Nightshade

Jason Gastrich

Doug Krueger

Thanks to the IIDB for the opportunity to discuss theological issues with Gastrich once again. I have shown in audio debates that Gastrich’s arguments for the existence of God do not work. Now our topic is similar: “There is enough evidence to consider faith in God reasonable." During the course of this debate I will consider the term “faith" to be equivalent to the word “believe" in this context. The reason for this is that if I were to debate the question of whether faith is reasonable the answer would clearly be “no." What is faith, according to the New Testament (NT)? Romans 8:24-25: “For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance." (NKJV) Hope is the expectation of that for which one does not have evidence. Then Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." So the essence of things expected not on the basis of evidence, is faith. But in the matter of existence claims, it is unreasonable to hold important beliefs about existents, especially gods, without demanding extraordinarily strong evidence. Gastrich would agree, since he does not believe in the vast majority of the tens of thousands of gods that have existed in human history. So faith in god, as defined biblically, is not reasonable.

However, the use of “faith" in our topic suggests that this kind of faith is simply belief. Is there sufficient evidence for the existence of God to make such belief reasonable? Gastrich does not define what he means by “God," so I will assume that he is referring to the concept of a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, creator of the universe, and who is identical to the being described in the Christian Bible. That Gastrich holds to such identity is shown in his argument from the inerrant Bible and his appeal to prophecies.

I will now examine Gastrich’s arguments for the reasonableness of belief in God and show why each of them is insufficient to show that such belief is reasonable.

The Inerrant Bible.
Perhaps the most surprising of Gastrich’s arguments for a belief in God is this argument from an inerrant Bible. The claim that the Bible is inerrant is not taken seriously in any reputable seminary or theological school in the 21st century. Examples of contradiction abound even in scholarly publications. Gastrich has not been able to rebut every example in the Skeptics Annotated Bible, and in some cases his “harmonization" raises more problems than they solve. (link removed)

If Gastrich is confident that he can harmonize every alleged error in the Bible, here are a couple of examples which he can use to show was his skill.

I. The Divorce Contradiction

According to the Bible, can a person get divorced and remarry without committing adultery? Remarriage after divorce is prohibited because it is adultery. Jesus clearly says so.

Mark 10:2-5, 9-12
And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept...What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.

(Also see Luke 16:1-18.)

So the logical form of the prohibition on remarriage is:

(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax)

where D is for "divorced," R is for "remarried," and A is for "commits adultery." It is read, "For anything x, if x is divorced and x is remarried, then x commits adultery." This is universal and applies without exception to any x, according to the above quotations from Jesus. "Whosoever" means "anyone." Jesus (in Mark) says this applies for any divorced man and any divorced woman.

Other parts of the Bible also state that if someone divorces, the person is not to remarry. See Matthew. 5:31-32 and 1Corinthians 7:10-11 (and Romans 7:2-3).

So no one who divorces can remarry without committing adultery. But, on the other hand, the Bible also says that not everyone who divorces a spouse and remarries is committing adultery:

When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife. [Deuteronomy 24:1-2]

Jesus agrees that you can get divorced and remarry as long as you divorce because of fornication:

And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. [Matt. 19:9]

But if you can divorce and remarry without committing adultery (in case of fornication), then this implies:

~[(x)(Dx & Rx→Ax)]

If there is an exception, then the conditional cannot apply to any and all things x and it is NOT the case that whoever divorces and remarries commits adultery. This is a formal contradiction, since the Bible, then, and even just the NT, endorses both sides of the issue:

(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax) & ~[(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax)]

So the Bible contradicts itself on whether one can get a divorce and remarry without committing adultery. In fact, Jesus contradicts himself on this issue.

Reputable Bible scholars know that the reason for this flip-flop is that different authors wanted different rules on divorce, so they put different, inconsistent rules into the mouths of Biblical characters such as Jesus. But inerrantists are stuck with the contradiction.

II. Jesus Lied.

During his hearing before the high priest, Jesus says, "I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing" (John 18:20 (NKJ)). Here Jesus claims he shared all of his teachings with his public audiences; he never kept important parts of his teachings a secret.

My understanding of John 18:20 is further supported by the verse that immediately follows John 18:20:

"Why askest thou me? ask them which heard me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said."

Here Jesus tells his inquisitors that they may question those who have heard him teach. Those who heard his public lectures can say what his teachings are; there is no need to question Jesus to find out what he teaches.

So the story is that Jesus is called in for questioning. They want to know whether he has secret teachings. The High Priest is probably worried that Jesus may be telling the people to believe things contrary to the teachings of the High Priest. Jesus says, "Hey, I don't have any secret teachings. I've always spoken openly, where everyone can hear me. Anyone who's heard me speak can tell you what I believe." This strikes me as the most reasonable reading of the verses in question.

But other parts of the NT show that Jesus did teach in secret. Of course, reputable NT scholars know that different (anonymous) authors of the gospels had Jesus portrayed in different lights, hence the contradictory verses. But inerrantists are once again stuck with a contradiction.

Let's look at some specific examples of the secretive aspect. Jesus claimed, “In secret I have said nothing." Of course, we must grant that this is not to be understood literally. Surely this is intended to mean that Jesus claimed that he did not have important teachings that were secret. But what does the Bible show? It shows that this claim is false.

Going to his lectures would not have let his general audiences know his important aspects of his true teachings.

Mark 4:
2 He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said:
3 "Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed…
9 Then Jesus said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
10 When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables.
11 He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables
12 so that, "`they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'"
[Here Jesus quotes parts of Isaiah 6:9-10]

Matthew 13:3-15 has the same story and quotation. Jesus intentionally talks in parables specifically to keep some people from understanding, and he does this so that they will not turn and be forgiven. (Obviously, Jesus does not want everyone to be saved, but that's another issue.) Note in verse 11 Jesus even tells them that he is giving them “the secret."

Mark 4:33-34:
"With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything."

That is teaching in secret.

Matthew 13:
34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable.
35 So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world."[Psalm 78:2]
36 Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field."
37 He answered, "The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man.
38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one…
51 "Have you understood all these things?" Jesus asked. "Yes," they replied.

So Jesus is clearly shown using parables, and he's explained that the does so in order to keep those not in his "inner circle" from understanding the real meaning of his teachings. Then his disciples ask for an explanation when they are alone with him, and Jesus gives the explanation. That is teaching in secret. The most important aspect of the parable, its meaning, was told in secret.

That Jesus had secret teachings is the issue known to scholars as "The Messianic Secret." This thesis was first explained and defended by Wilhelm Wrede in his 1901 book Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien. Here are a few examples of Jesus asking others to keep his activities or his nature a secret.

Mark 9:9: "He ordered them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves."

Jesus wants demons to refrain from telling who he really is. Mark 1:
23 Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out,
24 "What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God!"
25 "Be quiet!" said Jesus sternly. "Come out of him!"
26 The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek…
34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

When Jesus heals someone, he asks the man to keep quiet. Mark 1:
41 Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!"
42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.
43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning:
44 "See that you don't tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them."

Jesus asks people to keep quiet about healing a little girl in Mark 5:41-43, again after healing a man in Mark 7:34-36, and, after healing a blind man, Jesus tells his own disciples to keep quiet in Mark 8:26-30. And there are other examples. Jesus is portrayed as telling people to keep a secret about his true nature and about his activities. This is clearly keeping something secret that is important about himself.

Those who believe that account in John 18:20 of what Jesus said is accurate are committed then to either admitting that the many verses that conflict with it are incorrect or that Jesus lied. If the account is inaccurate, the Bible is not inerrant. If Jesus lied, then this is a contradiction. Matthew 15:19 and Mark 7:22 show Jesus saying that lying is evil. Proverbs 6:17-19 tells us that God hates a lying tongue and a false witness. If Jesus is God, and God cannot do evil, then Jesus cannot do evil. So Jesus was either God or he lied, but not both. The Bible says that Jesus was God and he lied, so the Bible contains a clear contradiction.

In any case, Gastrich’s argument from the alleged inerrancy of the Bible is a nonstarter. If one of the allegedly inerrant Bible claims is that God exists, then his argument begs the question of whether God exists. On the other hand, if Gastrich holds that all the claims except that God exists are true, it is not clear at all how this would show that God exists. There are other books on mathematics, science, and so on that, through years of editing and correction, have no errors. But this does not show that God exists. Gastrich writes: “It is reasonable to have faith in Him if you have found answers to every alleged Bible error." But even if the Bible were inerrant (excluding the claim that God exists), this would not show that God exists. At least, if this conclusion is supposed to follow, Gastrich will have to develop the argument further to attempt to show how this is so.

By the way, Gastrich claims of my book that I devoted more than half of my introductory book on atheism, What is Atheism? A Short Introduction, to the Bible. As readers of my book can readily see by perusing my book, this is false. Gastrich claims to have read my book, so why he writes this is not clear.

My Long Term Relationship with God
Gastrich’s assertion that his relationship with God shows him that God exists commits the fallacy of begging the question. If the issue is whether belief that God exists is reasonable, stating that it is reasonable on the grounds that God exists is a textbook case of the fallacy of circular reasoning.

Charitably, perhaps one can interpret Gastrich as saying that belief in God changed his life. However, people have their lives changed by false beliefs, so the fact that Gastrich felt happier or more comforted with his belief in God does not show that the belief is true. The followers of Rev. Jim Jones held that he was god incarnate, and many were happy in their beliefs. The same is true of the followers of David Koresh. But their happiness does not make their beliefs true. All major religions have comforted their followers. Unless Gastrich is willing to hold that all religions are correct in their assertions about their gods existing (even polytheistic religions), then he must admit that his argument from an alleged relationship with God doesn’t support his conclusion. The psychology of holding comforting beliefs can easily and nonsupernaturally explain why someone can hold a false belief and still have his or her life changed. No appeal to gods is necessary to explain the effects of belief in a god.

By the way, Gastrich seems to have the mistaken impression that the Supreme Court has a higher standard of evidence than lower federal courts. This is not so. It uses the same federal rules of evidence used in any federal court. Gastrich also perpetuates the myth that atheists are unreasonable in their demand for evidence for the existence of God. This is not so. I explain this in detail in my book, to which I refer Gastrich. If he thinks atheists have unreasonably stringent expectations for evidence for the existence of God, he should demonstrate this and not merely accuse atheists of bias and prejudice.

Miracles and the Effects of Prayer
Gastrich cites several cases of alleged miracles. His case of allegedly having his eyes cured by miraculous power is interesting. Gastrich states that he recently saw an eye doctor and he has 20/20 vision. But nowhere in his story does he state that he ever had other than 20/20 vision. He only had eye strain headaches. It is not clear what the alleged miracle is. The headaches went away? Perhaps he had eyestrain headaches from reading in poor light. Maybe he stopped doing that. We don’t have to appeal to the supernatural to explain why his headaches went away. In fact, the human body has natural mechanisms for healing. Healing without medical intervention is natural. So why should we be surprised when this happens?

His other stories are equally as irrelevant. Anecdotal evidence in science means little. If Gastrich wants to show that a miracle has occurred, he needs to fulfill some basic evidentiary requirements. Here is what he would need to do. For medical miracles, he would need to show medical records to substantiate that someone has a particular ailment. Then he needs to show that someone prayed to have this ailment disappear. Then he would need to produce medical records after the prayer to show that the ailment has indeed vanished. And, he would have to show that medical treatment for the ailment is not what is responsible for the positive result. Finally, he would have to show this consistently in many cases if he wants to argue that prayer has a causal relationship to improved health.

Sometimes people recover after prayer, sometimes they do not. That they sometimes do shows nothing about the effect of prayer, since it would be absurd to suppose that all people prayed for never get better. So individual, scattered cases where people recover does not establish a causal relationship between prayer and positive results. A major study with reproducible results could establish this, and despite millions of dollars invested in such studies, none have shown the efficacy of prayer. If prayer works, why can’t studies demonstrate this?

Benny Hinn is a well-known faith healer who claims to have healed thousands of people, far more than Gastrich claims. Yet a recent Dateline expose shows that attempts to prove his healings genuine turned up not one single case that could be documented. Other faith healers have identical track records.

Of course, it is interesting that for all the talk of the power of prayer, the millions of people who prayed for the recovery of Terri Schiavo, and the hundreds of millions (perhaps a billion) who prayed for the health of John Paul II did not get the miracle they hoped.

The NT has Jesus give a simple test for faith.

Luke 17:6-7 (NIV), Jesus speaking:

He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you."

See also Matthew 17:20. Recall that Mark 4:31 holds (erroneously) that the mustard seed is the smallest seed sown. So Jesus is saying that even if you have the smallest amount of faith, you can command a tree (or a mountain in Matt. 17) to move and it will move. Mark 11:22-24 has a similar story. Remember 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “Test all things; hold fast what is good." So let’s conduct Jesus’ test. If Gastrich has even the smallest amount of faith, he should be able to do as Jesus described, if the Bible is inerrant. If he can come to my house and make one of my trees in my backyard plant itself in the sea at his command, I will convert to his religion. However, I expect that Gastrich will continue to claim that he has a lot of faith and yet not perform this simple feat described by Jesus in his allegedly inerrant book.

Fulfilled Biblical Prophecies
Biblical prophecy fulfillment claims are common among fundamentalists, yet not one such prophecy holds up under scrutiny. In my book What is Atheism? A Short Introduction I list some commonsense criteria for evaluating whether a prophecy fulfillment claim can successfully serve as evidence for the existence of God. Here is a similar list that we can use for the purposes of our debate.

1.The interpretation of both the prophecy and the event that allegedly fulfills it must be shown to be correct interpretations.
2.The event that can fulfill the prophecy must be unusual or unique.
3.The prophecy must be known to have been made before the event that is supposed to be its fulfillment.
4.The event foretold must not be of the sort that could be the result of an educated guess.
5.The event that fulfills the prophecy cannot be staged, or the relevant circumstances manipulated, by those aware of the prophecy in such a way as to intentionally cause the prophecy to be fulfilled.

Gastrich cites Isaiah 53, by the anonymous “Deutero-Isaiah" or “Second Isaiah," as scholars call him, as evidence of fulfilled prophecy because, he claims, it is a description of the crucifixion of Jesus. But criterion #1 above involves showing that one’s interpretation of the event is correct. Isaiah 53 can be interpreted in a number of ways. The “servant" can be interpreted as the nation of Israel because of passages such as Isaiah 44:1: "But now listen, O Jacob, my servant, Israel, whom I have chosen." (See also Isa. 41:8.)

The Daniel 9 prophecy Gastrich refers to has been championed by many, most notably Sir Robert Anderson in his book The Coming Prince. Gastrich writes that “Daniel was a prophet of God and he predicted the exact day that Jesus Christ would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey and let people worship Him as Messiah the Prince (or King)." The book attributed to Daniel was not written by Daniel. Biblical scholars know this. However, for prophecy, this is irrelevant. More importantly, the claim of prophecy in Daniel 9 suffers from enormous liabilities. First, it cannot be shown that Jesus really rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Since the fulfillment cannot be known to be true, the prophecy fulfillment claim is worthless. Second, even if Jesus did ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, no one knows when this would have taken place. Jesus’ dates cannot be pinned down with any precision at all. Anderson’s version of the prophecy has the event in 32 CE, but Passover would have been on the wrong day of the week that year. Third, the Daniel 9 “prophecy" about dates is arrived at by unreliable means. Anderson creates an arbitrary start date for his calculations, so there is no reason to think that this alleged prophecy was fulfilled by Jesus. There are interpretation problems with this prophecy too. (“Robyn Banks" has roasted Gastrich on this prophecy at TheologyWeb, in case viewers want to take a look.) This prophecy has been rebutted many times by skeptics, so why Gastrich keeps using it remains a mystery.

I also found it interesting that Gastrich would assert that atheist Farrell Till, an expert in rebutting inerrantists, stated that the Daniel 9 prophecy “only failed in its fulfillment by 3 days!" Till said no such thing, and he doesn’t think there’s anything to this prophecy or any other. I expect that next time Gastrich posts in this debate he will correct his error about Till.

Gastrich’s use of some names in Genesis 5 is likewise a poor candidate for prophecy. Gastrich asserts that the names Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, etc. form a sentence suggesting the mission of Jesus. But the meanings of the names are not known with certainty. For example, “Adam" can mean “clay" or “red," “Seth" can mean “fixed," “Enos" can mean “forgetful," and so on, differing from the meanings Gastrich cites to form his sentence. Comparison of several online Bible dictionaries reveals disagreement on what the names mean. But even if the names did form the sentence Gastrich claims, what would this show? It would not show that divine intervention led to this statement. The story of Adam and his descendants is myth. Characters in myth often have meaningful names. Messianic concerns could easily have led the anonymous author(s) of Genesis to put names in a meaningful order. That proves nothing about gods.

Intelligent Design
The design arguments Jason uses are nothing new. He uses both an intelligent design argument concerning biology and the fine-tuning argument.

Regarding the fine-tuning argument, Jason writes: “In order for the life we have on Earth to exist, over 150 factors must be just so." He then discusses galaxy type. The idea here is that if many natural laws could have been different, then the chances that any one set of “cosmological constants" being the way they are now is improbable. So these factors must have been made to be the way they are intentionally. But we don’t know the probability of our universe being the way it is. It is possible that the universe could not in fact exist in any other way. If this is so, then this universe would not be improbable. For all their talk about improbability, theists cannot show that universes could exist in any other form than it does now. In addition, physicists have theoretical models showing how it is possible that there have been a multiplicity of universes. If this “multiverse" theory is correct, we should not be surprised that there is a universe like ours if there are billions of different universes existing simultaneously in different dimensions. Our universe would not be unlikely. Those who would counter that we don’t know for sure that there are other universes, or that there have been others in the past must admit that they also don’t have any evidence for the claim that a god made the universe. In fact, there is more theoretical foundation for the “multiverse" theory than there is for the view that all that we see was made by a ghost.

Gastrich’s comments about evolution betray his lack of scientific understanding. Evolution is a fact of biology, and intelligent 21st century people should be aware of this. He asks, “If the eye evolved, how good would 10% of an eye have worked?" This “problem" with evolution has been rebutted for decades. We know eyes evolved because the fossil record proves that they evolved and we see eyes in different states of evolution now. Some animals have eyes that work only 10% as well as ours.

Evolution is not even an issue in science anymore. The weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, and arguments for the existence of God that trade on the alleged “irreducible complexity" fail. In fact, creationists have yet to produce a single example of irreducible complexity that cannot be explained by evolution.

Gastrich commits the usual creationist fallacy of accusing scientists of promoting evolution by indoctrination. Evolution is taught in schools because it passed the rigorous test of the scientific method, including peer review, observation, and testing.

For rebuttals of the irreducible complexity of the eye or the lungs, Gastrich should read: (link removed)

Conclusion:
Some of Gastrich’s arguments ask us to evaluate his credibility. His personal anecdotes about miracles and his relationship with God depend on our accepting his word. However, in his concluding remarks Gastrich asks “Why do you think the majority of the world is over 90% Christian?" That Gastrich would make such a remark shows more than simply that he does not check his facts. Just a few minutes with an almanac would have shown him that of the 6.4 billion people on Earth, there are a billion Muslims, a billion Indians, most of whom are Hindu, and that few of the billion Chinese are Christian. It is not the case that the majority of the world is Christian, nor that the majority of the world is over 90% Christian (whatever that means). About one third of the world population is Christian. (See: http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm ) Gastrich has shown repeatedly that many of his statements, under scrutiny, do not hold up.

Gastrich writes: “Atheism answers nothing. It simply denies everything and naysays. It’s an incredible position based on willful ignorance." Atheism is not a position that denies everything. It is only a position on the existence of God. I have known many more atheists than Gastrich, and all of them I have met are positive people with an appreciation for life. I know that is my own approach to life, and for Gastrich to accuse me of “willful ignorance" when he can see in my book that I have given the atheist position a careful, reasoned examination is both insulting and laughable.

Gastrich has not come close to showing that there is sufficient evidence to make belief in God reasonable.

Jason Gastrich

Round 2

In this round, I will support my rebuttal to Doug’s post. I’ll also be presenting some new information and some new arguments. Thanks for reading and I hope you continue to enjoy our debate.

Before I begin, I want to clarify a statement I made in my last post. I made a confusing statement regarding 90% of the world and their beliefs. My statement was supposed to read, “90% of the world believes in God." If this were the only proof of God’s existence, it would be pretty weak. However, it isn’t and it is a very interesting fact in support of God’s existence.

Quote:

But in the matter of existence claims, it is unreasonable to hold important beliefs about existents, especially gods, without demanding extraordinarily strong evidence.

I agree that evidence is necessary. However, I see no good reason to have a presumption of atheism. Evidence is necessary for your claim as well; and strangely, the wording of your assertion above provides for my assertion.

Quote:

Gastrich would agree, since he does not believe in the vast majority of the tens of thousands of gods that have existed in human history. So faith in god, as defined biblically, is not reasonable.

There is not enough evidence for those gods. There is far more evidence for the biblical God.

Quote:

The Inerrant Bible. Perhaps the most surprising of Gastrich’’s arguments for a belief in God is this argument from an inerrant Bible. The claim that the Bible is inerrant is not taken seriously in any reputable seminary or theological school in the 21st century. Examples of contradiction abound even in scholarly publications. Gastrich has not been able to rebut every example in the Skeptics Annotated Bible, and in some cases his “harmonization" raises more problems than they solve.

This simply isn’t so. Doug must have a very different definition of “reputable seminary or theological school." For instance, Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) is one of the very best seminaries in the nation. They boast influential graduates such as Dr. David Jeremiah, Dr. Tony Evans, Mike Gendron, etc. They have employed amazing faculty such as Chuck Swindoll and Dr. John Hannah. Incidentally, I’ve visited DTS and I’m friends with some of the graduates.

I could go on and on about universities that affirm biblical inerrancy, but the list would be far too long. Doug has simply asserted, which is the logical fallacy of argument by assertion, so I’ll wait and see if he has any proof before I take his assertion (I can’t call it an argument) any more seriously.

I’ve snipped your link to the site who is illegally using my name and cybersquatting. However, even that site has only a handful of quibbles with my answers. My full and complete rebuttal to The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible offers nearly 4,000 answers.

Quick aside. I saw you ask the ii_errancy group at Topica.com for help on biblical inerrancy. Does this mean that you cannot find any errors on your own?

Quote:

I. The Divorce Contradiction

This is a rather pedestrian misunderstanding. Here is the solution.
* Mark 10:11, Luke 16:18, Matthew 5:32, and Matthew 19:9 are all different statements, made by Jesus, about divorce. They don't contradict each other, though. They complement each other.
* First, Jesus makes it clear that God created man and woman to enter into a covenant with God to stay married. He quotes Genesis, too. This is the ideal.
* Here are the things that we learn from these four statements by Jesus:
1) If a husband or wife divorces the other and marries another, then they commit adultery (Mark 10:11). Since no reasons or circumstances are given, Jesus is obviously talking about divorce without fornication.
2) If a husband divorces his wife and marries another, then he commits adultery. If the divorced wife marries another, then she commits adultery (Luke 16:18). Once again, Jesus is talking about divorce without fornication being the cause.
3) If a husband divorces his wife for any reason besides fornication, then he causes her to commit adultery. Whoever marries this divorced woman commits adultery (Matthew 5:32). Now, Jesus is giving instructions about a married person who commits fornication.
4) If a husband divorces his wife for any reason besides fornication and marries another woman, he commits adultery. Whoever marries this divorced woman commits adultery (Matthew 19:9). Once again, Jesus is giving instructions about a married person who commits fornication.
* It is obvious from the text that the first two verses are toward people who have not committed fornication. The third and fourth verses are given to people who have committed fornication. These don't contradict each other, but they give instructions to people in different circumstances. Furthermore, they aren't taken from the same times and places in Jesus' ministry, so they cannot be misquotes or omissions.
* 1 Corinthians 7:15 addresses another circumstance. Paul gives instructions to spouses who have an unbelieving husband or wife that abandons them. They are no longer in bondage to them.
Citation: The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible: Corrected and Explained, [removed solicitation - NS]

Quote:

II. Jesus Lied. During his hearing before the high priest, Jesus says, "I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing" (John 18:20 (NKJ)). Here Jesus claims he shared all of his teachings with his public audiences; he never kept important parts of his teachings a secret.

Doug and I discussed this issue in one of our previous debates. Although it’s obviously a “pet issue" with Doug, it doesn’t seem as if anyone else has made it an issue. For instance, the author of The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible (which is an exhaustive, atheist Bible commentary, trying to point out every alleged error and contradiction in the Bible) doesn’t even mention it.

To further illustrate my point, before I explain Doug’s error, see the following link. In Google’s entire archive of 8 billion web pages, there is only ONE web page about this alleged error. It’s from a guy named “Brad" with a hotmail email address and a free, geocities web page.

In over 2000 years of biblical scholarship, no Bible scholar has ever taken this claim seriously, yet Doug thinks he’s on to something. Maybe “Brad" is his pen name.

Link: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=John+18%3A20+Bible+error+Jesus+lied

Now, it’s important to recognize that Doug Krueger has never given the entire context for this passage of scripture. This should be a red flag if we are wondering whether or not Doug will be able to understand the passage. As you can imagine, pulling one verse out of a 2000 year old document and trying to understand it, out of context, is simply poor hermeneutics and poor exegesis.

I’ll quote the passage, so everyone can read the context.

John 18:19-21 reads, “The high priest then asked Jesus about His disciples and His doctrine. Jesus answered him, ‘I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing. Why do you ask Me? Ask those who have heard Me what I said to them. Indeed they know what I said.’"

In order to prove Jesus is lying, we would have to have the specific questions from the priests. Wouldn’t we? You can’t accuse someone of giving a false answer to a question if we don’t even know the question. That’s part of Doug’s problem. The question isn’t mentioned.

Now, if you want to be extra-literal, as Doug is trying to do, then why can’t we apply this statement to Jesus’ entire private life? He’s saying that He has never spoken in private. This is, of course, absurd. However, it’s no more absurd than Doug’s claims.

Jesus’ point was that His teachings were for everyone and He wanted the entire world to know about His doctrines, His plans, etc. This passage could even be considered prophecy. The things He taught to His disciples have been shared all over the world and billions of people!

So, I think it’s very obvious that Doug is falsely accusing Jesus of lying and misinterpreting the passage. If there is any doubt, then why didn’t the high priest accuse Jesus of lying?

Finally, I seem to remember Doug misinterpreting the following part of the verse: “I always taught in synagogues and in the temple." He thinks that if he can find Jesus teaching in another location, then He is a liar. It’s unfortunate that Doug lacks understanding, though.

In my phone debate with Doug, I compared this to me saying, “I always eat hamburger." Do I ALWAYS eat hamburger? No. I eat it a few times a week and sometimes I don’t eat it for days at a time. Am I lying? No. The word “always" is an ambiguous word and it can refer to probability or necessity.

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In any case, Gastrich’s argument from the alleged inerrancy of the Bible is a nonstarter. If one of the allegedly inerrant Bible claims is that God exists, then his argument begs the question of whether God exists. On the other hand, if Gastrich holds that all the claims except that God exists are true, it is not clear at all how this would show that God exists. There are other books on mathematics, science, and so on that, through years of editing and correction, have no errors. But this does not show that God exists. Gastrich writes: “It is reasonable to have faith in Him if you have found answers to every alleged Bible error." But even if the Bible were inerrant (excluding the claim that God exists), this would not show that God exists. At least, if this conclusion is supposed to follow, Gastrich will have to develop the argument further to attempt to show how this is so.

Comparing the Bible to a mathematics or science book is a bad premise. The Bible was written by 40 people, over thousands of years, in several countries, by priests, shepherds, kings, prophets, etc. It contains all kinds of literary devices like poetry, historical narrative, didactic treatise, etc. It’s also thousands of pages long.

So, when we have an inerrant Bible, it is far more awesome than an allegedly error-free math or science books. Incidentally, if Doug wants to propose that there is an inerrant math or science book, he may, but he needs to support his premise. Where is his proof? Where is his work and research that supports this claim? Not here.

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By the way, Gastrich claims of my book that I devoted more than half of my introductory book on atheism, What is Atheism? A Short Introduction, to the Bible. As readers of my book can readily see by perusing my book, this is false. Gastrich claims to have read my book, so why he writes this is not clear.

Your book is 222 pages long. It begins at page 9 and ends on page 231. The pages that have scriptures on them or clearly address the Bible include 20, 26-28, 30-50, 61, 64-65, 68-70, 72, 73, 76, 77, 92-124, 131, 134, 138, 140, 161, 163, 164, 167, 169-173, 176-178, 182-194, 196-198, 201-206, 208-209, 222, 224, 229, 230. This amounts to 113 pages directly talking about the Bible and this doesn’t even count all of the pages that indirectly talk about the Bible or Christianity.

So Doug, it’s correct to say that over 50% of your book addresses the Bible. It’s also correct to say that you represent most atheists with your oddly consuming, pre-occupation with the Bible; even in a supposed introductory book on atheism. For instance, I don’t believe that pink unicorns exist, so I devote about .000001% of my time talking about them. It makes people wonder when atheists feel the need to address the Bible so much. If God doesn’t exist, then why bother?

By the way, page 86 lists Anthony Flew as an atheist. Will you be changing this in the next revision of your book?

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If he thinks atheists have unreasonably stringent expectations for evidence for the existence of God, he should demonstrate this and not merely accuse atheists of bias and prejudice.

In a phone debate with you, you said that you wanted God to spell your name in the clouds before you’d believe in Him. This is an unreasonable request. You have been given plenty of other proof. There is no good reason to waste a miracle on your ego. Billions of others believe in God without this sort of proof. This miracle would serve no altruistic purpose and would not help to benefit humankind. Therefore, you do not have a reasonable request and you do have an overly stringent demand.

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Miracles and the Effects of Prayer Gastrich cites several cases of alleged miracles. His case of allegedly having his eyes cured by miraculous power is interesting. Gastrich states that he recently saw an eye doctor and he has 20/20 vision. But nowhere in his story does he state that he ever had other than 20/20 vision. He only had eye strain headaches. It is not clear what the alleged miracle is. The headaches went away? Perhaps he had eyestrain headaches from reading in poor light. Maybe he stopped doing that. We don’t have to appeal to the supernatural to explain why his headaches went away. In fact, the human body has natural mechanisms for healing. Healing without medical intervention is natural. So why should we be surprised when this happens?

Yes, the miracle is my painful, eyestrain headaches went away without any medication or surgery and without any physical therapy. I had eyestrain headaches each day. I prayed that they would go away and they went away. My diet and routine did not change. Therefore, God exists because He answered my prayer and it’s reasonable to believe in Him.

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A major study with reproducible results could establish this, and despite millions of dollars invested in such studies, none have shown the efficacy of prayer. If prayer works, why can’t studies demonstrate this?

These sorts of studies have been done. I linked them in my last round post. However, you snipped them and avoided them.

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Benny Hinn is a well-known faith healer who claims to have healed thousands of people, far more than Gastrich claims. Yet a recent Dateline expose shows that attempts to prove his healings genuine turned up not one single case that could be documented. Other faith healers have identical track records.

I do not support Benny Hinn. I have done research on him and I’ve found him to be a liar and a fraud. However, this does nothing to disprove God and nothing to show that faith in God is unreasonable.

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Of course, it is interesting that for all the talk of the power of prayer, the millions of people who prayed for the recovery of Terri Schiavo, and the hundreds of millions (perhaps a billion) who prayed for the health of John Paul II did not get the miracle they hoped.

One out of every one person dies. However, prayer may extend people’s lives. How do you know that they wouldn’t have died much earlier without their faith and without prayer? The research shows that time spent in prayer effects your physical and mental health in a positive way, so it is very likely that they did live longer and better lives due to faith and prayers.

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The NT has Jesus give a simple test for faith. Luke 17:6-7 (NIV), Jesus speaking: He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’’ and it will obey you."

There is no evidence that this is a “test for faith" as you characterize it. Can you show that Jesus intended this to be a way to convert atheists?

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See also Matthew 17:20. Recall that Mark 4:31 holds (erroneously) that the mustard seed is the smallest seed sown.

This is untrue. The scriptures do not call the mustard seed the smallest seed. They record Jesus calling it “the least." It’s unclear exactly what relationship He is referring to when calling it the least, but if He would have meant “smallest," then He would have said smallest.

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If Gastrich has even the smallest amount of faith, he should be able to do as Jesus described, if the Bible is inerrant. If he can come to my house and make one of my trees in my backyard plant itself in the sea at his command, I will convert to his religion.

This is an unreasonable request. You have been given plenty of other proof. There is no good reason to waste a miracle on your ego. Billions of others believe in God without this sort of proof. This miracle would serve no altruistic purpose and would not help to benefit humankind. Therefore, you do not have a reasonable request and you do have an overly stringent demand.

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Fulfilled Biblical Prophecies Biblical prophecy fulfillment claims are common among fundamentalists, yet not one such prophecy holds up under scrutiny. In my book What is Atheism? A Short Introduction I list some commonsense criteria for evaluating whether a prophecy fulfillment claim can successfully serve as evidence for the existence of God. Here is a similar list that we can use for the purposes of our debate.

There are several problems with this list. I’ll comment and question it below.

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1.The interpretation of both the prophecy and the event that allegedly fulfills it must be shown to be correct interpretations.

I agree with this.

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2.The event that can fulfill the prophecy must be unusual or unique.

This has nothing to do with whether a prophecy has been made or fulfilled.

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3.The prophecy must be known to have been made before the event that is supposed to be its fulfillment.

I agree with this. The definition of a prophecy is history foretold in advance.

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4.The event foretold must not be of the sort that could be the result of an educated guess.

This has nothing to do with whether a prophecy has been made or fulfilled.

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5.The event that fulfills the prophecy cannot be staged, or the relevant circumstances manipulated, by those aware of the prophecy in such a way as to intentionally cause the prophecy to be fulfilled.

The reason why or how someone fulfills a prophecy has nothing to do with whether or not a prophecy has been made or fulfilled. This is an invalid criteria for prophecy fulfillment.

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Gastrich cites Isaiah 53, by the anonymous “Deutero-Isaiah" or “Second Isaiah," as scholars call him, as evidence of fulfilled prophecy because, he claims, it is a description of the crucifixion of Jesus. But criterion #1 above involves showing that one’s interpretation of the event is correct. Isaiah 53 can be interpreted in a number of ways. The “servant" can be interpreted as the nation of Israel because of passages such as Isaiah 44:1: "But now listen, O Jacob, my servant, Israel, whom I have chosen." (See also Isa. 41:8.)

Criterion #1 didn’t involve the ability to find other interpretations. It involved knowing the correct interpretation of the passage. While it “could" have been referring to Israel and possibly a variety of other things, it wasn’t.

Once again, you’re having trouble with context, hermeneutics, and exegesis. Before, you wanted to pull a single verse out of the Bible and try and find its meaning, independent of the verses around it. This time, you’re trying to interpret Isaiah 53 by using a single verse in Isaiah 44 and a single verse in Isaiah 41. Once again, this is poor exegesis and should be disregarded.

If you have a sound argument (e.g. premise and conclusion) regarding Isaiah 53, then present it. Otherwise, my premise that it was a prophecy about the crucifixion and my conclusion that faith in God is reasonable still remains.

The following premise about Isaiah 53 is why my conclusion is true.

1. The chapter describes crucifixion hundreds of years before it was a method of execution by the Romans.
2. The chapter describes the sufferings of Christ that we also see recorded in the gospels.
3. The chapter uses words and terminology that do not refer to the country of Israel.
4. The chapter says, “He is despised and rejected by men . . . He was despised and WE (Israel) esteemed him not." (Isaiah 53:3)
5. The chapter corresponds with the treatment of Jesus by the Pharisees.
6. The chapter mentions the whippings that Jesus received.
7. The chapter reveals Jesus’ reaction to His persecutors.
8. The chapter prophesies His imprisonment.
9. The chapter reveals Jesus’ death with “the rich" and He was buried in a rich man’s tomb.
10. We find that His soul was an offering for sin. (Isaiah 53:11)


Since these prophecies clearly refer to Jesus Christ, it is reasonable to have faith in Him and the Bible.

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The book attributed to Daniel was not written by Daniel. Biblical scholars know this.

Logical fallacy: appeal to authority.

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However, for prophecy, this is irrelevant. More importantly, the claim of prophecy in Daniel 9 suffers from enormous liabilities. First, it cannot be shown that Jesus really rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Yes we do. We find this in Matthew 21:1-5.

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Anderson’s version of the prophecy has the event in 32 CE, but Passover would have been on the wrong day of the week that year.

Please reveal your math. All I see is an argument by assertion.

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Third, the Daniel 9 “prophecy" about dates is arrived at by unreliable means. Anderson creates an arbitrary start date for his calculations, so there is no reason to think that this alleged prophecy was fulfilled by Jesus.

There is no arbitrary start date. According to the scriptures, the command to rebuild Jerusalem was given in the "month of Nisan and the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes". This king was the King Artaxerxes Longimanus of Persia. The day when he gave the command to rebuild Jerusalem was March 14, 445 B.C. [copied comments removed - NS]

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[quote & link added - NS] The Prophecy of Daniel The ACTUAL DATE of the decree was MARCH 14, 445 B.C. We know this from Neh 2:1-6 that the decree was issued "in the Month of Nisan, in the 20th year" of Artaxerxes' reign. History records Artaxerxes' reign as being from 465 - 425 B.C. History also records that "The 1st of Nisan is a new year for the computation of the reign of Kings and for festivals" so we know that the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, which would have been a Major decree was issued on the First of Nisan which in 445 B.C. fell on March 14.

As for Farrell Till, he wanted me to clarify and I’m happy to do so. He doesn’t think this is a prophecy, BUT if it were, then he thinks it’s off by three days. We’re splitting hairs here. I wasn’t trying to show that Till believed in the Bible and I think you both know that. I was showing that he thought this prophecy (I call it a prophecy) was fulfilled 3 days late. My question to the readership was, “What if he is off by three days?"

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Intelligent Design But we don’t know the probability of our universe being the way it is. It is possible that the universe could not in fact exist in any other way.

This isn’t the issue. Of course the universe could exist in another way. However, life as we know it could not exist if any of those 150+ factors were not just so. This is powerful evidence of a designer.

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If this “multiverse" theory is correct, we should not be surprised that there is a universe like ours if there are billions of different universes existing simultaneously in different dimensions. Our universe would not be unlikely.

This is nothing more than a gambler’s fallacy. Every time you roll a six sided die, you have an equal chance of getting a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. Doug seems to think that the astronomically small possibility of life being created by itself somehow grows if there are more universes. This simply isn’t true. Every time you roll the die, you have the same chance and every universe that exists still has the astronomically small possibility of life as we know it.

Doug has no tenable theory for the origin of life. Nothing has ever been observed that could help us understand how life could have originated on its own. Brilliant scientists cannot create life, yet Doug and the other atheists believe it happened billions of years ago on its own. It’s simply absurd.

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Gastrich’s comments about evolution betray his lack of scientific understanding. Evolution is a fact of biology, and intelligent 21st century people should be aware of this.

I never disputed good science. I believe in every form of evolution that we have observed. I believe the primrose plant produced another species of promise plant. However, I’m very skeptical when it comes to assuming things about the distant past.

Answer me this. You have faith that the evolution of species (which is not a fact) happened. Why should I trade my faith for your faith?

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He asks, “If the eye evolved, how good would 10% of an eye have worked?" This “problem" with evolution has been rebutted for decades. We know eyes evolved because the fossil record proves that they evolved and we see eyes in different states of evolution now. Some animals have eyes that work only 10% as well as ours.

These seems awfully fallacious and assuming. Can you produce some evidence that an eye evolved?

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Evolution is not even an issue in science anymore. The weight of the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, and arguments for the existence of God that trade on the alleged “irreducible complexity" fail. In fact, creationists have yet to produce a single example of irreducible complexity that cannot be explained by evolution.

Really, Doug? Well, how would you explain this quote from an evolutionist in Nature magazine? “A major enigma in evolutionary biology is that new forms or functions often require the concerted efforts of several independent genetic changes. It is unclear how such changes might accumulate when they are likely to be deleterious individually and be lost by selective pressure’’ - True, H.L. and Lindquist, S.L., A yeast prion provides a mechanism for genetic variation and phenotypic diversity, Nature 407(6803):477––483, 28 September 2000, p. 477.

The cases of irreducible complexity are no more accounted for than Doug understands the teachings or person of Jesus.

Arguments from Logic

Is it reasonable to have faith? Let us define reasonable and faith. Reasonable is defined as, “being within the bounds of common sense." Faith is defined as, “confident belief in the truth." Citation: Dictionary.com.

Some have said that atheism is a mental disorder. Is it common sense to reject belief in God? Or is it common sense to believe in Him?

90% of the world believes in God. If atheism is true, then 90% of the world is unreasonable and does not have common sense when it comes to an issue that permeates every aspect of life. Can this really be so?

However, if atheism is not true, then 90% of the world is reasonable and does have common sense when it comes to the issue of origins. Does this sound more like the world you see and know? Or is the world you recognize filled with 9 out of 10 people who are unreasonable and without common sense?

The one who calls 90% of the world deluded is deluded.

Atheism Waning

Recently, reports have shown that atheism is waning. Of course, this is exactly what the Bible predicts. We don’t read about end times atheism. We read about end times false religion and there are, of course, numerous religions and religious people in the world, today. Since the Bible predicts end times false religion and that is what we see, we can know that the Bible is a book with true and fulfilled prophecies in it.

I’d like Doug to explain why atheism is waning; why it isn’t accepted as an intellectual position like it used to be. Don’t worry about trying to explain Anthony Flew’s conversion to theism/deism. I’m interested in the numbers and the reasons for the other people. Here is support for my premise that if atheism is waning, and if the Bible is correct on this, then it is reasonable to have faith in God.

Atheism in Decline
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050303-115733-9519r.htm

From 1991 and 1999, the population of the world rose by about 600,000,000. During that time, the world's atheists plummeted from 240 million to 150 million. Citation: The World Almanacs (1994 and 2001).

Perhaps people are just becoming more reasonable.

Sincerely,
Jason Gastrich

Nightshade

Jason Gastrich,

In your recent statement, I have found that you copied some comments nearly in verbatim from another source and without any attribution:


And here's material from The Prophecy of Daniel, by the Christian Information Exchange


I have removed your comments in bold and replaced it with the actual quote from the original website. As you may be aware, plagiarism is a serious offence and would normally constitute a forfeit of the debate. But since only a few sentences were involved, I will merely provide a warning. A second infraction, however, will constitute a forfeit.

Thank you for your consideration,

- NS, FD Moderator

Doug Krueger

I had solidly rebutted Gastrich's arguments in my first reply. His efforts to rehabilitate his arguments are futile, and indeed his posts show signs of haste and poor research.

For example, Gastrich recognizes that his statement that “the majority of the world is over 90% Christian" was absurd. He amends it to:


But this is still false. I defined “God" in the first round as


Gastrich does not dispute or comment on this. Of the world population of 6.5 billion, the billion Chinese, who are Taoist, Buddhist, Confucian, or atheist, the 900 million Hindus, and millions more, have no belief in God as defined. So Gastrich remains incorrect.

But the point is moot. Appealing to the popularity of a belief to support its truth is a logical fallacy called argumentum ad populum. The popularity of a belief is not evidence of its truth, as philosophy students learn even in introductory classes. Gastrich writes that the popularity of belief in God is “a very interesting fact in support of God’s existence," so he’s determined to commit this fallacy.

Gastrich says that he can see “no good reason" to hold a presumption of atheism, the view that in the absence of evidence of an extraordinary claim, disbelief is warranted. Regarding nonchristian gods, Gastrich admits he doesn’t believe in them because “there is not enough evidence for those gods." So Gastrich uses a presumption of atheism! Indeed, in our telephone debate of 5/13/03 (sermonaudio.com) he agreed with this principle. How can Gastrich claim to see “no good reason" to have this principle and yet put it into practice?

But that is not our topic. On to the main rebuttals.

The Inerrant Bible Argument
Regarding his argument from an inerrant Bible, I pointed out that


Gastrich cites the Dallas Theological Seminary and says that it is “one of the very best seminaries in the nation" and that the faculty supports the inerrancy position. But the seminary's website states


The first doctrine listed is “the authority and inerrancy of the Scripture." The faculty endorses biblical inerrancy because they wouldn’t be hired otherwise, so their endorsement proves nothing about the tenability of biblical inerrancy.

In “Mistakes of Moses," Robert Ingersoll explained:


Any school whose faculty cannot dispute the basic doctrines of the school with impunity cannot be taken seriously. And of course these inerrantists have no good arguments for their position.

Since the faculty at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the oldest university in the world, support the inerrancy of the Qur’an, would Gastrich be impressed by this as evidence for the inerrancy of the Qur’an?

The reason legitimate scholars reject biblical inerrancy is that there is a plethora of examples of error, especially contradictions.

I. The Divorce Contradiction
I explained in my first post the contradiction on the matter of divorce and remarriage. In Mark 10:11, Jesus states



which is the universal statement

(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax)

where D is for "divorced," R is for "remarried," and A is for "commits adultery."

In Matthew 19:9, Jesus says:


If someone can divorce and remarry without committing adultery, this is:

(∃x)(Dx & Rx & ~Ax)

which implies:

~[(x)(Dx & Rx→Ax)]

Thus we have a contradiction of:

(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax) & ~[(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax)]

So the Bible contradicts itself on divorce and remarriage. This is a formal contradiction supported by the biblical text.

Gastrich says of these verses:



But this is demonstrably false. I showed, using logical notation, that the statements contradict.

Gastrich says:


That defense is inadequate. Jesus specifically states that the ban on divorce and remarriage applies to “whosoever," meaning anyone. This is a universal statement, and any other statement that allows for divorce and remarriage necessarily contradicts this statement.

Gastrich writes:


This is false. In Mark 10, Jesus is addressing all those who are married. It is precisely because no exceptions are given that it is a universal statement. Gastrich’s intended defense actually underscores my point.

Gastrich continues:


It certainly wouldn’t follow that if statements are taken in different times and places that they can’t be misquotes, and if they’re cited, they aren’t omissions anyway. It is unclear what Gastrich is talking about.

But Gastrich has obviously not examined Mark 10 and Matthew 19 in context. The claim that Jesus was speaking on different occasions is implausible. Here are events surrounding the Pharisees’ questioning Jesus about divorce in Mark and Matthew.

1. Jesus goes into the region of Judea across the Jordan.
2. Large crowds followed him.
3. Pharisees come.
4. The Pharisees came to test him.
5. The Pharisees mention one issue.
6. That issue is whether a man can divorce his wife.
7. Jesus asks the Pharisees if they recall the OT view.
8. Jesus cites Genesis 1:27.
9. Jesus cites Genesis 2:24.
10. Jesus states that what God has joined together, let man not separate.
11. Jesus explains the divorce-and-remarry rule.
12. People bring little children to Jesus.
13. The disciples rebuke the people for doing this.
14. Jesus says they should allow the children to approach.
15. Jesus says that the kingdom of God belongs to such as these children.
16. A man approaches Jesus.
17. The man calls Jesus "good."
18. The man asks one question.
19. The man asks what he must do to inherit eternal life.
20. Jesus asks him why he called Jesus good.
21. Jesus says there is only one who is good.
22. Jesus tells the man to follow the commandments.
23. The man asks which commandments he must follow.
24. Jesus tells him to follow the commandments.
25. Jesus gives a short list of commandments.
26. This list includes `Do not murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t give false testimony, and honor your father and mother.'
27. The short list does not include any of the other ten commandments.
28. The man says that he has already been keeping these commandments.
29. It is stated that the man lacks one thing to gain life.
30. The man must sell everything he has and give to the poor.
31. If the man does this, he will have treasure in heaven, states Jesus.
32. The man hears this and leaves sadly.
33. The man is sad because he is rich.
34. Jesus addresses the disciples.
35. Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
36. The disciples are then amazed.
37. The disciples ask "Who then can be saved?"
38. Jesus tells them that with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
39. Peter says, “We have left everything to follow you!"
40. Jesus says something about everyone who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for him.
41. Jesus says that those who have left those things for him will receive a hundred times as much in return.
42. Jesus says that those who have done this will also receive eternal life.
43. Jesus talks to his disciples on the way to Jerusalem. (Now Matthew 20.)
44. Jesus takes the Twelve aside.
45. Jesus explains what is going to happen to him.
46. Jesus says that the Son of Man will be betrayed.
47. Those to whom he will be betrayed are the chief priests and teachers of the law.
48. They will turn Jesus over to the Gentiles.
49. Jesus gives a short list of things that the Gentiles will do to him.
50. The list includes that the Gentiles will mock Jesus, flog him, and kill him.

And so on. I have an even longer list with further parallels, but this is sufficient. All these descriptions of events, in the same order, in almost the same language, are clearly intended to be descriptions of the same sequence of events. Since this is so, the claim that Jesus was addressing the Pharisees in two separate occasions is implausible. And, worse still, even if these had been different occasions, contradictory statements on different occasions are still contradictory. Gastrich has not resolved this contradiction. In fact, I sent him the longer list of these parallel events on 2/7/03. Gastrich never rebutted my argument.

II. Jesus Lied
Gastrich ends his discussion of the divorce contradiction with one of his mean-spirited barbs, stating


I need no help finding errors, but I had asked the Errancy group for contradictions Gastrich hadn’t resolved so I could tell readers of this debate that he has not “found reasonable and accurate answers to every alleged error in the Bible" as he claims. He never adequately responded to many issues. Anyway, just after suggesting that I can’t come up with my own Bible problems, Gastrich states in the next paragraph that my “Jesus Lied" contradiction is so unique that “it doesn’t seem as if anyone else has made it an issue"!

Of the “Jesus Lied" contradiction, Gastrich writes:


But we don’t have to know the question to know if someone is lying. We just have to know what statements the person makes and whether the person knows or believes they’re true. Anyway, the question about his ministry is clear enough for our purposes. Gastrich has no rebuttal here.

He continues:


Gastrich needs to re-read my post. I stated that I was NOT going to take Jesus’ statement literally. I said:


And then I showed how Jesus did have important secret teachings. Gastrich says:


I had specifically cited Mark 4:2-12 which shows that Jesus did NOT want everyone to know his teachings. Gastrich says nothing about that here. I cited verse after verse showing Jesus keeping important information secret, and Gastrich says nothing about any of this evidence. How can he expect to rebut me when he simply ignores my evidence?

The claim that Jesus lied in John 18:20 is simply an extension of the well-known Messianic Secret issue. That Jesus’ secrecy in Mark conflicts with John 18:20 surprises no NT scholar.

Gastrich writes:


If Jesus has secret teachings, the High Priest would not know them and would thus have no basis for accusing Jesus of lying.

I had also pointed out that Gastrich’s argument from biblical inerrancy is moot. I challenged Gastrich to show the connection between an inerrant Bible and the conclusion that God exists, and he did NOTHING to develop the argument.

Incidentally, Gastrich keeps insisting that most of my book is about the Bible. (He seems to think that if a page mentions the Bible, then the whole page is “devoted" to the Bible.) He is puzzled by this:


I “bother" because so many people persist in a false belief. Why would this be unusual? Gastrich doesn’t believe Bible errors exist, yet he has devoted 100% of a book to Bible errors!

"My Long Term Relationship with God" Argument

I thoroughly rebutted this argument in my first post, showing that it was circular. Gastrich makes NO mention of this argument in his latest post, so he has apparently abandoned this argument.

Miracles and the Effects of Prayer

Gastrich repeats his anecdote about his vision being healed. I already explained why anecdotes of healings are worthless. Individual cases where people recover do not establish a causal relationship between prayer and positive results.

What would serve as evidence for the power of prayer, I said, is a major study with reproducible results, yet no such studies have conclusively shown that prayer works. Gastrich claims that studies of this sort have been done, and he linked to them. One link was a page about the increased mental health of those who pray. This is no miracle. The same effects occur from simple meditation or from yoga. His other link was to a round-table discussion of prayer, and one panelist states,


If Gastrich wants to use prayer studies as evidence for the efficacy of prayer, I am not going to do his homework for him. He needs to select a study, explain how it was conducted, and explain how it supports the claim that belief in God is reasonable. He must also reply to critics. So far he has not made reference to a single prayer study.

When I asked Gastrich why prayer did not work for Terri Schiavo or John Paul II, he said:


Ignorance of whether someone would live longer is not evidence of the power of prayer. But knowledge that what was asked in prayer was not granted is evidence that prayer does not work.

I also cited Luke 17:6-7, where Jesus says:


Since Mark 4:31 holds (erroneously) that the mustard seed is the smallest seed sown, Jesus is saying that even if you have the smallest amount of faith, you can command a tree to move and it will. If Gastrich has even the smallest amount of faith, he should be able to do this.

Gastrich says:


Weren't “signs" used in the NT to convert people or confirm “the word"? Yes. See John 2:23 and 6:2. And Mark 16:20:



Can’t Gastrich could do as Jesus described as confirmation of “the word"?

Gastrich protests:


Or “smaller than all the seeds on earth (NKJV)"? But let’s use Gastrich’s terminology. If you have “the least" amount of faith, you can do as Jesus described. If Jesus says those with “the least" amount of faith can do this, it is not unreasonable to ask someone with faith to do it. Can Gastrich do this? On our phone debate, we discussed this and he waffled on whether he believed it. Doesn’t he have even “the least" amount of faith? 1 Thessalonians 5:21 says: “Test all things; hold fast what is good." Why won’t Gastrich do this test?

Fulfilled Biblical Prophecies Argument

Gastrich provided some alleged fulfilled prophecies as evidence for the existence of God. I provided some reasonable criteria for him to meet. Gastrich takes issue with criteria #2 (uniqueness), #4 (the result of a guess), and #5 (a staged event). He fails to understand that if the alleged event is supposed to serve as evidence of divine intervention, if an event is not unique (“The President in 2045 will drink water!"), or if it can be reasonably guessed (“There will be violence in the Middle East next month!"), or if the event can be staged (“A prophecy says a house will be built here? Let’s build a house here!"), no divine intervention would be required to explain such events. Eliminating those criteria undermines the appeal to the very explanation the prophecy argument is supposed to show.

And Gastrich’s examples don’t meet the reasonable criteria.

Isaiah 53
Regarding Isaiah 53, Gastrich has not shown that his interpretation of the suffering servant refers to Jesus. If other plausible interpretations of the prophecy can be shown, Gastrich’s interpretation won’t be compelling. The “servant" can be interpreted as the nation of Israel because of passages such as Isaiah 44:1: "But now listen, O Jacob, my servant, Israel, whom I have chosen."

Gastrich writes:


A denial is not a rebuttal. Oddly, although Gastrich has not put any of his arguments in premise/conclusion format, he demands that I do so with my Isaiah prophecy rebuttal. If he’ll do the same with all his arguments, I’ll be happy to comply.

Gastrich lists these prophecy details:


Isaiah 53 does not describe a crucifixion. No cross, pillory, pole, or crucifixion is described, nor are Romans.


This is question-begging. That is what he is trying to show.


Chapter divisions in the OT are later additions, so if Isaiah 44:1 and 41:8 refer to the servant as Israel, it is arbitrary to say that a later “chapter" does not mean this too.


There were many who loved Jesus and did not despise him. Many others were despised. This is too vague to be useful.


Again, this is what Gastrich is trying to show.


There is no mention of any whippings. Verse 53:5 has “stripes" in KJV, but the Hebrew “chabbuwrah" (Strong’s 2250) could also mean “wound," “bruise," or “blow."


Too vague to be useful.


Many people killed by authorities are imprisoned first. This is not unusual.


Show this. No one knows what happened to Jesus’ body. And Isaiah does not say that Jesus would be buried in a rich man’s tomb. A “death with the rich" could mean any connection with a rich person surrounding the death would qualify. It fails the uniqueness criterion.


This is a theological statement. Gastrich cannot show that this happened.

Now some dissimilarities Gastich overlooks:

“He shall see his seed." (v. 10) Jesus had no children.
Verse 7: “He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth."But Jesus speaks to the chief priests (Luke 22:67-70), to Pilate (Luke 23:3, John 18:37; 19:11), as he is led to crucifixion (Luke 23:28-31), and as he is crucified (Luke 23:34). There are other examples. Anyone who points to other verses in which Jesus does not speak commits the fallacy of selective evidence. Everyone is sometimes silent and sometimes not. To say of someone that “He opened not His mouth" and insist this was miraculously realized in someone who sometimes talked and sometimes remained silent is ridiculous.

It is likely that the anonymous gospel writers added features to the story of Jesus based on what they read in Isaiah, which would require no divine intervention either. For example, based on a mistaken reading of Zechariah 9:9, Matthew 21:1-7 has Jesus riding two animals into Jerusalem instead of just one as described in Mark and Luke. (See Farrell Till’s article at: (link removed) Literary license is the most parsimonious explanation for the alleged prophecy “fulfillment," and since Gastrich can’t show that his interpretation is correct, explain away dissimilarities, or show that all of the Isaiah details really happened to Jesus, he has no case.

Daniel 9
I pointed out of the Daniel 9 prophecy that it cannot be shown that Jesus really rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, Gastrich writes:


What you find in Matthew is that Jesus rode two animals, not one. (See Till’s article, above.) Since it is clear from this discrepancy that literary fiction is part of the gospel accounts, I challenge Gastrich to establish that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a specific date. He can’t.

At (link removed) one of Gastrich’s critics writes:


So Gastrich cannot establish his end date for the prophecy. Regarding the start date for the Daniel 9 prophecy, Gastrich says that the decree to rebuild Jerusalem was given in the “Month of Nisan, in the 20th year" of Artaxerxes' reign. But there is no justification for holding that this decree was given in any particular day of that month. The start date is arbitrary.

And the span in-between? Anderson, the champion of this prophecy, arbitrarily jumps between two different calendar systems, with errors, to get his desired number of days, using an arbitrary 360-day year. Correcting for the length of the year shows calculations off by at least 7 years. Other corrections show the prophecy off by many more years.

Also, there are interpretation issues as well. The Messiah in Daniel 9 may be King Cyrus. (See link above.) There is no hope for this prophecy.

Gastrich still persists in stating that Farrell Till, expert in demonstrating biblical error, “thought this prophecy…was fulfilled 3 days late." Till holds no such view, and directly e-mailed and corrected Gastrich, who unfortunately still spreads this misinformation.

Intelligent Design Argument

Gastrich asserts that of the laws of nature,


I claimed that we do not know whether a universe could exist in any other way. If the universe could not exist in any other form, then this universe is not unlikely, and we needn’t appeal to design to explain its existence.
Gastrich replies:


It is the issue. He needs to show that this universe is improbable or no appeal to design is needed.

I also cited the “multiverse" theory that if there are billions of different universes existing simultaneously in different dimensions or in the past, our universe is not unlikely among the set.

Gastrich writes:


Gastrich apparently cannot distinguish between the probability of a single trial and the probability over a series of trials. A six-sided die has a 1 in 6 probability of a given number for one roll, but not over a hundred rolls. Similarly, even if our universe is unlikely if singular, it may not be unlikely in a series of billions or trillions of universes. Since Gastrich can’t show that our universe is improbable, his argument fails.

Regarding irreducible complexity, I gave Gastrich a link to explain the evolution of the eye, yet he seems mysteriously oblivious to this and asked for such information. Although evolution has been observed, Gastrich still denies that too. But this is off-topic. Gastrich asserts irreducible complexity exists in biological systems, so he must provide an example evolution cannot explain. I explained how an eye could evolve, and all Gastrich said was:



That’s a retort with no substance.

“Arguments from Logic"

Gastrich ends with some definitions and barbs. He says,



This is pointless speculation from someone with no credentials in the field of mental health.

He then suggests that since so many people believe in God, it is more commonsensical than atheism. But this is the argumentum ad populum fallacy. Again, Gastrich is determined to commit this fallacy.

Regarding his false claim that atheism is waning, since it is irrelevant to our topic, I will only refer him to Darrel Henschell’s post in the peanut gallery, page 14, which rebuts this claim.

Gastrich has already abandoned one of his arguments and has been unsuccessful in supporting his others. He is clearly unable to establish that belief in God is reasonable. His arguments get weaker while my rebuttals get stronger. His case for the reasonableness of belief in God may be beyond repair.

Nightshade

Nightshade

Jason Gastrich

Dear IIDB and Doug,

I hope you’re well.

Before I begin, let me say one thing. I find it humorous that whenever one of my debate deadlines is approaching or if I need an extension, unbelievers and atheists start saying I have no answers, I’m afraid, I’m going to quit and never return, etc. Some may not realize all of these accusations, but I’ve heard some and rest assured, they are awfully absurd.

Don’t forget. I’m the guy who wrote an entire, exhaustive rebuttal to The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. I found answers to every single, alleged Bible error known to most every skeptic. If you think you have a stumper, send it to me and send it to Steve Wells (author of The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible) and I’ll address it and he’ll put it on his site.

Now, I’m not saying I’m a genius or that I know everything. I’m a regular guy who has worked hard to investigate the claims of skeptics. In my research, I have found reasonable and complete answers to every, alleged Bible error.

So, to say that I’m afraid, unable to complete the debate, or anything on that level is quite absurd. After beginning, I’ve never quit a formal debate. If I didn’t have some extreme circumstances and some previously unforseen responsibilities, my post would have been completed and posted on time.

Thanks to the moderators for the extension. Without further adieu . . .

Doug’s definition of God is irrelevant when it comes to my points. My point was that over 90% of the world believes in God. Despite Doug’s attempts to redefine God in a way that is convenient to him, over 90% of the world still believes in God.

Doug’s claim that this is a logical fallacy is incorrect as well. It may be a logical fallacy if I said that this very large majority meant that God existed. However, this isn’t what I’m saying. What I’m referring to is a probability and the probability that the resolution of this debate is true.

The resolution of this debate is: Faith in God is reasonable. How is something determined reasonable? Well, if 90% of the world believes something, it could be considered reasonable on that basis alone. Couldn’t it?

So, Doug has tried to change my argument to his liking (again), but he has also failed, again. It is in times like these that I wish I were having a public debate with Doug. The audience wouldn’t have to wait several weeks before fully understanding Doug’s attempt at deception. Just as I pointed out this tactics during my public debate with Eddie Tabash, I will do the same if Doug ever agrees to a public debate.

Now, on to rebutting Doug’s attempts to prove his case.

In reference to my entire argument about biblical inerrancy and DTS, Doug writes:


This is a large assumption on Doug’s part. How does he know that people simply affirm inerrancy, so they can be hired? If you think this sounds like poppycock, it’s because it is.

Now, although I gave an airtight explanation regarding the nuances in the situations ending in divorce and the teachings on them, I’ll address Doug’s quibbles below.



The word “whosoever" isn’t mentioned in Mark 10:11. Nonetheless, Doug is ignoring the context and the obvious implications of the passage.

Regardless of Doug’s list of events, non-contradictory statements are still non-contradictory. As I showed in my last round post, the teachings on divorce can be easily harmonized.


This isn’t what Jesus told him. Jesus told him that he knew about His teachings. Nonetheless, the issue isn’t that of secret teachings. The issue is of a public ministry and Jesus had one and tells the High Priest as much. Doug has invented this idea of Jesus lying; evidenced by not even one other person hinting at such a thing.


On the contrary, you cannot and will not rebut my personal experience and relationship with God. All you can do is naysay.


Worthless, eh? This was an awfully callous and distasteful paragraph by Doug. I suppose he also thumbs his nose at others who have been healed from even greater illnesses and diseases.

Doug’s mere assertion that there is no relationship between time spent in prayer and physical and mental health is worthless. It contradicts scientific data and is simply false; as I showed last round.

Next, we see Doug commit a rudimentary error in understanding the Bible (again). Quick aside to Doug: Have you ever considered attending theology school? It would greatly help your understanding of the Bible. Plus, if you kept to your skeptical position, you would be seen as an even greater witness against the scriptures because you would have been educated in the scriptures.

I’m in a Ph.D. program right now (as I believe you are), but when I’m finished, I will consider my educational options. For instance, I may seek another degree in the sciences from another, secular university. This way, I can understand the theory of evolution even better and be able to either debunk it better or (potentially) accept it if the evidence was that powerful.

I wonder if you’ve considered doing something similar in the field of theology. Please advise.

Now, on to Doug’s next error. He writes:


Mark 4:31 doesn’t say that the mustard seed is the smallest. The scriptures tell us that it is the least.

Mark 4:31 reads, “It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth." The Greek word is mikros and it means “small in size, quantity, number, or dignity." Link: http://www.jcsm.org/StudyCenter/kjvstrongs/STRGRK33.htm#S3398

Next, I’ve already explained this passage to Doug. If you take it in context with Jesus’ teachings, you will understand that it doesn’t refer to doing anything one feel’s like if they have enough faith. It has to do with doing God’s will if one has enough faith.
Verses like this one should be understood in the context of other verses such as this one. “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (John 14:13).

Christians understand that we must ask things according to God’s will and they will be granted. If we ask for things against His will, then they will not be granted. When we understand the mustard seed passage in this context, then we understand why Doug’s understanding is incorrect and the teaching is correct.

Doug’s Criteria for Fulfilled Prophecy

I hope you are as skeptical of Doug’s criteria as I am. Keep in mind that this is someone who has told me that he will only believe in God when He spells Doug’s name in the sky with clouds. Most people would consider that unreasonable. Likewise, most people would also consider his criteria for fulfilled prophecies unreasonable.

While I agree that we should scrutinize biblical prophecies and the scriptures, in order to tell whether or not they are from God or not, I disagree with Doug’s criteria. In reality, his criteria is simply a way for him to naysay and doubt. The prophets and the Christians before me didn’t have this burden of proof and I don’t have it either.

Unfortunately for him, Doug’s criteria doesn’t disprove any biblical prophecies. It simply gives him a way to cast dirt on them. It gives him the chance to say again, “I doubt it!" However, this is hardly proof that a prophecy isn’t credible.

We see more of his poor apologetics below.


On the contrary, I spent plenty of time showing how Isaiah 53 definitely refers to Jesus Christ. Doug has only been a naysayer. This time, we have a microcosm of Doug’s apologetic power.

Isaiah 44:1 reads, “Yet now hear, O Jacob my servant; and Israel, whom I have chosen" (KJV). How this verse could mean that the entire chapter of Isaiah 53 cannot refer to Jesus Christ is beyond my understanding. Perhaps Doug can enlighten us.

Now, I’ll rebut some more of Doug’s attempted rebuttals.



It’s not question-begging. It’s a fact. The sufferings that are described in Isaiah 53 are also recorded in the gospels. If this is Doug’s best rebuttal, this is on par with his naysaying.



I’ve already shown that Isaiah 44:1 could not be used as a valid argument.

Genesis 32:28 tells us that Jacob’s name was changed to Israel. In Isaiah 41:8, we find a reference to Jacob; not the country of Israel. Therefore, this verse is an invalid argument for Doug as well.

Genesis 32:28 reads, “And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed."

Isaiah 41:8 reads, “But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend."

As I said, Isaiah 41:8, like Isaiah 44:1, have no bearing on Isaiah 53.



Well, at least Doug doesn’t try and apply this verse to Jacob or the country of Israel; whichever he was trying to do earlier. Nonetheless, Jesus fits this criteria. He may not fit Doug’s unreasonable criteria, but then again, Doug’s unreasonable criteria for having faith is God writing his name in the clouds.



Again, this is a fact. The New Testament reveals the fulfillment of this prophecy. I suppose this is just Doug’s clever way of creative naysaying.



Doug is being petty because he has no sound rebuttal. Jesus was beaten and bruised. This fact was prophesied hundreds of years before it happened.

Doug is also likely incorrect even in his pettiness. Here is the exact definition from Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary: properly bound (with stripes), that is, a weal (or black and blue mark itself):—blueness, bruise, hurt, stripe, wound.



I’m sure the readership of this debate is beginning to apply these one liners to Doug’s naysaying and not my arguments.

Isaiah 53:7 reads, “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."

We find Jesus remaining silent while being oppressed and afflicted in several passages of scripture. See Matthew 26:68. See also the following verse.

Matthew 27:12 reads, “When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer."



This debate isn’t over whether or not the prophecies in Isaiah 53 are unusual or not. This debate is over whether or not faith in God is reasonable. I submit to you that Jesus fulfilled the Messianic prophecies and all of the ones in Isaiah 53. Point 8 is yet another example of a fulfilled prophecy where Doug can only naysay.



If Doug would have read the whole verse, he would have realized that it does mention a grave. Isaiah 53:9 reads, “He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death . . ."

The fulfillment:

Matthew 27:57-60 reads, “As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. 58Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him. 59Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, 60and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away."






If you have read about Jesus Christ, then will realize that He was a man without sin. He wasn’t just a man, though. He was the Messiah and the Son of God.

The Bible reveals that a sacrifice for sins was necessary, but only a perfect sacrifice could wipe our sins away forever; otherwise, the sacrifices needed to be repeated like they were in the Old Testament.

Now, these are theological statements. However, they are verified by the inerrant scriptures. I’ve coined the following phrase and I believe it is reasonable. “Every verifiable claim in the Bible is true. Since they are all true, I believe the unverifiable claims by having informed (or reasonable) faith."

In other words, no claim in the Bible has ever been debunked. This is very significant because the book makes so many claims! Since all of the claims that we could verify one way or the other have been verified as true, we can trust the remaining claims as well.

The theological claim above may fall into that category, but based on Doug’s arguments against the inerrant scriptures, we have no reason to disbelieve it. On the contrary, due to the strength of the Bible’s integrity, inerrancy, and the arguments used to prove it, we can trust in the unverifiable claims in the Bible with only a reasonable measure faith.



This was referring to His spiritual seed and not a physical one. Those that repent and believe in Him are children of God. See John 1:12, 11:52, Romans 8:21, Philippians 2:15, etc.


Well, Doug had it partially correct. Yes, people do sometimes talk and sometimes remain silent.

The verses above referred to the mesmerizing, peaceful times where Jesus did not verbalize His defenses. These are mentioned in the Bible and I have mentioned one above. They don’t say or imply that Jesus was mute.

Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins. This was His mission. Therefore, He had to conduct His ministry and His life in a way where He could teach on Earth as long as He wanted, then die and rise from the dead. When you analyze Jesus’ statements (and non-statements) through this lens, they make perfect sense.

Jesus had no reason to plead His case to His captors to the point where they would set Him free. He came to die for our sins and rise from the dead.

Matthew 12:40 “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

Luke 9:22 “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day."

Now, Isaiah 53 and Messianic prophecy isn’t the only reason why faith is reasonable. Doug is trying to sidetrack the issue and the thrust of this debate. Although I humored him a bit this time, I will stay on task from here onward.

If anyone else wants to read the crucifixion prophecies that are in the Old Testament, I have found a great site with both the prophecies and the fulfillments. See
here: http://www.westarkchurchofchrist.org/wings/burninghearts8.htm


Why is this likely? What evidence fo you have for this bald assertion?


So, let’s get this straight. You think the New Testament writers invented fulfilled prophecies. You also think that they accidentally messed one up that they were trying to invent. Is this correct? Sounds quite fictional, but I’d be happy to see your proof.

Now, Matthew 21 doesn’t say that Jesus sat on two animals. It says he sat on some cloaks. Since sitting on two animals at once would be absurd and since the other gospels confirm Jesus sitting on one animal, we can safely conclude that the other animal was for someone else.

John 12:14 states that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a young ass. This Greek word in Mark 11:17 and Luke 19:35 indicates that Jesus rode on a "young ass," also.

Matthew 21:7 tells us that there was a "young ass" for Jesus and also another animal for the other disciples.

My explanation above is far more plausible, credible, and supported than Doug’s. He conjectures that Matthew tried to create a fulfilled prophecy, yet messed it up, but there is absolutely no evidence of this at all. Furthermore, a plain reading of Matthew 21 shows that He wasn’t sitting on two animals and the context of the accounts implies that the other animal was for someone else.

Doug has challenged me to prove that Jesus entered Jerusalem on a specific date. However, for the purposes of this debate, at least for now, I’ll avoid such a potentially lengthy and somewhat off-topic endeavor. We do have very specific details in Daniel 9 and other scriptures that can help us arrive at a date, though. Since I recognize that such a fulfilled prophecy could help prove the resolution of this debate, I may revisit it later.




Doug has given us a (somewhat) crafty mischaracterization of a small part of my intelligent design argument. As a philosopher, he probably thinks it serves him well to stay away from science. However, he hasn’t even pricked the foundation of my argument and has avoided all of the factors listed. Tsk, tsk.

My claim wasn’t that a universe couldn’t exist any other way. I’m sure one could and does. My claim was that “life as we know it could not exist if any of those 150+ factors were not just so." Perhaps Doug can address my actual argument instead of creating a straw man to his liking.


This is a rather absurd and arbitrary criteria. Furthermore, it’s downright poor. The proof of God’s existence doesn’t simply come after we cannot explain something. It isn’t dependent on scientific knowledge.

Being able to explain something scientifically doesn’t mean that there is no God! If God does exist, then He created natural laws and He gave us science. It would make perfect sense that there would be order and explanations from an intelligent creator. It’s a shame that Doug simply thinks that God can only be found when we are ignorant of science. However, this is probably a microcosm of skeptical thought. If they can explain it, then there is no need for God. When they can’t explain something, then what? My guess is that they will still reject the Creator and simply say that an explanation may be coming. Nonetheless, an explanation of something with scientific terms in no way rules out a Creator. In fact, it verifies the existence of an intelligent designer.

I’ve spent most of this post answering Doug and rebutting his statements. Now for a couple of questions for Doug.

1) Where did morality come from? Did humanity discover universal concepts of morality or were they created? If they were created or discovered, tell us how and why.

2) Do you believe that most people on Earth are reasonable or unreasonable?

3) How and when was matter created?

Sincerely,
Jason Gastrich

Doug Krueger

Perhaps Gastrich’s next post will have more substance, but in this case my rebuttals will be for the most part simply explaining how Gastrich’s responses are irrelevant, inadequate and/or how he completely neglects to respond to my arguments.

For example, Gastrich originally posted that “the majority of the world is over 90% Christian." When that was easily shown to be false, he amended the claim to “90% of the world believes in God." I explained how, on the definition of “God" as the “omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, creator of the universe, and who is identical to the being described in the Christian Bible" this statement is also clearly false.

Now Gastrich writes:

Convenient definition or not, that is no rebuttal. Gastrich has never defined the concept of God in the first place, so I never “redefined" it. I tried to clarify it, since it is relevant to our debate. And Gastrich cited no study, no poll, no definition of “God" that could reasonably show that his claim is true. Thus my refutation of his claim stands.

Worse still, I have also explained that appealing to the popularity of a belief as evidence for its truth is a logical fallacy called argumentum ad populum. Gastrich says that I am incorrect:


Gastrich doesn’t understand that appealing to popularity doesn’t show that a proposition is true or likely to be true. When most or all of the world’s population thought that the Earth is flat, this neither made it true nor probably true that the Earth is flat. Gastrich’s appeal to popularity is still fallacious. When most of the world would have said that “Jesus died for your sins" is false, would Gastrich agree that at that time the proposition was probably false?

Gastrich asks:

No. Before we had evidence that the Earth is flat, one might make a case that, given the available evidence, it was reasonable to believe that the Earth is flat. But given the evidence now, it would hardly be reasonable to believe this even if the majority of the population accepted it. So the popularity of a belief does not, “alone," make it reasonable to hold that belief.

Note also that Gastrich has never explained what he means by “reasonable," so perhaps his next post will clarify this. He assumed the burden of proof, so it is incumbent upon him to make his case. If he doesn’t explain what it means to say that faith in God is reasonable, so much the worse for his case.

Curiously, Gastrich also writes:

Gastrich is the one who changed his claim when it was proven to be false. I have only corrected Gastrich’s false claims about the popularity of belief in God and Christianity. Gastrich neither explains nor supports his charge.

Gastrich continues:

(Is our current debate not public?)

Gastrich writes:

If Gastrich is going to accuse me of deception, he should make it clear what he means. If he has nothing but insults here, obviously he is at a loss to provide evidence for his case.

I also note that Gastrich has dropped his attack on the presumption of atheism argument after I showed that he has previously endorsed it and that he still puts it into practice. He says not a word about it in his latest post.

The Inerrant Bible Argument
Gastrich’s claim that it is reasonable to believe in God because the Bible is inerrant is an argument with no future. It is the overwhelming consensus of Bible scholars that the Bible has many errors. I pointed out that the claim that the Bible is inerrant is “not taken seriously in any reputable seminary or theological school in the 21st century."

Gastrich cited the Dallas Theological Seminary. I countered by showing that belief in inerrancy is a prerequisite for employment at that institution, but Gastrich misunderstands the nature of my rebuttal.

He writes:

I was not claiming that people only pretend to believe inerrancy in order to be hired, I am claiming that only Biblical inerrantists are seriously considered for employment. I have no problem acknowledging that the applicants are sincere inerrantists. A seminary that will only hire inerrantists does not have academic freedom and cannot be taken seriously.

I had written:

This is a relevant question, and a reduction to absurdity for Gastrich. He did not respond.

I. The Divorce Contradiction
I have shown that Jesus’ statements on divorce and remarriage in Mark 10:11 and Matthew 19:9 contradict, as do other Biblical statements on this topic (Matt. 5:31-32, 1 Cor. 7:10-11, Rom. 7:2-3, and Deut. 24:1-2). In just two examples, we see the contradiction:

Mark 10:11: Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.

In logical notation: (x)(Dx & Rx → Ax)

Matthew 19:9: And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

In logical notation: ($x)(Dx & Rx & ~Ax) which implies: ~[(x)(Dx & Rx→Ax)]

Thus we have a contradiction of:
(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax) & ~[(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax)]

The case for a contradiction is ironclad. First, Gastrich attempted to rebut me by claiming that Jesus was addressing different circumstances of married people, but I showed that can’t be right since Jesus states in Mark 10:11 that this applies to “whosoever," which applies universally. Gastrich didn’t rebut that. He also said these statements “aren't taken from the same times and places in Jesus' ministry," but I showed that the context proves otherwise. Gastrich dropped that rebuttal.

Now Gastrich claims:

I am the one who refuted Gastrich’s previous defense by showing in great detail the context of Jesus’ statements. And in this case, not only has Gastrich neglected to look at the context, he didn’t even read the passage itself! How can Gastrich claim that “whosoever" (KJV, Darby) isn’t in Mark 10:11? Anyone who can read a Gideon Bible can see that his claim is false. Bible translators are the experts, and they agree on the main lines of translation here. The word can also be “Whoever" (NASB, YLT) or “Anyone" (NIV). All of these refer to statements that have universal scope, which supports my case that Jesus was making a universal statement in Mark 10:11.

Gastrich is clearly at a loss to rebut my argument. Thus my claim that the Bible has a contradiction is unrebutted, and Gastrich’s argument from an inerrant Bible does not succeed.

II. Jesus Lied.
Another Bible problem Gastrich has yet to solve is that during his hearing before the high priest, Jesus claims he shared all of his teachings with his public audiences. I take this to mean that he never kept important parts of his teachings a secret. However, I cited numerous verses in which Jesus did keep important parts of his identity and ministry secret.

First, Gastrich protested that, since we don’t know the exact question the High Priest asked, we don’t know whether Jesus lied. But I pointed out that the nature of Jesus’ lie is not whether he accurately answered the High Priest but whether he had secret teachings, since he claimed he did not. Gatrich dropped that rebuttal.

Then Gastrich accused me of interpreting Jesus to say that “He has never spoken in private." I reminded Gastrich that I explicitly stated that I was not going to interpret Jesus that way, that literally. Gastrich dropped that too.

Gastrich then wrote:

I replied that “If Jesus has secret teachings, the High Priest would not know them and would thus have no basis for accusing Jesus of lying."

Gastrich’s rebuttal to this is incoherent.


I never claimed that Jesus said this to the High Priest.

Gastrich continues:

Again Gastrich doesn’t bother to read the verse! Jesus tells the High Priest that he should ask “those who heard me" because they are the ones who know what he taught. Jesus does not tell the High Priest that the High Priest knows what Jesus taught.

So far Gastrich’s attempts to rebut me have made not one dent in my case.

But what would his argument show, anyway? If one of the allegedly inerrant Bible claims is that God exists, then in order to show that the claim that God exists is true, one would have to show that God exists, in which case the case for the inerrant Bible is superfluous. On the other hand, if Gastrich holds that all the Biblical claims--except that God exists--are true, it is not clear how these other claims would show that God exists. I have also challenged Gastrich to show the connection between an inerrant Bible and the conclusion that God exists. After several posts, he has not attempted to develop the argument.

"My Long Term Relationship with God" Argument
I refuted this argument in my first post. The argument was terribly vague, and was either circular or merely a version of the religious experience argument. Gastrich made NO mention of this argument in his second post, so I thought he had abandoned this argument, but now Gastrich writes:


I didn’t attempt to rebut his experience with God, I refuted his argument based on this alleged relationship. But if ALL Gastrich can do is deny that I am correct, and he won’t cite any evidence as to how I am allegedly incorrect, he certainly has a lot of chutzpah to accuse me of “naysaying"!

Miracles and the Effects of Prayer
I have explained at length why anecdotes about healings cannot establish a causal relationship between prayer and healing. Gastrich calls my explanation “awfully callous and distasteful" but makes no attempt to rebut my comments on the shortcomings of anecdotal evidence. I’m sorry that Gastrich was offended, but haughtiness is not a substitute for rebuttal.

He then says that my comments are a “mere assertion," even though I supported my claim about anecdotal evidence, and he says my view contradicts “scientific data and is simply false; as I showed last round." I rebutted his references to scientific studies and challenged him to produce a single study he is willing to support as evidence of the power of prayer. Gastrich STILL has not referred to a specific study after three rounds.

So Gastrich once again has no credible support for his claims about the power of prayer.

However, I challenged Gastrich to demonstrate the power of prayer since Jesus makes it clear in Mark 4:31 that this can be done. If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can tell a tree to move, and so on.

I wrote:

Gastrich writes:

And then Gastrich cites a Greek concordance that tells us that the word “mikros" means “small in size, quantity, number, or dignity."

So the concordance agrees with me! What an odd rebuttal.

He says

OK, and “enough" as explained by Jesus is the amount analogous to the mustard seed, which is “small in size" compared to “all the seeds that be in the earth," i.e., the smallest.

Gastrich fails to realize that his “evidence" really underscores my point. Jesus explains how a believer can perform miracles, and Gastrich seems to disbelieve this claim. If the Bible’s claim in this verse were true, Gastrich could easily prove supernatural power, such as the power of prayer. But he won’t or can’t.

Fulfilled Biblical Prophecies Argument
Gastrich still disputes my criteria for fulfilled prophecy claims.

This is false. In our second audio debate I gave the example of God causing the stars to form a word, and I gave him other examples of how I could be brought to believe in God. (sermonaudio.com) Gastrich needs to check for accuracy.

I have already pointed out that Gastrich’s unwillingness to accept my criteria for prophecy fulfillment undermines the argument from prophecy. Using prophecy as evidence for God’s existence is predicated on the inability to explain prophecy naturalistically, i.e., without appeal to God. My criteria are designed to eliminate a naturalistic explanation, so any alleged fulfilled prophecy that meets them is a case that cannot be explained naturalistically. To reject my criteria is to accept cases of alleged prophecy fulfillment that CAN be explained naturalistically. So there would be no need to appeal to God to explain such cases, and the alleged example becomes pointless.

But Gastrich fails to see this. He writes:

That doesn’t address the problem of rejecting my criteria.

Isaiah 53
Gastrich still hasn’t shown that his interpretation of the “suffering servant" refers to Jesus.

I wrote:

Gastrich admits that he has no idea what I mean. OK, I’ll explain. Gastrich is presumably looking for a reasonable interpretation of Isaiah 53’s suffering servant. Since chapter divisions are not original with the texts, one should not interpret chapters in isolation. So, since Isaiah 44:1 makes it clear that the suffering servant is Israel, one can reasonably interpret Isaiah 53 that way too, as a metaphor. So Gastrich cannot show that his interpretation of the suffering servant refers to Jesus. So his argument about prophecy fails. Gastrich also admits that 41:8 refers to “Jacob; not the country of Israel," then points out that Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, and says “Therefore, this verse is an invalid argument for Doug as well." It is unclear what this means, but Gastrich’s point helps my case since it shows again that the suffering servant is Israel.

Gastrich had also said that Isaiah 53 “mentions the whippings that Jesus received." I pointed out that no whippings are mentioned, and that


Gastrich calls me “petty" for showing that the word can be variously interpreted, but, strangely, agrees that the word could be interpreted in a way that does not refer to whippings, and seems to think he has rebutted me after showing that I am correct.

Most of Gastrich’s other remarks on this topic are little more than calling me a “naysayer," ignoring my points, and/or simply repeating his claims despite my rebuttals. There is nothing of substance to address.

However, of point #8, the claim that Isaiah 53 prophesied Jesus’ imprisonment, I stated that this fails the uniqueness criterion, since many captives are imprisoned, and Gastrich reiterates his dislike of that criterion but does not rebut its importance in an argument from prophecy.

Of #9, that Isaiah 53 prophecies that Jesus was buried in a rich man’s tomb, I point out that Isaiah does not say that the suffering servant would be buried in a rich man’s tomb. It makes a vague reference to a “death with the rich," which could mean many things. Gastrich says that Isaiah 53 “does mention a grave," but I didn’t deny that. He again attacks a straw man.

Of #10, that Isaiah 53 says that Jesus’ soul was an offering for sin, I point out that this is a theological statement and that Gastrich cannot show that this happened. Gastrich repeats standard theological slogans, asserts that they are “verified by scripture," but doesn’t realize that he begs the question of the reliability of scripture.

Gastrich writes:

Given that Gastrich has yet to rebut the two Bible contradictions I have given him—and I have many more!—his boasting is premature to say the least.

I had also cited a few dissimilarities Gastich overlooks between Isaiah’s suffering servant and Jesus.

For example:

Gastrich writes:

That is one interpretation. But “seed" in the Old Testament seems to constantly refer to physical lineage. The reference is to a man’s semen, his “seed." What evidence can Gastrich produce that his interpretation of Isaiah’s use of “seed" is correct? He has given none so far.

Of verse 7, that the servant “opened not His mouth," I point out that


Gastrich’s rebuttal: Verse 7 only refers to “the mesmerizing, peaceful times where Jesus did not verbalize His defenses."

Since Gastrich commits the absurdity I described in the paragraph above, I don’t think I need to comment on it further.

Daniel 9
This takes us into the Daniel 9 alleged prophecy that Daniel predicted the exact day that Jesus would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey.

I had written:

Gastrich responds:

The evidence is that making things up to say about Jesus based on the Old Testament is found in the Gospels.

I wrote:

Gastrich:

I had already given the proof in the link above, to Farrell Till’s article. Till’s case is based on standard, solid scholarship.

Gastrich writes:

From Till’s article:

“Them" refers to more than one. The cloaks were on more than one animal (on THEM), and Jesus sat on more than one animal (on THEM). Did Gastrich not read this verse either?

Gastrich wrote:

That Matthew obviously has Jesus sitting on more than one animal, and Gastrich concedes that other gospels disagree, it seems that there is another contradiction.

In any case, as Till wrote in the article cited:

Till points out other flaws in this “prophecy." In any case, after I showed that the Daniel 9 attempt at prophecy is hopelessly flawed, Gastrich has given up trying to defend that prophecy:


If one claims that an event was predicted to occur at a specific time, it is hardly “off-topic" to ask for evidence that the event occurred at that specific time. However, Gastrich warns us that he may “revisit it later."

Intelligent Design Argument
Gastrich misreads my criticism of his ID argument and so his rebuttals are all beside the point.

I had written:

Gastrich quotes the above in his latest post, but omits the last sentence and states:

I gather that Gastrich does not understand the way in which ID arguments are structured. The basic idea is that the universe could (presumably) have existed in a way that does not permit life. If gravity had been weaker or stronger, life would not have had a chance to come into existence, etc. If there could have been, by chance, many billions of other ways in which the universe could have existed, for the universe to be precisely, finely tuned to permit life is not likely. If the universe could have existed, say, billions of other ways that do not permit life, the odds of it being life-permitting are billions to one against its current state. Since this state is unlikely, it did not become life-permitting by chance. If it was not chance, it was intelligent design, and there you go. God.

However, if the universe can only exist in one way, if NO other combination of laws of nature could result from a Big Bang, then a life-permitting universe is not unlikely, so we would not need to appeal to intelligent design. If the universe can only exist in one way, then the odds of the universe being life-permitting are 1, or certainty. So to get the fine-tuning argument off the ground, one must show that the universe could have existed in different ways. But we don’t know that it could exist in different ways. So we don’t know that the universe is unlikely by chance, in which case we needn’t appeal to a designer.

Now that I have explained both Gastrich’s argument and my rebuttal to him, perhaps he will attempt to counter my rebuttal next time.

I had written:

Gastrich writes:

It is odd that Gastrich calls this criterion “absurd and arbitrary," since most creationists see it as appropriate to attempt to provide examples of irreducible complexity that evolution can’t explain.

Gastrich, in fact, agrees. In his opening statement he wrote:

After I rebutted his examples that evolution allegedly could not explain, apparently providing more examples is “absurd and arbitrary." Well, if he won’t provide examples that evolution can’t explain, then ipso facto he will at best provide those that evolution can explain, in which case he has no case for biological irreducible complexity.

Does Gastrich not see how often he undermines his own arguments?

Gastrich concludes with his standard round of irrelevant questions for me. Perhaps he should concentrate his efforts, not on coming up with new questions, but on answering some recurring problems in his case for the reasonableness of belief in God.

So in this round Gastrich picked up one argument he had dropped, the long-term relationship with God argument, but does nothing to support it or rebut my criticism. He drops an argument for prophecy, stops trying to give evidence of irreducible complexity, omits further attacks on the presumption of atheism argument, abandons a defense of a contradiction where he had stated that the verses in question were different times in Jesus’ ministry, and so on. I stated last time that Gastrich’s arguments get weaker while my rebuttals get stronger. This becomes more obvious as we progress through the rounds.

Nightshade

Jason Gastrich

Round 4

Thanks to all who are reading this exchange.

It should be known that I requested an extension from IIDB and Doug even wrote them on my behalf and requested a one week extension for me and it was denied. My great-grandmother died last week and I’m moving my residence, my ministry, and my business from San Diego to Los Angeles, tomorrow (July 30). Nonetheless, Nightshade and the moderators at IIDB decided against giving me an extension. Real classy.

Let’s dive right in.

Doug began his last round by saying I haven’t answered his questions. I challenge Doug to make a numbered list of questions that I’ve avoided. I think it will be an empty list, but if there is something on the list, it means I’ve overlooked it or thought it irrelevant. Nonetheless, I’d be happy to give specific answers if Doug can come up with a list for us. I bet he won’t, though.

Doug writes:


Doug doesn’t understand that his moral system either rests on popularity or it has been stolen from the Christian world view. He has yet to explain where else it could have come from. “I don’t know" just doesn’t cut it any more.

Doug writes:


This is a logical fallacy. It’s called argumentum ad populum.

These are words from [flame removed - NS] who tried to make up a Bible error that nobody has ever heard; someone who cannot argue and prove that there is even one error in the Bible.


More of the same logical fallacy.
Doug writes:


I’m a bit surprised that Doug is making such a rudimentary mistake in logic and biblical exegesis. Just because the word “whosoever" is used, it doesn’t mean that it must apply to everyone, in every circumstance. In fact, it still has a context that must be considered.

For example, if I say, “Whosoever kills is a murderer," I’m not talking about rape or incest. In a vacuum, maybe Doug is right. However, this text isn’t in a vacuum. The word “whosoever" is followed by a description of a certain kind of person and a certain sin. Therefore, Doug hasn’t rebutted anything. Furthermore, Doug has avoided my complete and exhaustive argument regarding the different teachings of Jesus. I gave references, insights, and arguments regarding all of these teachings and all Doug could do was harp on the word whosoever.

Doug continues and writes:


It suits Doug that he is no longer quoting the scriptures. Making broad statements regarding weak arguments is always the wisest move.

Don’t forget that this is the argument that nobody has ever heard of. It’s absent from Google. It’s absent from the relatively exhaustive Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. Nonetheless, I’ll rebut it again. By the way, I solidly rebutted this argument in one of my verbal debates with Doug Krueger. You can hear it from this link: http://debates.jcsm.org/

Let’s quote the entire passage, so we can accurately see the context, again.

19: The high priest then asked Jesus about His disciples and His doctrine.
20: Jesus answered him, “I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where the Jews always meet, and in secret I have said nothing.
21: Why do you ask Me? Ask those who have heard Me what I said to them. Indeed they know what I said."

It’s awfully absurd that Doug wants to turn this into a sinister lie. There is nothing indicating a lie, whatsoever.

First, we have the high priest merely asking Jesus about His disciples and doctrine. Next, we have Jesus answering. It was certainly known to everyone present that Jesus didn’t literally, always teach in the synagogues. In fact, it would be absurd to take this as a literal statement. Why would He possibly limit Himself to only teaching in synagogues? Answer: This statement wasn’t meant to be taken literally.

Next, when Jesus said that “in secret I have said nothing," what do you think He was talking about? Doug wants us to take this statement in HIS literal slant, but he doesn’t want you to take it too literally or it destroys his argument, again.

Doug wants you to think that you need to take this as a literal statement only so far as it refers to Jesus’ teachings and doctrines. He knows that if you apply it in a genuine, literal fashion, it tells us that Jesus was a mute in secret.

Bottom line: Jesus’ statement is no different than the following scenario.

Johnny Atheist doesn’t like hamburgers. He has eaten them, though. Now, when asked if he eats hamburgers, he says, “No, I never eat hamburgers."

Avoidance

It should be noted that Doug has (un)successfully avoided my arguments regarding Isaiah 53, intelligent design, and Daniel 9. All we saw was a little, creative hand waving. I’m still waiting for something resembling a rebuttal. Until that time, those argument will stand as compelling reasons to have faith; compelling reasons regarding why faith in God is reasonable.

My Personal Relationship with God

It’s unfortunate that Doug didn’t have a better rebuttal for this. As every atheist knows, personal experience is a powerful indicator of truth and perception. In fact, Christians look at their experiences and compare them to the scriptures and when they align with the Bible, we consider them legitimate. For instance, if God is telling us to do something that aligns with His Word, then we know it’s from Him and we do it. If we hear Him telling us to do something that contradicts His Word, then we know it isn’t Him.

Since Christ and until the end of time, a Christian’s relationship with God will always be powerful evidence for God’s existence. To have no solid rebuttal for such a thing is surely a problem for every atheist.

Doug writes:


To those unversed in debate tactics, calling miracles and the effects of prayer “anecdotal" is merely a creative way to pass the buck. It sounds more official than saying, “I have no rebuttal."

Bottom line: I’ve done miracles in Jesus’ name (and many others have, as well). They are powerful indicators of God’s existence and they lead us to the conclusion that: faith in God is reasonable.

Doug says:


That’s rich. If we don’t use Doug’s definitions and play by his rules . . . he’s going to pick up his toys and go home.

Doug crows:


Well, we know the first part isn’t true. I’m looking forward to more, though.

Doug continues:


I never conceded that the gospels disagree. In fact, I have a rebuttal for this weak argument.

* John 12:14 states that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a young ass. This Greek word in Mark 11:17 and Luke 19:35 indicates that Jesus rode on a "young ass," also.
* Matthew 21:7 tells us that there was a "young ass" for Jesus and also another animal for the other disciples.

This rebuttal has already been given. However, I’m sure Doug will call it “anecdotal" or accuse me of accusing him of naysaying; all poor tactics.

Doug continues:


This is the logical fallacy of ad hominem. If you have an argument, go ahead and make it. However, with all due respect to the philosophy professor, making a scientific argument will be a first for Doug.

Since Doug didn’t address my argument for intelligent design, I’ll submit his incoherent, two paragraphs on the subject and ask that he review my argument and try and rebut it, again.

Doug admits his avoidance by saying:


For this reason, I’d be thrilled to debate Doug in public. Of course, he isn’t getting away with avoidance in this format, but it will be painfully obvious and embarrassing if he tries avoiding my questions in public. I’m ready to discuss venues and find a date for our first, public debate. I’ll even fly to Arkansas if need be.

Perhaps he should concentrate his efforts, not on coming up with new questions, but on answering some recurring problems in his case for the reasonableness of belief in God.

I’ll give Doug a chance for partial redemption. Here is a repost of the latest questions he has avoided. I’ll even make it easy on him by refraining from making this post any longer.

1) Where did morality come from? Did humanity discover universal concepts of morality or were they created? If they were created or discovered, tell us how and why.

2) Do you believe that most people on Earth are reasonable or unreasonable?
3) How and when was matter created?

Best of luck!

Sincerely,
Jason Gastrich

Nightshade

Jason,

This isn't a forum to discuss the merits of our moderation decisions. If you have a complaint, then please take it to the Problems & Complaints forum.

Also, I have noticed that the tone of your responses to Doug is worsening. Please make an effort to maintain a civil discussion in your final statement.

Thank you for your consideration,

- NS, FD Moderator

Doug Krueger

I will continue to point out Gastrich's fallacies, misunderstandings, factual errors, and other mistakes as I respond to his latest installment. Gastrich has no new rebuttals, and much of my previous refutations of his position go unaddressed.

Gastrich wrote:

DOUG writes:
I had written that I was going to show how “Gastrich’s responses are irrelevant, inadequate and/or how he completely neglects to respond to my arguments." Here is a brief list of some of the questions and issues that Gastrich has avoided.

1.Gastrich claimed that “over 90% of the world still believes in God." I mention that Gastrich cites no study, no poll, no definition of “God" that could reasonably show that his claim is true. Gastrich still provides no support for his claim.
2.Since Gastrich was promoting a direct appeal to popularity, I asked him in the last round: “When most of the world would have said that ‘Jesus died for your sins’ is false, would Gastrich agree that at that time the proposition was probably false?" He did not respond.
3.Gastrich appealed to the Dallas Theological Seminary for support in his contention that Biblical inerrancy is a respectable position. I showed that the institution was biased and thus cannot be used for such support, and he did not rebut me.
4.I also asked him whether he would be impressed by the faculty at Al-Azhar University in Cairo since they endorse the inerrancy of the Qur’an. Two posts later he has still not responded.
5.Gastrich claimed that “whosoever" is not found in Mark 10:11. It is. I asked: “How can Gastrich claim that ‘whosoever’ (KJV, Darby) isn’t in Mark 10:11?" No response.
6.In my first post, I asked Gastrich to explain how his inerrancy argument is supposed to work. If one of the allegedly inerrant Bible claims is that God exists, then in order to show that the claim that this Bible claim is true, one would have to show that God exists, in which case the case for the inerrant Bible is superfluous. On the other hand, if Gastrich holds that all the Biblical claims--except that God exists--are true, it is not clear how these other claims would show that God exists. He has not attempted to develop the argument.
7.I refuted his “My Long-term Relationship with God" argument in my first post. To date, Gastrich has not addressed the substance of my rebuttals.
8.I rebutted Gastrich’s vague references to studies about the power of prayer and challenged him to produce a single study he is willing to support as evidence. After four rounds, Gastrich has not referred to a specific study.
9.I stated last time that “Gastrich has never explained what he means by ‘reasonable,’ so perhaps his next post will clarify this. He assumed the burden of proof, so it is incumbent upon him to make his case. If he doesn’t explain what it means to say that faith in God is reasonable, so much the worse for his case." With one post left to go in the debate, Gastrich has still not explained what it means to say that faith in God is reasonable.
10.Of his Isaiah 53 argument, I wrote that verse 10 said of the suffering servant that “He shall see his seed." I point out that Jesus had no children. Gastrich responded that “This was referring to His spiritual seed and not a physical one." I rebutted: “That is one interpretation. But ‘seed’ in the Old Testament seems to constantly refer to physical lineage…What evidence can Gastrich produce that his interpretation of Isaiah’s use of ‘seed’ is correct?" Gastrich did not respond.

I could expand the list, but I think my point has been made. And unlike Gastrich’s questions that he throws in at the end of his posts, my questions and challenges are directly relevant to the specific points we are discussing in his main arguments.

Below we will see more issues to which he has not responded as I address his latest material.

Gastrich’s Fallacious Appeal to Popularity
Gastrich still seems to think that committing the argumentum ad populum fallacy is a good strategy.

I wrote:

Gastrich replies:
DOUG
a. Gastrich’s response is irrelevant. Asking about the origin of ethics has nothing to do with Gastrich’s fallacious appeal to popularity. Why he brings this up to defend the appeal to popularity fallacy is unclear.
b. In chapter 2 of my book What is Atheism? A Short Introduction I explain several nontheistic ethical systems. If Gastrich wants to explore this issue, perhaps he’d like to start there.

The Inerrant Bible Argument
I had written:

Curiously, Gastrich responds:
DOUG
How odd that Gastrich defends the fallacy in one paragraph yet deplores it in the next. In any case, I was not appealing to the masses but instead to the select group of scholars that specialize in Biblical studies, who publish in peer-reviewed journals, who read the original languages, offer arguments for their positions, attend academic conferences with their peers, and who have the academic freedom to change their minds if they so wish. This is a legitimate appeal to the authority of scholars, not an appeal to the masses, not an argumentum ad populum.

Unfamiliar with informal fallacies, Gastrich’s rebuttal misses its mark.

I. The Divorce Contradiction
In the last round Gastrich denied that the word “whosoever" is found in Mark 10:11! Of course, the claim was untrue. Now Gastrich has no trouble admitting that the word is there. He wrote:

DOUG
Gastrich’s point is unclear. Gastrich says nothing that damages my case for a contradiction. It is precisely because the word “whosoever" is followed by a specific description that we can generate the contradiction.


So anyone who does as Jesus describes commits adultery. I have not only consistently referred to this description, I have put it into logical notation for clarity. (See previous posts.) Why Gastrich says this means that I haven’t rebutted anything is anyone’s guess. Later when Jesus explains how it is possible to divorce one’s wife, marry another, and NOT commit adultery (Matthew 19:9), we have a clear contradiction.

I can’t see that Gastrich has said anything in this fourth post to show that there is no contradiction. And he says nothing about other verses I’ve cited (Matt. 5:31-32, 1 Cor. 7:10-11, Rom. 7:2-3, and Deut. 24:1-2) that compound the problem. This makes his attempts to refute me all the more ineffective.

Gastrich continues:
DOUG
Gastrich claimed in his second post that since Jesus was addressing different groups in different circumstances, the contradictory teachings were applicable in different occasions to different groups, so there is no contradiction. Gastrich said the verses I cited “aren't taken from the same times and places in Jesus' ministry." However, I showed that the context proves that Mark 10:11 and Matthew 19:9 are intended to be descriptions of the same event, and in each case Jesus was addressing the same audience: the Pharisees. I also pointed out that since Jesus’ statement in Mark 10:11 applies to anyone who divorces and remarries, this covers the entire group of those who divorce and remarry. Later exceptions contradict the universal statement. Gastrich has been unable to rebut this line of reasoning. I responded to Gastrich’s defense and showed that it was ineffective.

It is clear that the Bible contradicts itself on the subject of divorce.

II. Jesus Lied.
I had written:

Gastrich responds:
DOUG
I have cited plenty of verses in previous posts. That I don’t repeat all of them does not detract from my case. In this case the relevant verse is John 18:20.

Gastrich wrote:
DOUG
In seconds I found websites with this contradiction. Using Google.

Look here and here for starters.

There are also other website references, including attempted solutions by inerrantists.

In addition, the way I formulated this contradiction was simply to put together some material from my study of the Messianic Secret, an issue well-known to NT scholars. The literature on this subject has no lack of references to Jesus’ secretive aspect in Mark and its contrast elsewhere, with John 18:20 being only one example.

If Gastrich takes away nothing else from this debate, he should understand that the Internet is a fine tool in many respects, but most scholarship takes place offline, in books, journals, and other academic venues. If Gastrich continues to rely exclusively on the Internet for research, he will remain at a serious, I’d say insurmountable, disadvantage in his quest to become a scholar of the Bible.

Gastrich continues:

DOUG
a.Whether anyone else has ever stated this contradiction is irrelevant. Gastrich seems to denounce me now because of a lack of appeal to popularity!
b.Again we see undue reliance on the Internet.

Gastrich wrote:

DOUG
a.I skimmed the two debates but didn’t find the discussion on this. Perhaps he can be more specific next time.
b.If he’s rebutted me, why don’t we see that rebuttal here? Is it merely what follows below, a tactic I’ve already rebutted?

Gastrich writes:
DOUG
I never referred to this as “sinister." And I showed at length how Jesus’ statement “in secret I have said nothing" in verse 20 contradicts many verses in Mark. See my first post.

Gastrich writes:
DOUG
If this is his rebuttal, we’ve seen it and I’ve refuted it. In my first post, I was quite clear that I was not going to interpret Jesus literally. I wrote:

Since my first post, I have repeated my claim that I am not taking Jesus literally, yet Gastrich still attacks a straw man and continues to state that I am interpreting Jesus in this way.

I wrote of John 18:20-21:

If Gastrich can do nothing but attack a caricature of my position, he obviously has no substantial rebuttal and the contradiction remains unscathed.

Gastrich writes:

DOUG
No, that is a disanalogy because one does not distinguish between different kinds of eating. But in our scenario I do distinguish between important and unimportant teachings.

A better analogy would be that we have, say, a woman named Gail Guss. She is told about a surprise party for a friend, Mr. Until. The party does not take place until the following week. In the meantime, Gail speaks to Mr. Until. Her friends find out and anxiously ask her: “Did you tell him anything?" Obviously they don’t intend to inquire about whether she spoke at all, but whether she told him about the specific bit of information important to them: the party. If Gail told him about the party but says “Oh, I didn’t tell him anything," she would be a liar, but not because she first said “hello," even though that is telling him something. That is not the relevant sense of what is being asked. She would be a liar because she told him about he party and she is denying it.

In the same way, if the high priest is inquiring about the teachings of Jesus he is of course concerned with important aspects of Jesus’ ministry. If Jesus denies having secret, important teachings when he really does have secret, important parts of his ministry, and if he gives the false impression that the masses who have heard him speak know all the significant parts of his teaching when really this is false, as I showed in my first post, then this is outright deception. I never claimed that Jesus was portrayed as lying because he sometimes talked in secret. I could even grant that Jesus said some unimportant things in secret and that would not make him a liar in the sense in which I am exploring the question. What makes the lying contradiction work is that Jesus said IMPORTANT things about his ministry in secret and then gave the high priest the impression that he had no important, secret teachings. That was a lie. And my interpretation here is quite reasonable.

And as I wrote in my first post, the way this lying is a contradiction is:

Gastrich writes:
DOUG
I have given specific, detailed rebuttals to each of the three arguments Gastrich cites. To dismiss this as hand waving suggests a lack of a response on his part. No one who read my previous posts could interpret my rebuttals as merely dismissive.

“My Personal Relationship with God" Argument
Gastrich writes:
DOUG
I rebutted his personal relationship argument in my first post:

DOUG
In other words, to say “Since I have a relationship with God, it is reasonable to believe that God exists," is simply assuming what the argument is supposed to show. That is circular reasoning.

I continued:
DOUG
To date, Gastrich has written NOT ONE WORD addressing the content of my rebuttal. Perhaps in his closing statement he will finally address this. If he can rebut my arguments, I suggest he attempt to do so instead of simply claiming that I had “no solid rebuttal." If it’s not solid, show this.

Miracles and the Effects of Prayer
I wrote:

Gastrich writes:
DOUG writes:
Anecdotal evidence (second-hand stories and personal experiences) does not show that prayer works because it commits the fallacy of selective evidence. Some people do get better after they are prayed for. Some don’t. So, appealing only to cases in which people got better cannot establish a causal relationship between prayer and positive results. That is the mistake of selecting out the positive evidence and neglecting the negative results. That’s why legitimate studies have protocols that, among other things, show both the positive and negative results.

This is why I’ve asked Gastrich to cite a prayer study that he thinks shows that prayer works. He has provided some links to vague material that I have rebutted. He has not cited a specific study.

Gastrich wrote:
DOUG
OK, if Gastrich can do this, he should do it for James Randi under scientific testing conditions and win his million-dollar prize. (See: link removed) If he does, I’ll not only concede his point, he’ll be a lot richer. But Gastrich’s unsubstantiated claims continue to fall short as evidence.

Biblical Prophecy
I had written:

Gastrich writes:
DOUG
To his detriment, Gastrich does not address the reasons behind my prophecy fulfillment criteria and why his position would suffer if he does not adopt these or other reasonable criteria. Unaddressed, my criteria stand unrebutted.

In his previous post, Gastrich said he is setting aside the Daniel 9 prophecy (but may revisit it) and stood by his Isaiah 53 prophecy. Now he says nothing to defend Isaiah 53 but brings up Daniel 9!

Daniel 9
I had written:

Gastrich writes:
DOUG
Gastrich says other Gospels (not Matthew) have Jesus on one animal only. I said that since Matthew has Jesus on two animals simultaneously, there is a contradiction.

Gastrich wrote:
DOUG
I’ll cite the verse again, which Gastrich neglects to address.


So what did Jesus sit on? On “them." More than one. The cloaks were on “them," and Jesus sat on “them." The two animals. And Gastrich did not attempt to rebut any of the material from Farrell Till's article demonstrating why the (anonymous) author of Matthew put Jesus in this awkward position. The author of Matthew was fabricating a fulfilled prophecy and bungled the translation.

Also note that Gastrich’s claim that “Matthew 21:7 tells us that there was a ‘young ass’ for Jesus and also another animal for the other disciples" is false. Matthew 21:7 (see above) says nothing about having another animal for the other disciples. This is not the first time Gastrich’s description of a Bible verse has been inaccurate.

In any case, the point is moot. Gastrich’s prophecy claim is that Daniel 9 predicts the exact day Jesus would ride into Jerusalem. I challenged Gastrich to show that the exact day is predicted, and he said he was going to “avoid" that. Since he will not defend the substance of this prophecy claim, he has no case, so it is a mystery why he decided to discuss Daniel 9 this time instead of Isaiah 53.

Isaiah 53
Since Gastrich does not address my lengthy exposition of the flaws in his claim that Isaiah 53 predicts the suffering and death of Jesus, I will let my third round rebuttal stand unanswered.

Intelligent Design Argument
Since the first round, I have explained the nature of one well-known objection to the fine-tuning argument. If our universe can’t be shown to be unlikely, if it can’t be shown that our universe could have existed in many other ways, then the existence of this universe is not unlikely by chance, and one needn’t appeal to supernatural agency to explain why our universe exists as it does.

Gastrich did not seem to comprehend the objection, since he simply replied (in round three):
My challenge was for Gastrich to show that the “150+" factors could have been otherwise.

Thus I replied:

And I proceeded to explain the fine-tuning argument and my objection in detail. Gastrich’s reply this time is incoherent.

He writes:
I didn’t see my two paragraphs “submitted," but if Gastrich doesn’t comprehend how I have offered a rebuttal to his argument—a standard rebuttal to the fine-tuning argument!—after I have explained it several times now, then it is unlikely that he will be able to refute my objection in the last round.

I see also that Gastrich did not attempt to salvage his argument from irreducible complexity after last time saying that it was “absurd and arbitrary" to provide examples of irreducible complexity that evolution can’t explain—after he tried to provide such examples in round 1.

Conclusion
Gastrich concludes with more irrelevant questions, such as asking me to explain the origin of ethics. Had Gastrich used the moral argument for the existence of God, or even a version for the reasonableness of belief in God, I would respond. But he didn’t. He just threw in a question at the end of his post last time and again this round. But his questions and remarks are not an argument. The same is true of his question about whether most people are reasonable. I addressed popularity and reasonableness in the last round. It's little more than his argumentum ad populum fallacy again.

Since his brief questions are not his arguments for the reasonableness of faith in God, I certainly don’t feel obligated to follow the red herring trail and respond to his asides.

Gastrich has only one post to go and his case that it is reasonable to have faith in God is in shambles. Many of his rebuttals remain nebulous at best. Others address minor issues and avoid major avenues of critique I have developed in previous rounds. Sometimes he ignores my points entirely and then claims that I have offered no significant rebuttal at all. I now have no expectation that Gastrich can salvage his case in the last round.

Jason Gastrich

Dear readers and Doug,

I hope you’re well.

Since this is the final round and since the final round has been designated as one for summary information, I’ll be summarizing my arguments. I’ll remind the readers and Doug why it’s perfectly reasonable to have faith in God. In fact, it’s unreasonable to avoid having faith in Him.

The Inerrant Scriptures

During my concurrent debates, I’ve challenged my opponents and every reader to submit questions about the inerrancy of the scriptures. I’ve challenged them to contact me with things that they think are errors in the Bible. However, I haven’t received even one email! This is astonishing since my current, two debates alone have been read over 10,000 times to date!

I’m hereby renewing my offer and it will remain open, indefinitely. If you or anyone you know thinks they have found an error in the Bible, please submit it to me. I’d be happy to address it. All you have to do is contact me through the contact form at http://jcsm.org/contact.php .

In the future, I hope to offer a sizeable, cash prize to the one who can prove that there is an error in the Bible. This will be a challenge akin to James Randi’s challenge. More details will be forthcoming on my web site.

I don’t make these claims and these challenges for no good reason. I make them because I’ve found sound answers to every, alleged Bible error. I’ve rebutted a possibly exhaustive collection of alleged, Bible errors: The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. After I wrote this full rebuttal, I have declared that the Bible is a book without error. I can no longer say I have “blind faith." I must say that I have “informed faith."

Doug had every opportunity to prove that there is an error in the Bible. However, he couldn’t. Instead, he gave us a couple tired arguments and one of his own creation. With all due respect to Doug, I was hoping for something more. I shouldn’t be too surprised, though. I feel the same way now that I did after rebutting the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible.

Science

Doug completely failed to rebut my scientific arguments. In fact, he flat-out ignored them. I gave a number of reasons why there is a Creator from science and I gave him a link with even more. I’m shocked at his hand waving.

Doug had a chance to hit the ball out of the park. Although I haven’t seen any atheist write complete and detailed rebuttals, I thought Doug would. I never would have imagined that he would have ignored all of the arguments completely.

On that note, I look forward to debating Doug in a public venue. If it fits my travel schedule, I could even come to his university and debate him and I may be able to waive some of my honorarium. If you’re interested (and it would be recorded and transcribed, so you won’t have to be there to take it in), please contact us. I could potentially be there in May of 2006.

It’s very difficult for my opponents to get away with avoiding my arguments and hand waving in public because these sorts of tactics can be exposed, immediately. You don’t have to wait several weeks to discover them. Furthermore, as I did with Eddie Tabash, I’ll point out Doug’s distortions and such and it will further undermine his credibility.

Some of Doug’s Avoidance

If I were to list all of the questions and issues Doug avoided, I’d run over the word/character allotment for this debate. Nonetheless, I must list a few things.

I asked Doug some important questions. Instead of answering them, he said they were irrelevant. Why? Because they’re tough questions! Because they’d expose the weakness of atheism and the tenability and reasonableness of faith in God.

Here are those questions, again.

1) Where did morality come from? Did humanity discover universal concepts of morality or were they created? If they were created or discovered, tell us how and why.

2) Do you believe that most people on Earth are reasonable or unreasonable?

3) How and when was matter created?

Now, in a public debate, there will be a specific, question and answer time. We will ask and answer questions from each other and we will field questions from the audience. I can only hope that Doug won’t call those questions irrelevant. It will be highly embarrassing for him again if he does.

My Long-term Relationship With God

Doug provided nothing that could lead me to believe that my long-term relationship with God was false, erroneous, or make-believe. I’ve been blessed and changed. I’ve seen and done things that I cannot deny. Doug’s attempts have been no more influential or productive than John Doggett’s attempts to belittle Fox Mulder’s experiences with the supernatural. They resemble a child’s attempts to tell an adult that airplanes can’t possibly fly.

Miracles and the Effects of Prayer

Once again, miracles and the effects of prayer go to prove that faith in God is indeed reasonable. Millions of people around the world have experienced and done the things I’ve experienced and done. Doug wants us to think they are deceived fools, but in reality, all Doug can do is naysay.

The bottom line is that prayer works. It effects people in a positive way. It has been proven.

Fulfilled Biblical Prophecies

From the Messianic prophecies, to the prophecies about Israel, biblical prophecy has shown us that it is reasonable to have faith in God. No other book has given us history in advance. It has been demonstrated, time and time again, that the Bible is a prophetic book that told us things that nobody else knew; and they happened and they are happening, now.

The atheist needs to come up with a better argument against biblical prophecy. It is unseemly to simply present an unreasonable criteria that cannot be met. In fact, this has become a tactic in itself. It is of no surprise that the atheist requires greater proof than a court would require for anything relating to the Bible.

Conclusion

Herein lies the problem for the atheist. After my debate with Eddie Tabash, a well-meaning atheist approached me and asked me a question. He said, “Both you and Eddie seem like bright people, but you have totally opposite viewpoints on the existence of God. How can this be?"

How would you answer this question? This is the answer that I gave him: “My criteria for evidence has been met. Eddie’s criteria hasn’t been met; and has likely changed many times as certain evidence has been provided."

Regards,
Jason Gastrich

Gastrich’s case has been thoroughly destroyed. He has apparently abandoned some of his arguments as lost causes, and the arguments that remain are inadequate to show that it is reasonable to have faith in God.

Throughout this debate, Gastrich’s attempts to rehabilitate his arguments have been fraught with inconsistencies, blatantly false claims, poor research, insults, plagiarism, irrelevant points, and—all too often--simply incoherent responses. My fourth post was a summary of significant rebuttal points to which Gastrich never responded, as well as further difficulties. It was a summary of why Gastrich has not come close to making his case in this debate—including the major oversight on the part of Gastrich that he never explained what it means to say “it is reasonable to have faith in God." It only made his task harder that he never explained what he means by “God," “reasonable," or “faith." This was just one of the many problems with his case.

How many of my rebuttals had Gastrich left unaddressed? In his fourth post, Gastrich stated:


Gastrich lost that bet because I met his challenge in the last round with a list of ten points to which he hadn't responded. Other unrebutted points were mentioned elsewhere in that post. In this last round, Gastrich did not attempt to respond to a single point on my list.

And Gastrich cannot claim that lack of space prevented him from including responses. In his final post, Gastrich used approximately 23% of the word limit, which leaves ample space to reply to at least some of the points on my list, if not all. That he did not try to do so, I think, demonstrates the strength of my rebuttals and Gastrich’s inability to support his case.

I refer readers to my fourth round post for a detailed summary of some of the failings of Gastrich’s case. However, another summary here may be useful.

The Argument from Common Consent
Gastrich originally posted that “the majority of the world is over 90% Christian." This is an example of his reluctance to research his claims, as even a brief look at an almanac shows that this is incorrect. In addition, the appeal to common consent is a well-known logical fallacy. Gastrich then asserted that he had meant to write “90% of the world believes in God," but he still had not researched his claim and I showed that this was incorrect also on the standard definition of “God." Gastrich never produced a definition of “God," any statistics to support his statement, and consequently was never able to show how his claim could be anything other than a gross error, nor did he show that he was not committing the fallacy of appeal to common consent. In his final post, Gastrich makes no mention of this blunder and has abandoned this claim.

The Inerrant Bible Argument
Gastrich’s Inerrant Bible Argument suffered from fatal flaws.

1.The argument was never clear. Although I asked Gastrich to explain the reasoning from “the Bible is inerrant" to “it is reasonable to believe in God," and I showed how this inference is problematic, Gastrich didn’t try to show how the latter can be derived from the former. Thus he was unclear about what he was trying to accomplish, and his argument could not succeed even if his premises had been true.
2.The Bible is known to contain numerous errors. Thus his argument contained a false premise. As support for this point, I cited two clear-cut Bible contradictions:

I.The Divorce Contradiction
I have shown that Jesus’ statements on divorce and remarriage in Mark 10:11 and Matthew 19:9 contradict, as do other Biblical statements on this topic (Matt. 5:31-32, 1 Cor. 7:10-11, Rom. 7:2-3, and Deut. 24:1-2). In Mark 10:11 Jesus says:


In logical notation: (x)(Dx & Rx → Ax)

In Matthew 19:9 Jesus says:


In logical notation: ($x)(Dx & Rx & ~Ax) which implies: ~[(x)(Dx & Rx→Ax)]

Thus we have a contradiction of:
(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax) & ~[(x)(Dx & Rx → Ax)]

The contradiction is inescapable, and the other Biblical verses I cited only compound the contradiction.

Gastrich claimed that the verses in Matthew and Mark were from different times in Jesus’ ministry, such that Jesus was addressing different audiences on different occasions, but the context, as I proved in my second post, shows that the verses are clearly intended to describe the same set of events. Gastrich dropped that rebuttal and had none better afterwards. He even claimed in his third post that “The word ‘whosoever’ isn’t mentioned in Mark 10:11," and in the next sentence accuses me of “ignoring the context and the obvious implications of the passage." Anyone who read the verse saw that the word “whosoever" is in Mark 10:11. Why Gastrich said something so blatantly false is of no concern to me. What is relevant is that he could not resolve this contradiction.

One thing Gastrich could have done to show that the Bible does not have a contradictory position on divorce is to explain what the Biblical view is. Gastrich could have spelled it out and cited specific verses to support his case, including the verses I cited as examples of contradictions. It is not enough to list verses that agree, one must also address verses that seem to disagree. But there were some verses Gastrich never addressed, and rebuttals he ignored. So what is the alleged harmonious view on divorce and remarriage found in the Bible? If Gastrich were to consider divorce, what would be the alleged Biblical view he would follow? And why do so many believers disagree? Gastrich failed to resolve the problem.

II.Jesus Lied.
During his hearing before the high priest, Jesus says:


Here Jesus claims he shared all of his teachings with his public audiences; he never kept important parts of his teachings a secret. I demonstrated in great detail that other parts of the NT show that Jesus did teach in secret (Mk. 4:2-12; 33-34; Matt. 13:3-15; 34-51; and others).

One of Gastrich’s rebuttals is that we don’t know the exact question the High Priest asked, so therefore we can’t know whether Jesus lied. But I pointed out that to know whether someone lied we would only have to know what the person claims and whether the claim is true. We know that, in John, Jesus denied having important secret teachings, and Markan verses show that this is false. Gastrich dropped that rebuttal.

Gastrich also repeatedly misrepresented my position by saying that I was taking Jesus’ claim literally and saying Jesus claimed to have said nothing at all in secret. In his second post, Gastrich wrote:


In his fourth post Gastrich writes:


The problem with this rebuttal is that it attacks a straw man. I wrote in my first post:


However, Jesus is clearly shown using parables, and he explains that the does so in order to keep those not in his "inner circle" from understanding the real meaning of his teachings. When his disciples are alone with Jesus and ask for an explanation of the parables, Jesus gives the explanation. That is teaching in secret. The most important aspect of the parable, its meaning, was told secretly. Jesus is also portrayed as telling people to keep secret his true nature and some of his ministry activities. This is keeping something secret about himself that is important.

It is telling of Gastrich’s rebuttals that he misrepresents my position. He never comments on the reasonable interpretation of John 18:20 that I explained in my first post. This suggests that he is at a loss to rebut my real position. Indeed, as with the previous contradiction, Gastrich even misrepresents the New Testament. In his third post he says that Jesus told the High Priest that he, the High Priest, knew Jesus’ teachings. Jesus makes no such statement. There are other misrepresentations, but again this just shows that Gastrich was unable to address my claims and thus unable to disprove them or even undermine my evidence. It is also noteworthy that in his rebuttals Gastrich never referred to any of the many synoptic verses I cited to demonstrate this contradiction. Since Gastrich could do nothing but misrepresent me, my contradiction remains unrebutted.

3.Gastrich claims that he will be offering a “sizeable, cash prize" to anyone who can show that the Bible contains an error. I showed two clear errors that Gastrich was unable to rebut, so I demand that he send the cash prize to me care of the Secular Web immediately upon its initial offering. That Gastrich would continue to claim that he has “found sound answers to every, alleged [sic] Bible error" is false. He had no plausible reply to the errors I cited. This makes his claim ludicrous, and it comes off as nothing more than false bravado. It is not clear who he hopes to convince of his success in refuting alleged contradictions, but it is certainly not careful readers of this debate.

I showed that the Bible contains contradictions, Gastrich was unable to offer even a remotely plausible rebuttal to any of them, so Gastrich’s argument from an inerrant Bible is refuted.

“My Long-term Relationship With God" Argument
In his final post, Gastrich writes:


Gastrich forgets that it is he who accepted the burden of proof in this debate, and it is incumbent upon him to provide evidence that his assertions are true. He made no attempt to substantiate his miracle claims with evidence readers could examine and evaluate.

Another problem with his argument is that, as with his previous argument, Gastrich’s argument was unclear, and he ignored my requests that he clarify his position. As I wrote in my first post:


Alternatively, if Gastrich’s argument is nothing more than a version of the religious experience argument, I countered by stating that


In his fourth post, Gastrich says of his argument:


Readers no doubt wondered, if my rebuttals were not very good ones, why Gastrich made no attempt to rebut them. And if his argument was so powerful, one would think it would be both easy and important to defend the argument—and in either case we would expect him to do so. (One might also wonder why this allegedly powerful argument was never mentioned in his second post.) Unfortunately for his case, Gastrich never addressed either of my rebuttals, so they remain unscathed and his argument is refuted.

The Argument from Miracles and the Effects of Prayer
In his final post, Gastrich once again misrepresents my position by stating that


Here Gastrich ignores the specific points I made against his argument.

First, I had explained why anecdotal evidence of the power of prayer (addressing specific anecdotes Gastrich provided) is insufficient to demonstrate the power of prayer. In my first post I wrote:


Gastrich provided two links in his second post. One was a page about the increased mental health of those who pray. However, I pointed out that meditation and yoga provide the same results, so this does not demonstrate that prayer is supernatural. His other link was to a round-table discussion of prayer, and one panelist stated that prayer studies were inconclusive. So Gastrich had nothing of value as evidence.

I challenged Gastrich to cite a prayer study he would endorse as showing the efficacy of prayer. Afterwards, Gastrich never cited a single prayer study to support his case. This is especially odd given that other fundamentalists often cite specific prayer studies, so there should have been no lack of examples. In his final post Gastrich wrote:


Gastrich refused to cite any study that proved this. This omission was never explained, but since his miracle claims remained unsupported by evidence, his argument failed.

One sideline of this topic was my mention that Jesus gives a simple test for faith/prayer. I wrote:


Gastrich responded with a red herring that one "can’t show that Jesus intended this to be a way to convert atheists." I countered with John 2:23, 6:2 and Mark 16:20 to show otherwise. Gastrich dropped that line, and disputed whether Jesus called the mustard seed “small" or “least." When Gastrich cited a concordance that ended up agreeing with me, he abandoned any attempt to explain why he cannot do what Jesus said even those with the least amount of faith should be able to do.

The Argument from Fulfilled Biblical Prophecies
Gastrich provided some alleged fulfilled prophecies as evidence for the existence of God. I provided some reasonable criteria for him to meet.


I explained how these are reasonable criteria, designed to preclude the possibility of naturalistic fulfillment. However, Gastrich rejected my criteria and, notably, didn’t propose any of his own. I explained in my second post why this was a problem for him:


Gastrich’s final post has:

Gastrich’s response is inadequate for several reasons.
1.A court would require reliable evidence, which is absent from the Bible with respect to Gastrich’s alleged examples of prophecy.
2.Gastrich was unable to show that my criteria are unreasonable (for the most part, he merely asserted it).
3.Gastrich again misrepresents my position by suggesting that all I did to rebut his argument from prophecy was submit these criteria.

His cases of alleged fulfilled Biblical prophecies were so strongly rebutted that he all but gave up on this line of argumentation.

I.Daniel 9
Gastrich’s claim of Daniel 9 is that this chapter predicts the exact day Jesus would ride into Jerusalem. I challenged Gastrich to show how this is predicted, and he said he was going to “avoid" that. Since I showed in detail how the dating is problematic, and since Gastrich said he would not defend the main point in this prophecy claim, he has no case.

II.Isaiah 53
Gastrich claimed that Isaiah 53 predicts the suffering and death of Jesus. However, this is predicated on the assumption that the gospel details are accurate and, worse still, the questionable interpretation that Isaiah’s “suffering servant" refers to Jesus.

I pointed out that earlier chapters of Isaiah refer to the servant as Israel, not Jesus. Gastrich responded that Isaiah 53 “uses words and terminology that do not refer to the country of Israel." I rebutted:


Gastrich admitted that he had no idea what I meant. I explained, and Gastrich never attempted a response.

Similarly, Gastrich’s claims that Isaiah 53 “mentions the whippings that Jesus received" (I pointed out that no whippings are mentioned), that Jesus’ imprisonment is mentioned (many people arrested are imprisoned, this doesn’t show that it refers to Jesus), that it says that the servant would be buried in a rich man’s tomb (it has only a vague reference to a “death with the rich"), and so on, were all rebutted.

I had also cited a few dissimilarities Gastrich overlooks between Isaiah’s suffering servant and Jesus, including verse 7, that the servant “opened not His mouth." I pointed out that Jesus speaks to the chief priests (Luke 22:67-70), to Pilate (Luke 23:3, John 18:37; 19:11), as he is led to crucifixion (Luke 23:28-31), and as he is crucified (Luke 23:34). I wrote:


Gastrich’s rebuttal was that verse 7 refers only to:


Since Gastrich resorts to the absurd claim that someone who sometimes talked and sometimes remained silent can be accurately described as someone who did not open his mouth (and that such a description apparently required divine omniscience to foresee!), it is no wonder that Gastrich abandoned this claim too. He never attempted to respond to these points after round three. Since my third round rebuttal stands unanswered for the last two rounds, Gastrich’s prophecy claim is refuted.

Gastrich was unable to show that Biblical prophecy claims are credible and thus did not show that such claims make it reasonable to have faith in God.

The Argument from Intelligent Design
Gastrich used intelligent design argument concerning irreducible complexity in biology and the fine-tuning of physical laws.

I gave standard rebuttals to each of these points in my first post.

I.The Irreducible Complexity Argument
Regarding the claim of irreducible complexity, Gastrich wrote:


I responded:


I also provided a link to an article explaining how the lungs and the eyes can be explained by evolution.

Gastrich responded by stating:


Yet he provided no explanation of alleged fallacies or assumptions. He also ignored my link and asked:


Not only did Gastrich ignore the evidence I provided, he provides no evidence that the evolution of the eye is impossible, or that it is less likely than divine creation. Indeed, in a later post I asked Gastrich to provide further examples of irreducible complexity that allegedly cannot be explained by evolution. He responded:


However, if it is absurd to ask creationists to support claims of irreducible complexity with examples, why did Gastrich try to provide such examples in his first post? And why do so many other creationists think it is a good idea to attempt to provide such examples?

Gastrich seems to have abandoned any possibility of rehabilitating his argument for irreducible complexity since in his last two posts he does nothing to defend against these points.

II.The Fine-Tuning Of Physical Laws Argument
Since the first round, I have explained the nature of one well-known objection to the fine-tuning argument. If our universe can’t be shown to be unlikely, if it can’t be shown that our universe could have existed in many other ways, then the existence of this universe is not unlikely by chance, and one needn’t appeal to supernatural agency to explain why our universe exists as it does.

One of Gastrich’s rebuttals involved a dice analogy. In his second post he wrote:


I responded by showing how Gastrich misunderstands the relevant probability theory:


Gastrich seems to have misunderstood how this rebuttal works. In round three he wrote:


So in round three I explained how my rebuttal serves as a standard counter to the fine-tuning argument.

Gastrich never responded to this rebuttal. Instead, in round four, he wrote:


And in round five he writes:


My rebuttals to Gastrich’s “scientific arguments" are clearly found in previous posts. Why Gastrich would say such a thing is, again, of no importance to me. However, one can’t help but think that this is nothing short of deliberate misrepresentation, not an oversight, and as such I must say I find it insulting. It would not surprise me at all if readers were also insulted to think that Gastrich would try to “put one over" on them after they have been following this debate closely for months.

Anyway, Gastrich was unable to provide a coherent rebuttal to my refutation of his intelligent design claims, so this line of argumentation for the reasonableness of belief in God has also failed.

Gastrich continued with a debate challenge and writes:


This is not the forum to engage in debate challenges, but I must say that conduct that includes these kinds of abusive, false accusations hardly makes debate offers attractive. I can’t imagine any skeptics group wanting to pay his honorarium to debate, and I could not in good conscience recommend to a religious institution that they fund his debate events.

CONCLUSION
Regarding the questions Gastrich challenged me to answer at the end of some of his posts, I had already explained in round four that, had he developed these asides into arguments (as he did with the common consent argument), I might have been inclined to comment further. In round three I addressed his question about whether popularity determines what is reasonable. I explained how this is not a sufficient condition to guarantee reasonableness. Gastrich never responded. Since he never developed his questions into arguments, I had no obligation to respond. Gastrich never tried to show that failure to answer his questions undermined any of my rebuttals, nor did he try to show that his questions somehow supported his case. Because of this, they remained red herrings at best, which, as such, I largely ignored.

In the end, Gastrich’s case for the reasonableness of faith in God has now been roasted to a crisp. He never developed his arguments in any significant degree, and by the last post he had given up trying to recover from my rebuttals and for the most part seemed reduced to hollow denials.

Finally, one of the reasons that I think formal debates are useful is that people become apprised of each side of an issue and make up their own minds. This is especially important with topics as significant as whether God exists. In this debate, I find it difficult to believe that anyone learned from Gastrich how to make a case for the reasonableness of belief in God. Such is the danger of so often engaging in constant denial and attacking a straw man. The real man is left standing, unrebutted. So I stand, hoping that some readers studied my own installments with profit, and I wish them all the best in future inquiries into this subject.

StrictSeparationist

This concludes the debate. We thank Jason Gastrich and Doug Krueger for their participation.