Measuring McAfee 1522865322, 9781522865322

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Measuring McAfee: Why One Atheist’s Attempt to Disprove Christianity Misses the Mark

Tyler R. Vela Copyright © 2015 Tyler Vela All rights reserved. ISBN: 1522865322 ISBN-13: 9781522865322

DEDICATION

My loving wife Lindsay for all of her love and for allowing me the countless nights of late night typing working on this project. My dear friend Nicholas Bruzzese for being such a support, encouragement, and sounding board for the thoughts and arguments contained in this book.. CONTENTS

Acknowledgments i

1 Preface to the Second Edition 1

2 Preface to the First Edition 9

3 Introduction 13

4 Cultural Christianity 25

5 Christianity in America 35

6 Morality Versus Worship 45

7 Mainstream Theories of Disapproval 77

8 Contradictions in Scripture and in Practice 103

9 Minor Contradictions 135

10 Atrocities and Absurdities 161

11 Conclusion 189

12 Other Secular Essays 195 13 Appendix A: Review of David G. McAfee’s “The 213 Forgotten Gospel of the Bible: Did Jesus Condone Homosexuality? by

Nicholas J. Bruzzese and Tyler R. Vela About the Author243

Tyler R. Vela Measuring McAfee

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This current project would not be possible if it were not for a very supportive community of thinkers, debaters, arguers, and interlocutors. The concepts and arguments in this book were formed over years of research and countless conversations with Christians, theists, deists, agnostics, atheists, anti-theists, and everything in between. I would like to thank my professors at Sonoma State University, Moody Bible Institute and Reformed Theological Seminary for pushing me to think and grow and to give well researched and thought out answers for why I believe what I believe. I would also like to thank David G. McAfee for giving me every opportunity to complete this project. Hopefully he will see this as helpful correction to his arguments and views and maybe even take me up on my long standing offer for a public debate or dialogue. I would especially like to thank Nicholas Bruzzese for his collaboration on the article contained in the appendix of this current work and for allowing it to be published here. i

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION What follows is a revision of my original review of David’s first edition of Disproving Christianity, Refuting the World’s Most Followed Religion which has now been updated and republished by Dangerous Little Books under the new titleDisproving Christianity and Other Secular Writings. For those of you who may be reading this and thinking that I am simply hounding him, rest assured that at the time that I wrote this review, it was an agreed upon project by McAfee and myself. In anticipation of a book that we were working on together that would have been a dialogue on various issues regarding both Atheistic Naturalism and Christian Theism, we agreed

that it would be beneficial to release an updated version of his second edition bundled with my book length review. McAfee and I had a very cordial relationship with each other and often held public discussion on various internet threads – especially in his Facebook group. However as of late, McAfee has become somewhat recluse when it comes to responding to critics. Several of his other critics (such as Nick Peters, Elijiah Thompson and others) have joined me in challenging McAfee to formal public debates, interviews on various podcasts or recorded Skype calls or Google Hangouts, and even written responses, but have never received any direct response from him. Rather we often are only met with condescending comments from his follows, often wondering why David would stoop to debating the likes of us. Also, for those tempted to think that this is only a response by some religious fanatic who cannot stand the thought of their worldview being challenged, I would like to point out that I am not the only critic of McAfee’s work. My good friend, and then atheist, Nicholas Bruzzese has also been quite vocal in his criticisms of the book.1Many atheists have themselves expressed criticism of McAfee’s work so this is hardly a Christian vs atheist banter. As we will see in this review, the kind of extremely simplistic and all too frequently shallow interaction with the weakest brand of Christianity one can muster is precisely the kind of arguments that Nicholas dedicates so much of his time to removing from the his fellow skeptics.2 This next section may seem tangential, but it will lead somewhere good. McAfee’s book, Wikipedia page and his Facebook group page all remind me of a strangely oblivious comment that Richard Dawkins made in the preface to the second edition of The God Delusion where he writes this of the reviews that the first edition received, It was warmly well received by the great majority of those who sent in their personal reviews to Amazon… Approval was less overwhelming in the printed reviews however. A cynic might put this

down to an unimaginable reflex of reviews editors: It has ‘God’ in the title, so send it to a known faith head. That would be too cynical, however. Several unfavorable reviews began with the phrase, which I long ago learned to treat as ominous, ‘I am an atheist BUT…’ As Daniel Dennett noted in Breaking the Spell, a bafflingly large number of intellectuals ‘believe in belief’ even though they lack religious belief themselves. These vicarious second-order believers are often more zealous than the real thing, their zeal pumped up by integrating broad-mindedness: ‘Alas, I can’t share your faith but I respect and sympathize with it. (Dawkins, The God Delusion 2nd edition, p.13.) 1 The Skeptics Testament Podcast Episode 24 (episode 1:24) – 35min35sec. 2I highly recommend Nicholas’ talk to The Vics Skeptics which he subsequently aired on The Skeptic Testament Podcast, Episode 38 (episode 3:1).

What Dawkins seems almost keen to side step is just admitting that while all the non-experts ate it up, most scholars did not (his statement that it was “less overwhelming” is an understatement.) Not to mention that if you read some of the most critical reviews, those by Christians notwithstanding, they were nothing like “second order believers” who were saying anything about some zealous broadmindedness or even respect for belief. Atheist and philosopher of science Michael Ruse at Florida State University for example wrote a blistering review of Dawkins’ book3, and several articles about Dawkins’ zealotry thereafter.4 For one to call Ruse a “second order believer” or even that he is more zealous than the real thing is just bizarre because it is so demonstrably not true. In fact most of Ruse’s critique of Dawkins had to do with his sheer ignorance of the subject he is writing on. Ruse writes, “For a start, Dawkins is brazen in his ignorance of philosophy and theology (not to mention the history of science)... Dawkins misunderstands the place of the proofs, but this is nothing to his treatment of the proofs themselves. This is a man truly out of his depth.” Is it surprising then that Dawkins receives such poor reviews from scholars for a book in which he cites G.A. Wells as a “Professor [at] the University of London” in order to show that there might be a case against Jesus even existing, without mentioning that Wells is a professor of German with no credentials in

either history or the New Testament or that Wells had actually already recanted the Jesus Mythicist position before Dawkins even wrote his book? 3 Ruse, Michael. “Book Review: Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion.” Isis, Dec.2007. 98(4), pp814-816.

4Thomas Nagel, an atheist philosopher at NYU also wrote a blistering critique of Dawkins in The New Republic entitled “The Fear of Religion.” Another good article not directly geared toward The God Delusion but about the kind of

What this all amounts to, it seems to me, is that Dawkins chooses to allow the roar of the crowd (and possibly the checks in the bank) to drown out academic study. Can Dawkins really not see that the problem is not in the critics but in his content?The actor has begun to think that he actually is King Lear. Rather than seeing the reviews for what they were, the pomp of success that comes from people clamoring for any scholar to say something that they can quote mine to support their position regardless of how well researched or rational – so long as it comes as a witty zing from the end of a forked tongue. Could Dawkins really not imagine that anyone could bring a genuine charge against his book?5 atheism it represents, is agnostic scientist Stephen Jay Gould’s article in the New York Review of Books entitled “Darwinian Fundamentalism.” In addition to these I have compiled a list of online articles by prominent philosophers and scientists of all worldviews who have heavily critiqued Dawkins work: http://freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com/2011/08/critics-ofdawkinsunite.html

Here we may find a kissing cousin of what we have just undertaken in reviewing McAfee’s book. McAfee, while he may be quite rational and well researched on other topics, seems wholly incapable of giving a fair or honest reading of anything in or about the Bible, Christianity, or theism in general. His atheistic fundamentalism seems to cloud any ability at what may otherwise be a quite rational mind – though this is merely conjecture since I have never read any other of his works on topics other than religion. What we find repeatedly in this book are unsupported assumptions, unnecessary

woodenly literal interpretation, misrepresentations or misunderstandings of the Bible and Christian doctrine or practice, verses or passages ripped from their various contexts and treated as if they stand alone as sound bytes, an utter lack of research into Christian theology (or any subject addressed for that matter), Biblical theology, Exegesis, Hermeneutics, or even the most basic understanding of the history of Christian responses to his challenges, as well as a kind of juvenile retelling of very antiquated and long disproven arguments against God and faith. Mix in numerous conflations that ignore many real nuances between various Christian beliefs, denominations, theological systems, etc. or in creating false dichotomies between them, and McAfee has made a real mess for 5 There is a funny story which Dawkins tells, wholly unaware how foolish it makes himself look. He recalls: “I’ve forgotten the details, but I once piqued a gathering of theologians and philosophers by adapting the ontological argument to prove that pigs can fly. They felt the need to resort to Modal Logic to prove that I was wrong.” (The God Delusion, 1sted., p84) What Dawkins fails to realize is that the ontological argument is itself an exercise in modal logic. They used modal logic to refute him because his argument was the barefaced twisting of modal logic itself. It would be like trying to use physics to prove square-circles then make fun of the people who showed you why physics does no such a thing.

himself to defend.6When one thinks that questions like “what caused God” or “can God make a rock so heavy that even he can’t lift” are actually reasonable or valid arguments or objections to belief it is obvious that very little has occurred in the way of study or investigation nor has much occurred in the gray matter between the ears on that topic. We also find that McAfee’s own assertions have clearly gone unexamined and were never subjected to scrutiny prior to publication, and it is as if he was either unaware or totally unwilling to deal with the devastating critiques of scholars much more able than I am, who have responded to these very objections throughout the centuries. Upon completing this book I am reminded of the saying, “if they had better arguments, they would have used them.” Here, if McAfee had

better arguments against Christianity he would have used them. Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for the Christian, this was his Ateam, his MVP’s, his hit list – and he even tried to let what he thought were his best hitters to take more than one crack at the plate.7As we shall see however, they all fail. So the point still stands: if he had better arguments then he would have used them. Having spent several years now in McAfee’s company as a member of his Facebook group and frequently entering into discussions on his threads, I have noticed a direct correlation to the increase in the roar of his fans and the decrease in the reasonableness of his arguments (if one can call what is often just mocking assertions “arguments”). Graphic after graphic, post after post, his threads ooze with self assured wit and disdainful mockery, all brimming over with appeals to emotion to cover over the vapidity of the reasoning behind them. And yet McAfee seems a little more than just interested in religious affairs. “Obsession” might be a touch strong but comes close. Post after post is an image of a screen shot of some conversation he might have had with a religious person (often a terrible example of one) in which he then makes some snide remark to the effect of “look how stupid religious people are,” without realizing that he has not shown why the comment was wrong and only assumes we all should get the joke, but also that 9 times out of 10 it is just the kind of crazy aunt most religious people would rather leave locked in the attic and having nothing to do with ourselves anyway. Would it be fair or honest of me to take some random hate mailI get from a frothing angry atheist about how all theists should be arrested and shot (yes, I get that more often than one might think) and say “Look how backwards and bigoted you atheists are” - as if that person’s atheism even comes close to being an adequate representation of the group? One is often reminded of the school boy with the crush who cannot express his love any other way than to pull the young girl’s hair. He posts several posts a day, day in and day out, week after week, all about religion – more so than most of my religious friends… combined.

6 This review has been about in one form or another since about 2011 and not once has McAfee ever dealt with any of the content or arguments contained within. He has been given multiple opportunities to defend his published work but he continually refuses to do so. So he seems to have no desire to defend his book but only to promote it as if it is an untarnished work of scholarly repute. 7Some sections of this review will be brief statements of the “asked and answered” variety when he simply restates objections which he had already used in a previous section.

While I will not shy away from calling a spade a spade and plan on pulling no punches, it is also my hope that this review will be even handed and honest, even though it will also be highly critical of the style, content, lack of research, and the overall shallow nature of McAfee’s critiques of Christianity. There will be times where I will be quite severe with what seem to be really juvenile and petty misrepresentations that verge on willful distortion but I would like to preface this entire review by stating that I do not intend any of this to be a slight against his person. I know him personally and my comments are not meant to insinuate that he is unintelligent or vindictive but only that his book is so poorly researched and argued that it is hard to imagine why so many people have given it such critical acclaim.8To pilfer a great quote by Chaim Potok, if our arguments cannot go out into the world of scholarship and come back stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I believe that what I am about to present in this review will come back stronger – supported by thoughtful research. I am not afraid of truth.9Unfortunately for him, I think that McAfee’s arguments will all come back tattered and torn, only a pale shadow of his original intentions for them after being subjected to even a modicum of the rigors of academic scrutiny. 8 At last count, his book had 127 reviews for an average of 4½ stars – though this likely reveals just as much about the intellectual poverty of much of the New Atheist movement as it does about McAfee himself.

9The original quote is from Potok’s pièce de résistance In The Beginning, and reads, “Lurie, If the Torah cannot go out into your world of scholarship and return stronger, then we are all fools and charlatans. I have faith in the Torah. I am not afraid of truth.”

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Any book reviewer has the task of deciding what kind of evaluation is best suited for the book being examined. For this task, they have several options. Some seek to write brief reviews of summation followed by several concluding thoughts. Others write a kind of macro or large-scale review of the structure, common themes or method and approach of the book – a sort of room with a view surveying the fundamental assertions of the whole book at large. A third kind of review seeks to interact, chapter by chapter, line by line, with the information given. This final kind is quite rare and is often only used when the subject of the book is of vital importance and where the reviewer believes the author is so drastically mislead that they can either throw their hands up in despair or plunge in head first. While I initially desired to write a review of the second order for brevity’s sake, I have now decided, upon reading McAfee’s work several times, to opt for a review of the final order. However, this is not because I think that McAfee’s book is a tour de force for the skeptical or atheistic cause (as we will see it is quite sophomoric and unresearched – and not wanting of opinion) but rather because I have found this kind of “refutation” (if it can be called that) of Christianity so prevalent among the blogs and online threads that it has led me to the conclusion that we are witnessing the emergence of a new kind of fundamentalism – what I and others have begun to label antitheistic fundamentalism.10 McAfee’s book is unintentionally a good summation, not of the Christian religion which it seeks to disprove, but of the mindset, beliefs, and arguments of this new atheistic/antitheistic fundamentalism full of uncritical, unquestioned assumptions and a misrepresentation about the “heathen” Christians and their beliefs, as well as a blind faith in its own kind of a priori presuppositions. Some have even noted the irony of the religious nature of this new antitheistic movement – replete with its own version of churches, conferences, fellowships, priests, dogmas, creeds, informal catechisms, inquisitions, heretic hunts, apostasy shaming, revisionist histories, and even traveling missionaries and fiery evangelists. It is

precisely because of this that I have decided for, despite the time and work commitment it requires of me, the lengthier point by point review of McAfee’s book. What better opportunity does one have to deal with so many misinformed assumptions, illogical arguments, and misleading interpretations in one place than in a book review like this one? I apologize at the very onset for the length of this one review, but I think in the interest of providing defeaters of this attempt at a disproof, that if I were not to write such a review, even the stones would cry out for one. 10 By fundamentalism I mean the rigid adherence to a belief system or worldview in which the viewpoints are held in a unquestioned and dogmatic manner. I am not actually the first to coin this term but “atheistic fundamentalism” has been used by people such as Rod Liddle in his documentary The Trouble with Atheism, and by Alister and Joanne McGrath in their book The Dawkins Delusion. Even RJ Esskrow of the Huffington Post has criticized his college Sam Harris of being intolerant of faith in the same detrimental manner as those religious fundamentalists to whom he objects. We can even see this emerging in Stephen Jay Gould’s critical article “Darwinian Fundamentalism”, The New York Review of Books, June 12, 1997. The distinction made here is that while these other forms of fundamentalism are primarily apologetics for philosophical naturalism (the worldview of atheism), this new form of fundamentalism has become evangelistic and is not only pro atheism, but is ardently anti-theistic. Thus the fitting term. Recently however I have been exploring that this phenomena may not be best described as fundamentalism (though the term is still fitting for the dogmatic Naturalism and rigid Scientism of people like McAfee) but rather as a kind of ardent fanaticism that sees the opposing view as not only wrong but delusional, irrational, counter productive to societal flourishing, and possibly even evil. This kind of fanaticism is typically bolstered by the kind of anti-intellectualism and sound-byte parroting that has become so common among the New Atheists and online infidel brand of the New Atheist movement. For more on this phenomena, I recommend the episode of my podcast entitled “Books Are Dogs Now.”

As a procedural note, I will follow McAfee’s own chapter titles and subheadings so as to make comparison between his work and this present work more straightforward. INTRODUCTION

McAfee’s book, once we move beyond the acknowledgements (which actually function as an preemptive or initial shot across the Christian bow) and the ominous appeal to an “open mind” (where one can wonder if he means a predisposition toward a kind of enlightenment skepticism and scientism) there is quite a fair assertion that disproving Christianity does not disprove God in general. Other conceptions of God, such as deism could remain (p.ii). I think that this comment is beyond the ability of many other atheistic writers, so it is quite admirable to find at the outset of the book. Having now finished the book, even knowing the failed outcome of its intent and arguments, I can say thatthis disposition is something that McAfee really does hold to the end. He does not seem to blend various religions in the same manner that others do, and thus keeps good on his promise. One wonders however if we should expect a mini-series to follow dealing with all organized religious beliefs. Beyond this however, we begin to find our first concrete examples of the fundamental flaws of the book. Immediately we come across the statement that McAfee will be dealing with the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, and “contemporary teaching” (p.iv). Why address modern Christianity and not historic Christianity in a disprove of the doctrines of a religion? Addressing “modern Christianity” (as if it is monolithic in its teachings anyway) may be helpful in understanding cultural, sociological, and political ramifications of “modern” Christianity, such as American Evangelicalism or Latin Charismatic Roman Catholicism, and how it’s developments have impacted Western Culture. However, in dealing with the truth or validity of a religious system at large (i.e. Christianity), surely its historic roots and orthodox creeds must be preferred. If Christianity really is false, surely the fatal errors will lie at the root rather than the branches; that is, we must look at Christianity before evaluating Christiandom. Disproving “modern” Christianity in order to disprove Christianity at large (besides the fact that even most modern Christians are displeased with the current status and direction of modern Christianity, at least in the West), is like trying to cut down a redwood tree by trimming the upper branches. Due to the fact that McAfee

seems to only be acquainted with modern Christianity (and not even very well acquainted with it in its more robust and defensible) it causes his arguments to be geared more toward Western, American, anti-intellectual, uneducated, marginal, fundamentalistic Christianity in specific, rather than the historic orthodox Christian religion in general. This results in a kind of strawman argument where the weakest version of a belief is set up as normative or inclusive when in fact most Christians themselves would object to that very weak statement of Christianity. We can even wonder what McAfee hopes to gain should he succeed in his task of disproving the Christianity which he sets out – that is, late modern, American, fundamentalistic Christianity. Even if he is successful, which I believe he actually comes nowhere near, he would not have disproven Christianity – the world’s most followed religion – as the subtitle states, but rather a very lean sliver of one sociological subculture of it. This adds to the amazement that he chose to attack Christianity through such a narrow and circuitous course. For these reasons we can see immediately where this lack of knowledge will begin to cause problems for his arguments. He states, “the Holy Bible’s words create a battlefield within themselves in which contradictory statements are made, translations are forced, and major and minor edits of each account are made to suit the needs of one generation or the next. It is relatively impossible to consider that it would be flawless in any edition…” (p.iv). Even a simple understanding of the Christian theological category known as Bibliology would reveal several problems of a statement like this one that will have ramifications for much of what McAfee argues for later. First is the mingling of the Bible proper with later manuscripts, translations, and interpretations. For what would constitute a real problematic contradiction between the original autographs of the Biblical books and later editions or even later interpretations of later additions? In other words, why would we consider it a fault in the original text if translations or interpretations of that text from centuries later contradicted it? No Biblical scholar, Christian, atheist or otherwise, would argue with the fact that there are errors in the transmission (intentional or accidental) of the manuscripts and

translation of the Bible. But do these establish a problem for Christianity or the Bible itself? Not in the slightest. What this poses a problem for is that specific later date translation or theological system. Again, pruning branches does nothing toward uprooting a tree. In fact most sincere Christians are actively concerned to prune back those unruly branches themselves, so how McAfee sees this as a problem for the Bible is unclear. Beyond this we see McAfee’s lack of knowledge of an orthodox doctrine of inerrancy as displayed by his “all or nothing” concept and its invalid application to later editions of the Bible itself. Most inerrantists would tell you that inerrancy does not apply to our modern Bibles but only to the original autographs. This means that we should not expect that our modern translations should be without error. Does this mean that they are not trustworthy? We do not have space here to develop the argument, but the work of textual criticism has, to a large extent, purified our textual evidence for the original text to a near 96-99.5% accuracy.11 Beyond this, even a cursory reading of works such as B.B. Warfield’s The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (if any reading of such a dense work can be “cursory”) would suffice to show that McAfee’s notion of inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible is quite lacking in breadth, width, and scope.12While it may be the case that some Christian positions resemble what McAfee will argue for (though I am at a loss of concrete examples but only leave the option available since there are always exceptions), it is simply not the case for most – especially historically where inerrancy has actually been quite an amorphous doctrine.13 So even if McAfee refutes this vapid brand of Christianity that he puts forward, it would be like saying one has disproven that extraterrestrial life exists in general because they have disproven extraterrestrial life on a square mile section of Mercury in specific. To disprove one brand of a thing, does not by extension disprove all brands of that thing. 11 For those interested in this I recommend several books. Bruce Metzger’s The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, And Restoration (1964), (2005 4th edition with Bart d. Ehrman); Metzger’s Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (1994);

F.F. Bruce’s New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (1981); Daniel B. Wallace’s Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture's Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ with Darrell L. Bock (2007); and Wallace’s “The Gospel according to Bart: A Review Article of Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman,”Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49 (2006) 327-49. For comparative examples we can look at Homer’s Iliad with 643 manuscripts with the earliest coming 500 yrs after the original, Sophocles with 193 manuscripts with the earliest at 1400 years after the original, Aristotle with 49 manuscripts with the earliest at 1400 years after the original, or other giants like Plato with 7 manuscripts with the earliest coming in at 1200 years after the original. Compare that to the New Testament with 5600+ Greek manuscripts, 20,000+ translations, and over 80,000 citations with the earliest coming in at just about 30 years after the original and having complete copies of the entire New Testament (which is actually an anthology of collected works) within just over 200 years, and we can see that the textual evidence for the accuracy of the New Testament makes a historian of any other ancient work drool with envy.

12Not to mention his lack of Christian hermeneutics which will become readily apparent as we proceed. We can wonder, for example, if McAfee is familiar with Christian hermeneutical thought in general and how it has developed to address the issues raised in this book – such as the use of genre, symbolism (including anthropomorphisms, hyperbole, metaphor, analogy, etc.), polemics, theological narratives, ethical narratives, chiastic structures, idioms, illocution, theme/theme resolution, types/antitypes, shadow/fulfillment, etc. One marvels at his lack of knowledge of concepts like the three classes of laws in the Old Testament (civil, ceremonial, and moral), the three uses of the law for the church (magisterial, pedagogical, and normative, or sometimes called civil, pedagogical, and moral/ethical), or the relationship between the “City of God” and the “City of man” as well as between the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant (also referred to as law and gospel). Granted one should not expect a non-Christian to believe in the Bible or agree with the truth of the outcome of such readings of Scripture, but if one chooses to engage in an attempt to disprove Christianity it is simply inexcusable to do so without familiarizing oneself with its most robust theological and hermeneutical concepts. Even upon reading this list those terms might be as unfamiliar to you as they are to McAfee, but you likely are not posing a self-proclaimed “scholar” writing a book attempting to disprove what you clearly do not know the first thing about. Surely McAfee did not think that he could traipse into two millennia of Christiandom and tear it down with a simple wave of his wrist? Apparently he believes that he can. Christianity has been a bulwark well fortified with most of history’s greatest minds, not out of blind devotion, but precisely because of the spiritual and intellectual fulfillment that it brought to them. Such over simplifications as found in McAfee’s work will hardly be more than a nuisance. For those interested in learning more about the concepts listed

above, I recommend Vern Poythress’ book The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (1995).

13 While I disagree with his position, one can think of an eminent Christian Scholar like N.T. Wright, who is utterly committed to the reliability of the Biblical texts and yet calls inerrancy “that damnable American doctrine.” This

Next, we find that the definition of Christianity found on p.vi includes the heavily loaded word “literal” (which will be poorly handled later on p.x). In defining terms, this word should surely be near the top of the list for further refinement– for even among Christians what is meant by “literal” (that it is God’s unimpeded revelation concerning himself to man) is not synonymous with what we call “inerrant” (that God’s word is true and accurate in all that it affirms). Furthermore, Christians almost never mean what atheists, antitheists or skeptics often try and force “literal” to mean – that the Bible is woodenly literal, not just in affirmation of truth, but in grammar and style and should be read as we would read a technical modern scientific manual today.14This is simply beyond any reasonable method for reading any ancient literary work, let alone the Bible which is an anthology full of vastly differing genres, authors, historical contexts, and cultures. To presume that the Bible be read like a 21stcentury technical manual is beyond absurd.15While McAfee has not explicitly stated that this will be his hermeneutic, his apparent lack of any hermeneutical understanding (and my hindsight from finishing the book) affirms that this will indeed hold true in his awkward and heavy-handed treatment of Biblical passages. does not mean that Wright believes the Bible errs, but that he finds the typical formulations of such a doctrine as “inerrancy” to be troubling.

14I can think of no Christian theologian as example to the contrary – who would agree with McAfee’s wooden literalism - but leave it open since there seems to always be someone to prove the exception to every rule. 15The irony here is that while many atheists are ostensibly committed to reason, they will mock and ridicule any who say that nuance and context is needed to understand ancient literature – as if truth must only be in straight forward wooden literal, scientific prose.

Another troubling fact that will haunt the book rears its head on p.vii. Here McAfee says that he will almost exclusively use the 1611 Authorized Version – more commonly called the King James Version of the Bible. His reasons for this are really quite bizarre. In the paragraph he states that “Though it is not the earliest translation nor is it by any means the most recent [it] is the most widely accepted among Christian traditions.”16 This reveals several problems that will mislead McAfee and his readers throughout the book because of this poor choice. He is right that it is not the earliest (which should not bother us since in the case of English translations, earlier actually becomes less helpful) and that it is not the most recent. This is one of the problems – it is not recent. It does not enjoy the vast amount of textual discovery (like the Dead Sea Scrolls) or textual development (like the results of modern textual criticism) that more current translations have, and it suffers from a lack of linguistic continuity with our current English language.17While the KJV has been favored by many Christians for its poetic nature that leads to fruitful devotional reading and aesthetic delight, scholars have long shown that for a proper and robust understanding of specific Biblical passages, the KJV is often one of the least preferable translations.18 That McAfee chooses to use the KJV almost exclusively can be nothing short of ignorance or willful rejection of the versions of the Bible most trusted by scholars the world over. In either case, anyone attempting to write a book disproving Christianity and claim expertise has no excuse for such a blunder. 16 He extends this in a footnote where he says that this is also due to the lack of copyright protection on the KJV. While this may seem a promising reason, it is wholly invalid for while there are trademark protections on various modern versions, this never – and I do mean never – forbids someone from citing that version within their own publications. He makes this footnote worse by stating that the KJV has success “within the Christian canon” – it is quite strange to say that a translation of the Christian canon is itself within the canon. 17Contrast the use of “gentleman” in the King James era English (meaning “landowner”) and what a modern reader might interpret such a meaning to be (a polite man – especially in regards to his treatment of women during courtship).

McAfee then goes on to assert that if the Bible is the word of God and thus contains the infallible words of God, then it is obvious that “any imperfections can essentially disprove the book and, therefore, the religion,” (p.ix). I feel compelled to point out that this is anything but obvious. This is for several reasons. Firstly, McAfee seems to think that inspiration is a mechanistic project whereby God spoke the Bible by dictation to the authors – that it is wholly divine and not human at all. What makes comments like this so poignant is that skeptics like McAfee continually try to get Christians to see the Bible as a human document, but here seem to completely miss that creeds concerning the doctrine of inspiration often include clauses about the use of human language, themes, styles and personalities. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy states in Article VIII, “We affirm that God in His Work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared. We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.” 18 A prime example is the KJV translation of the Hebrew word‫( םאר‬re’em) as “unicorn” when in fact the viable translation of the word attested in all modern translations is more akin to “wild ox” and is directly contradicted by the fact that ‫םאר‬in Deuteronomy 33:17 is described as having “horns” (plural). This in Deuteronomy 33:17 is described as having “horns” (plural). This 8:11, as well as a handful of others that we now know are not found in the earliest and best attested manuscript sources that have been discovered following the KJV’s publication.

This is an important feature of the Bible to recognize during interpretation because often the text expresses the emotional state of the author about a given incident or reality. This is especially true when we encounter Psalms and the various songs of lament. An excellent example of this is found in Asaph’s words of Psalm 73:1213: 12 Behold,

these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in

riches. 13 All in vain have I kept my heart cleanand washed my hands in innocence.

Do we think that that we must read this English translation so literally such that we are committed to think that it means that God is somehow or in some way affirming that evil people really are always at ease and wealthy and that it is in vain that believers in God try to keep their hearts clean of sin and their hands free from violence? In passages like this we can easily see that what God is affirming is the “realness” or, possibly a better way to state it, the validity of having certain emotions as part of the human condition. Yet in one sense we also clearly know that while the emotion is a very real response, it is, in the view of the Bible, not “true.” In fact, Asaph goes on to say as much when he enters the Temple and sees the final end of those whose hands never rest from violence. The wicked are shown to not always be at ease nor will they be forever wealthy and that it is not in vain to keep our hearts pure and our hands free from violence. And yet it is expressed in the Bible. I wonder what McAfee’s black and white literalism of the Bible would do with passages such as this one. Finally, he ends the preface with another very strained summary of what “literal” must mean. He states, “we must first prove that The Bible is meant to be taken as the literal word of a flawless Lord,” (p.x), and then goes on to cite a smattering of Bible verses that talk about how the Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35), that Bible was written by men carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21) and that God will condemn those who attempt to delete from the Bible what God has spoken (Revelation 22:19). The problem is that none of these passages tell us that the Bible is meant to be taken as literal (a word McAfee has yet to even define for us) let alone give us any insights into how we are supposed to read the Bible, let alone how we should take the variety of different styles and genres of literature that comprise the Bible, or how the original authors would have intended us to interpret their writings in the first place. Surely at the forefront of any interpretation of any text is what the original author would have intended their primary audience to understand the meaning of their text to be. This is classically known as “authorial intent.”19Before we can ever come to a conclusion on whether or not a specific text is factually, historically, morally or even existentially true, we must first understand the answer to the question, “what

does this text mean?” Unless we are hopeless postmodernists, then surely the original meaning of the author should take center stage on determining what the text means20 and then evaluate if that meaning is more or less true or false. For McAfee then to run roughshod over biblical texts under the guise of a “literal” reading of passages as he does is not only irresponsible but it is entirely imprudent for someone claiming to be an scholars on these issues. 19 In Latin this kind of reading to uncover the author’s intent is called the sensus literalis and is where we even get the concept of a “literal” reading. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics states, “We affirm the necessity of interpreting the Bible according to its literal, or normal sense. The literal sense is the grammatical-historical sense, that is, the meaning which the writer expressed. Interpretation according to the literal sense will take account of all figures of speech and literary forms found in the text.”

20It is for this reason that I think so many interpretations of the prophetic literature in the Bible by some modern preachers are terribly skewed. I have a hard time seeing how an ancient Jew when talking about locusts could have Black Hawk helicopters in mind. The problem is also that if that was the

meaning of the text it would have been hopelessly unclear to the earlier reader to whom the text was intended to address in the first place.

CULTURAL CHRISTIANITY The great irony of this chapter is that it addresses the same concerns that many Christians themselves are troubled by about Western Christianity – specifically in America. This concern is that many Americans assume that Christianity is a heritage and not a belief, like being Jewish culturally but not in religious devotion. Thus we find people saying that they are “Christian” because they were raised in church – regardless of whether they believe in the orthodox creeds or anything distinctively Christian or not, or that they believe all manner of new age, pantheistic, and what has been called therapeutic moralistic deistic21beliefs. So one wonders at the onset of this chapter how a problem with one specific cultural expression of Christianity which is criticized by even Christians themselves can even hope to serve as a refutation of historic orthodox Christianity as a whole.

21 This view was first elucidated by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in their book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. This view sees God as basically a cosmic butler. God created the universe and is there to help us and wants us to be good but only intervenes when we need him to solve a problem to make us happy. Besides that God is aloof but welcomes all good people into heaven.

Nevertheless, while McAfee and I agree that there is a problem, we disagree on what kind of problem. For McAfee, the problem is not that people are being disingenuous in their beliefs about the Christian religion by claiming the Christian title as a cultural moniker rather than as a sign of repentance and faith, but rather that this is a problem of Christianity – that is, that Christianity organically breeds what he calls a kind of “genetic” belief. He writes, “religion can be something similar to genetic inheritance,”(p.2). But what he seems to assume is that this kind of cultural Christianity is what the Christian religion is, when in fact it is simply a cultural heritage of a religious traditionand quite distinct from the religious beliefs and practices themselves. So even if we accept McAfee’s critique of this religious “inheritance” then we would still be left wondering, “So what?” That has very little to do with whether or not religious beliefs in general or Christianity in particular are true or false. It is hard then to see how this critique could serve any function in an genuine attempt to “disprove” Christianity at large. However, McAfee will try to use this concept later in the chapter to argue that raising children in the church necessarily eliminates their freedom to explore other worldviews. Here one must wonder what his argument would then be for raising children inany worldview – he does not say. We can legitimately address how we raise our children to be critical thinkers but if we believe that our worldview is correct why should we teach them in order to cause them to disbelieve in it? From my personal knowledge of McAfee I can confidently say that he is a philosophical naturalist and while he may teach his children to be critical thinkers will he actually teach them all that the theistic, deistic, pantheistic, polytheistic or even distinctly existentialist and nihilistic worldviews are equally viable options when compared to his naturalistic worldview? Will hel intentionally not educate them within a

naturalistic framework? One can only wonder. Yet my skepticism will not allow me to think that he would be as approving of his children reading Augustine and Aquinas over Dawkins and Dennett. McAfee alludes (though probably unintentionally) to the distinction Christians have always made between sheep and goats on p.1. Here I found myself wondering if he knows that this is actually one of the major argument Christians use in explaining the crimes of the church done in the name of God – that is that those who commit such atrocities are most likely not Christians since they so clearly betray their own rejection of the fundamental ethics of living as a citizen in the kingdom of God and do not therefore represent Christianity at all.22Yet here he himself accepts and even positively affirms the claim that there are significant numbers of vapid Christians in name only who do not believe the Christian teachings and who fail to act very Christlike. Will he then allow it as a valid response, or at least part of a response, from Christians later on concerning the crimes of “Christians”? We will see. 22 One needs only to think of Jesus’ comment in the Sermon on the Mount in which he spoke of false believers by saying, “You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thorn bushes?” (Matthew 7:16, ESV). Literally dozens of passages could be presented that address this theme. However skeptics will often point to this as just another means by which Christians just judge each other, a kind of “Only my interpretation is true” retort. The problem with that overly assumptive view (besides that it seems to presume thatno group can be right and yet implies that all views besides theirs are in fact wrong) is that the condition that divides the groups in these passages is never doctrinal; it is always ethical. When Jesus continues his sermon that many will come to him, pleading that they did many religious activities like preaching, driving out demons and other miraculous works, what does Jesus say he will tell them? Does he tell them that they do not have their theological I’s dotted or eschatological T’s crossed? No. He says, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness,” (Matthew 7:23, ESV). Religious doctrine and activities are not the only necessary condition for someone being identifiable as a Christian. It is the following of the ethical teaching of Jesus to love the poor, the orphans, the widows, care for the down cast, feed the hungry, and clothe the homeless. To not judge, lest they be judged; to be quick to forgive, slow to anger, and live a life marked by love. It is

He then coins the term “genetics of religion,” a somewhat problematic term I think. While this term might be somewhat descriptive of the way any belief is passed from parents to children, he will actually use this as a basis for the fallacyby the same name – the genetic fallacy. It is his contention in this chapter that because many people grow up to be Christians due only to the faith of their parents and possess little to no real understanding about the nature, content or reliability of their own professed faith, that this is a rationale for the rejection of Christianity as a religion. For him, this is an argument against Christianity. He points to Christians who unreflectively grow up in a Christian home on p.3 (though I would argue that anyone who is a Christian in belief and practice and not just by heritage, generally has thought quite deeply about their beliefs), yet he seems to ignore that this same argument can be applied to any home of any worldview. It is so general that this “argument”23 actually becomes vacuous. What does he think about converts raised in a skeptical home but who come to believe in God later in life (like myself)? Would this not, by his own standard, prove Christianity to be true since he seems to think conversion from a worldview is a sign of open mindedness? Or does he only presuppose this to be true when one comes to disbelieve in religion rather than coming to repudiate naturalism (a case of flat out question begging if there ever was one)? However, beyond this, the genetic fallacy is to evaluate the truth of a belief by pointing to howor why a person came to believe something. The reason this is a fallacy should be clear. The truth or falsity of a belief is determined regardless of how one comes to hold the belief. A person in the middle ages might have come to believe fervently that the earth was a sphere orbiting a flaming ball of gas through hallucination, a dream, or through innocently believing the testimony of a person who says that they were able to flap their wings and fly to the moon and see for themselves that itwas so. Now, does this mean that the content of the belief (that the earth is a sphere that circles a flaming ball of gas) is false and disreputable simply because of howthe person came to hold that belief? Not at all. This is the problem with the genetic fallacy. It plays on our ability to see irrationality in the means by which someone came to hold a belief and then tries to

smuggle disbelief into the discourse on the truth value of the belief itself. It is a kind of bait and switch. It tries to distract you with your disregard for how this poor person came to believe in something, while it slips the content of that belief in through the side door. Thus even if all the Christians in the world are guilty of this kind of “cultural Christianity”, it would have no bearing on our evaluation of the truth or falsity of Christianity. precisely this ethical behavior that is the determining factor for separating sheep from goats. Doctrine is surely a identity marker, but it is a persons ethics that show if they are, to the core, a follower of Jesus.

23I hesitate to call it an argument. It’s more of an assertion, or a hunch even. This is one of the many of times that McAfee says that he has found this in his “research.” I found many of these claims between his two covers and yet one will be sorely disappointed if they hope McAfee will ever cite the sources of his “research” or that there would even be a bibliography at the back that would give a general list of his sources so one could even begin to fact check him. My skeptical meter goes through the ceiling with slights of hand like that. I also think my skepticism may lead to downright cynicism when I speculate what that list might even look like. I would be surprised if it was not entirely biased

and almost completely composed of other evangelical atheists with equally shallow and watery caricatures of Christianity and religion in general, as well as a handful of the worst examples of so called Christianity that one could find – a claim that effectively shields McAfee from accusations of completely hollow strawmen objections. Yet one wonders, are false or hasty generalizations somehow better?

He then goes on to say that inheriting religion is “as likely as inheriting hair or eye color” (p.4). While this is obvious hyperbole, the link is so drastically over stated even when taken as hyperbole, as to be nothing but sheer nonsense. If McAfee believes, which as an atheist I would be safe betting that he does, that genetics are determinative of all human function (even belief itself, as popularly argued by men such as Daniel Dennett, Jerry Coyne, and Sam Harris) then what recourse does he have to distinguish between Christianity and Atheism in this respect? If beliefs about God (here belief and disbelief must be equally included) are conditioned by upbringing, then that scalpel would seem to cut both ways and it would discredit atheism right along with theism. It either proves too

little, or far too much because it is not a commentary on the validity of Christianity or any belief, but on the model of parents as teachers. It is a critique of pedagogy rather than theology. McAfee also asserts that all Americans are responsible to not “simply take what they are taught from family at face value as opposed to studying, questioning, and learning about multiple religious traditions in order to make an informed decision” (p.4) and further on says that, “when a child is raised in religion it eliminates the choice in what is arguably the most important decision one can make in a lifetime…” (p.4). However, this provokes several questions. Firstly, at what point does McAfee believe children are cognitively capable of doing this? Does he not know that worldview development begins far before a child is capable of doing any of those reflective cognitive functions? And while I agree with some of his comments (with the exception that religious instruction necessarily eliminates choice), I would wonder if he would encourage children raised in atheistic homes to do the same – to consider various religions as equally viable options. From what I can tell I do not know that he would – especially considering the entirely propagandistic book he published for children called the Belief Book which so entirely misrepresents religious belief, specifically Christian belief, that I can barely refrain from calling it intentionally deceptive for children. In spite of that, we must also wonder then what are parents supposed to teach their children? What is missing in this discussion (besides that the logical extension of this commonly taken is nothing but an extreme invasion of privacy and parental rights – something on par with an Orwellian 1984 or a Huxleyan Brave New World)24is that McAfee and many the new atheists seem to think that a parent not teaching their children a Christian worldview is religiously neutral or even worldview neutral, when in fact to teach a child rational, moral, spiritual, and existential autonomy is not neutral by any means and is in effect the plain presumption of naturalism. Worldview neutrality is a myth. This does not mean a child should be discouraged from questioning, investigating, studying, etc. as listed above, but that the Christian message is precisely that we are not rationally, morally, spiritually or existentially autonomous agents but

are rather created imago dei(in the image of God) and thus derive logic, reason, morality, existence, natural law, and even our ability to question, seek answers and comprehend an intelligible universe from the fact that we are creatures created by God and all posses what John Calvin called the sensus divinitatis – a “sense of the divine.” If this then is the case we can ask, based on the second quote, whether or not children raised in McAfee’s, Dawkins’ or Dennett’s home are equally at a loss of choice. Surely none of them would wait to teach their children anything until they had the cognitive abilities to scrutinize and think critically about what their parents’ believe. Indeed, without parents giving them a presuppositional worldview framework to begin with they would be at a total loss for even how to think critically about anything in the first place. This may be an assumption, but I would venture to guess that Dennett did not tuck in his young daughter at night and encourage her to explore the truth of the world’s major religions for herself as equally probable worldviews and to critically evaluate his own worldview as well. Even if as loving fathers they likely would be supportive of whatever their child later comes to believe, I highly doubt that such a thing would be encouraged or taught as a valid option. It is a kind of “free thought” with an eye to one direction. 24 Here we do not need to look any further than Richard Dawkins’ own comments about religious parenting as child abuse. At the end of the May,

2006 article entitled “Religion’s Real Child Abuse” on his website RichardDawkins.net, Dawkins says this: “Priestly groping of child bodies is disgusting. But it may be less harmful in the long run than priestly subversion of child minds.” Really? Teaching a child to believe in God is worse than molesting a young child? I think most people see this kind of extremism for what it is. However the problem is that many atheists do not. Besides the massive problems that this kind of moral indignation will pose to Dawkins and McAfee when they later deny that morality is even real or objective to begin with (and so cannot ground their indignation), it is not a far cry from sanctioning the legal prohibition of religious parental rights. To those who think that that is too extreme even for Dawkins, one only needs to Google search his official support of petition to the Prime Minister to ban religious instruction by parents in the U.K.. The document reads: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make it illegal to indoctrinate or define children by religion before the age of

16. In order to encourage free thinking, children should not be subjected to any regular religious teaching or be allowed to be defined as belonging to a particular religious group based on the views of their parents or guardians.” Due to a firestorm of controversy that this obviously stirred, Dawkins removed his support and said that he simply did not read it. Once againmy skeptical meter shoots through the roof when I hear such obvious PR maneuvers taking place in claiming he did not read a petition that he personally signed. The New

Atheists often portray a thoroughly secular society as the pinnacle of equity and freedom yet frighteningly enough, this invasion of parental rights is not actually unthinkable in atheistic states. It has happened before. In 1927 in Soviet Russia, Lenin approved Penal Code Article 58-10, which dealt with “counter-revolutionary agitation and propaganda” which allowed parents to be sent to the Gulag for not less than six months for teaching their child the Lord’s Prayer. (Solzhenitsyn, Aleksander. Архипелаг ГУЛАГ/The Gulag Archipelago. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2002.) So one wonders how Dawkins would like to end this “child abuse.” Surely, if he has convictions to his beliefs, he would like to see child abused stopped by law. If religious education is worse than child molestation, then why would we not think that Dawkins would demand a comparably harsher legal punishment for it? Dawkins is not far from demanding criminalization for Christian or religious parenting.

McAfee also makes the claim that those children raised in Christian homes will only ever end up believing that their religion is the right one because their freedom of choice has been stifled – they are like worldview POWs in his mind. What I find so ironic about this is that most people who are “Cultural Christians” by heritage only, the group of Christians that McAfee is addressing in this chapter, are actually more often than not quite liberal in their theology – if they even have a theology at all. They are the Judeo“Christian” version of the new age movement – “all you really need is love,” pluralistic – “all roads lead to god,” or capitalistic “have it your way right away; God just wants you happy and nice.” In fact, this kind of cultural religious believer is often the type of person who is not willing to let their religious tradition inform their own autonomous beliefs, moral code, and public actions precisely because of their total lack of religious conviction and their new age pluralism in addition to an almost compulsive need to not offend anyone. Either that or they are so far to the other extreme of indoctrination that they do not even represent mainline or orthodox Christianity and their bigotry would seem to place them in the goats camp. To say that these are the ones who,

because of their childhood environment, will be hateful, ignorant, or justify violence, is actually to attach the actions of the extreme right of the spectrum to all other Christians. The cultural Christians can come from the far left liberal side of the spectrum or from the radical, extremist fundamentalism on the far right. Measuring this gradation seems to be beyond McAfee’s ability or willingness to do and so it is no wonder that he not only misses when he aims at the extremes on the left and the right, but also on the orthodox moderate middle. CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA What is so strange in this chapter is that McAfee bemoans the pervasive influence of the Christian religion on the United States, its foundations, its laws, its political appointees and many other aspects of daily life, and yet in the next sentence he praises the US as a land of immense freedoms. What he seems to miss is the obvious connection: our country is a land of freedoms precisely because of its Judeo-Christian tradition.25When the framers formulated the constitution they were not at a loss for basing rights, equality, and justice because they believed that they were “inalienable rights, endowed by our creator.” Christopher Hitchens’ has the humorous line “Mr. Jefferson, build that wall of separation up!” Yet what is so regularly missed by atheists and antitheists in their political assaults on religion is that the constitution was not, as McAfee seems to believe, to create a wholly secular state that was free from religious influence but rather that it would be a just state free of religious persecution. Those two realities are quite distinct. They seem to miss the irony of calling for laws to restrict religion in the public square by appealing to the 1stamendment that reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” (emphasis mine). It seems the 1st Amendment is a political football abused by the right and the left these days. 25 John D. Steinrucken makes this exact point that secularism must admit that it derives much of its liberal views on human rights directly from Christianity. Steinrucken, John D.

"Articles: Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity." Articles: Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity. 25 Mar. 2010. Web. 31 Dec. 2015.

From here McAfee launches into a more politically charged survey of the Church and State debates that have raged in the US from nearly the beginning. He begins with Manifest destiny – what often passes as “foreign policy” these days. While it was more brutish then, the concept seems to be the same as our political involvement in areas like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran, in the Cuban missile crisis, and our funding of Al Qaeda as freedom fighters prior to them biting the hand that fed them. This is all the same just minus (sometimes) a spiritual component – it is the nation’s “best interest” rather than its soul that is at the heart of the policy. The problem with McAfee’s point on this, like elsewhere, is that he still assumes that because Christians thought it or believed it, that Christianity must teach it and that other ideologies (such as atheism, secularism, or even democracy) are free from the same trappings. We can think of Marie-Jeanne Roland (1754-1793), the French writer and political figure, who presided over a salon and was influential in her husband's career during the early years of the French Revolution until she was arrested and executed for treason. At her execution she mounted the platform, her eyes fastened on the statue of Liberty, and exclaimed, "Oh Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name." Even something as noble as liberty can be distorted and succumb to political expediency. While there is no excuse for the treatment of the Native Americans for example, the crimes of a professing group does not invalidate the truth of a premise – that the God of the Bible exists or that humans are made in his image and have fallen in sin and need a savior which was provided in Nazareth all those years ago. Think of the crimes committed under the auspices of secularism and atheism in the 20thcentury (Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Hoxsa’s Albania, not to mention Lenin, Kruschev, Castro, Jong Il, Pol Pot, etc.) and you will find that they are actually the bloodiest in the history of humanity. Add in the crimes against humanity done in the name of science (“treatment” of metal patients, eugenics, forced sterilization, etc.) and I think any atheist should back peddle on this argument.26

If the “God is on our side” mentality is dangerous, what about the “nobody is watching” mentality? In Primo Levi's masterpiece "Survival in Auschwitz," Levi recalls that while suffering from thirst he reached out to break off an icicle outside his barrack window. When a nearby guard snatched it from him and dashed it into a muddy puddle, Levi moaned, "Warum?" - "Why?" The guard barked back in German, "Hier ist kein warum" - "Here there is no why." The greatest terror for human suffering is if the universe presents to us a blank face. The unsympathetic, uncaring, valueless universe of atheism can provide no basis for value, rights, goodness, or a justification to stand against immorality. Thus when we see evil in the world and ask of it, "why," the only answer we can ever get back from nature is, "Hier ist kein warum"... "Here, there is no why." Without God in the atheist’s universe there is no why. It is not that we just do not know why or do not understand why but that there actually can never be a “why”. As Dawkins says, 26 Here I want to point out that I do not think that pointing to the crimes of atheists or science somehow counts against atheism or science. The point is only that if atheists make the argument that the crimes of Christians in history count as evidence against Christianity as a belief system, as McAfee seems to want them to, then what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If they allow that the negative distortion of an ideology counts as evidence against the ideology in general, even in its most moderate and modest forms, then the same argument applies to atheism as well. What we find when this happens is that atheism in the 20thcentury is red in tooth and claw.

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.27 We will explore the justifications (or lack thereof) and the implications of this position and ones like it in greater depth during our discussion of McAfee’s chapter on morality. While this is not meant to address

the full scope of the moral question at this point, it should be pointed out that most people, when they know no one is watching or that they will not be caught, are much more likely to commit a crime or immoral action than otherwise. This has actually been the focus of much study on “mob mentality” – the anonymity that a crowd provides for the individual allows for multiple individuals to act violently in public, yet without much fear of individual punishment.28We can also think of the blog-o-sphere where there is an utter lack of common courtesy normally accorded to a person in a public or personal debate due to the distance and anonymity from the other individual and the complete lack of any real repercussions. 27Dawkins, Richard. "God's Utility Function," Scientific American (November, 1995), p. 85

From this point McAfee then launches into a brief (per usual) treatment of the Church’s position (as if it is monolithic to begin with) regarding two hot button issues: gay marriage and abortion. While there is nothing close to sufficient space to handle these issues adequately on their own in this present work, I do have several thoughts concerning McAfee’s treatment of them. In both cases McAfee’s comments not only drip with moral indignation (something we will see that causes him trouble later on in his own position on morality) but also that they ooze with a kind of assured truth – that is, he simply and unapologetically begs the question. Rather than actually engaging with the Christian positions on these issues29and then respond to their arguments and even respond to their possible rejoinders to McAfee’s own objections, he simply assumes that any reader will presume agreement with him that “the Christian position” is irrational and clearly on the wrong side of the issue – as if Christians were calling for the torture of infants for fun and profit. Besides the fact that this is more question begging which serves as a manner of banner waving to his fellow fundamentalistic atheist troop, it also seems to gloss over the fact that Christians have numerous positions on these issue – even between Christians who are, properly speaking, “Evangelical” and therefore take seriously the moral statements of the Bible and believe that homosexual actions are immoral and indeed sinful. The positions vary not just because of

various views on the severity of sin in general, which would be the case between say theologically liberal and theologically conservative Christians on whether homosexuality actually is a sin or not, but also because of the perceived connection and expression of one’s faith in relation to one’s civic duty, or to be more precise in classical theological terms, in the way that the kingdom of heaven is played out in the political life of the believer living in the kingdom of man. While McAfee’s concern that the more liberal Christians must jump through some massive loop holes to justify their faithand their acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle as morally acceptable (an argument many conservative Christians pose themselves), it seems to wholly miss the plethora of positions held by devoutly faithful Christians on these issues. For example Christians committed to the Bible as the inerrant word of God and as the moral rule and authority for the Christian life hold the following views on the issue of gay marriage (and this list is far from exhaustive): 28 Johnson, Norris R. "Panic at 'The Who Concert Stampede': An Empirical Assessment." Social Problems. Vol. 34, No. 4 (October 1987): 362–373; Challenger, R., Clegg, C. W., & Robinson, M. A. (2009). Understanding crowd behaviours. Multi-volume report for the UK Government's Cabinet Office. London: Cabinet Office. http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resourcelibrary/understanding-crowd-behavioursdocuments; Turner, Ralph, and Lewis M. Killian. Collective Behavior 2d ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972; 3d ed., 1987; 4th ed., 1993.

29 It should be pointed out that this is not even really a “Christian” issue. Prominent atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Jen Roth and whole groups like the Godless Pro-Lifers and Secular Pro-Life would stand shoulder to shoulder with Christians on their opposition of abortion. There have also been numerous articles by atheists making a secular case against gay marriage while many Christians (like myself) are advocates for legalizing gay marriage. So the sides are not as black and white as McAfee and others would make it.

1. That gay marriage should be banned.

2. That gay marriage and civil unions should be banned, but full and equal legal rights should be allowed.

3. That gay marriage should be banned but civil unions with full and equal legal rights should be allowed.

4. That gay marriage should be banned but civil unions with full and

equal rights should not only be allowed but also championed by Christians individually but not churches in general. 5. That gay marriage should be banned but civil unions with full and equal rights should not only be allowed but also championed by Christians individually and churches in general. 6. That gay marriage should be allowed and supported by Christians individually but not churches generally. 7.That gay marriage should be allowed and supported by Christians individually and churches generally.

8. That the church should not muddy its hands in politics and thus that Christians should take no stance on the issue. Regardless of what one believes or even if any of these options are right, this list should be enough to show that not only is McAfee’s question begging irrational (as circular reasoning always is), but his summation of “the Christian position” as some necessarily monolithic standpoint is intolerably short sided. To try and present the Christian perspective as such a sharp dichotomy (liberal or conservative) is also entirely unjustifiable. One wonders if such a misstep should be considered a mistake, an oversight, or an intentional deception – I would hope for the former, but in either case there seems to be no excuse to think oneself qualified to write book and include such an abrupt and inadequate treatment of a very complex issue. We then find that the concept of Christian “terrorism” (p.18) confirms that what McAfee is actually dealing with is not in fact Christianity (with the fundamental kingdom ethic of “turn the other cheek” embodied in Jesus himself) but rather a kind of extremism on par with that of suicide bombings or eugenics. What is being glossed over here is the overt use of guilt by association caused by the previously noted inability to differentiate between normative religious belief and extremism – a hallmark of fundamentalism. One cannot blame the sheep for what the wolves are doing in disguise. A final comment can be made to segue into our examination of the next chapter. In the close of this section McAfee writes,

We will begin debunking Christianity with a philosophical flaw found in any religion that ensures spreading by embedding acceptance requirements into doctrine. For example, if you are a Christian and believe the words of the Holy Bible, you believe that everyone who does not believe as you do will suffer eternal damnation. This is an archaic concept that many traditions utilize in order to scare people into believing. In this fashion the Bible and its adherents are using fear to convert people to Christianity. (p19-20) Several comments can be made about this section. The first is that calling something archaic may get a rise from his fellow atheistic fundamentalists who are predisposed to already agree with him, but it does not actually mean anything substantive. To call something archaic (in the pejorative sense) means that it is somehow wrongbecause it is old and “outdated.” Yet this is not necessarily the case. Should we say that mathematics, logic, philosophy, science, art, democracy, etc. are all invalid because they either have roots in the ancient past or are themselves “archaic”? Simply calling something archaic in order to disprove it does little to address the actual truth or value of the position. Furthermore, as we will see more in the next chapter, this summation of Christianity as winning converts through fearmongering is also quite a misstatement concerning the historic Christian doctrine, and practice of evangelism. The Christian belief is not that people are condemned because of their unbelief but because of their sin and their reprobate legal status before the throne of Heaven’s Judge. However, beyond this it is actually the contention of many Christians themselves (such as in the Reformed tradition to which I belong) that attempting to win converts by simple shock and awe is itself a kind of blind moralism which assumes a person is capable by their own merits and good foresight to earn their way into heaven by their belief. This heresy is known as Pelagianism and has been condemned throughout church history more than almost all Christological heresies combined. Yes, as a Christian I believe that heaven and hell should be presented as the real outcomes of the choices that we make, and thus such realities are frightening – like

being faced with the open jaws of lion without any defense – but if one confesses to believe simply in order to collect their “get out of hell free” card, this is actually not the heart and mind acceptance of the death and resurrection of Jesus on their behalf so that they could be redeemed. The concept and fear of hell may lead someone to realize their sin before a holy God and their need to repent and be forgiven, but this is nothing like the fear-mongering alluded to by McAfee no matter how much he wishes it would. MORALITY VERSUS WORSHIP My first comments for this chapter are thoroughly procedural ones. I take it to be obvious that a chapter which barely fills six small book pages (both size and length) cannot possibly do justice to a topic as immense as morality or worship – let alone both. How can this possibly be an “open minded” analysis of the issue when it is not even seemingly long enough to get simple preliminaries on the table? Prior to writing this section of my review, I am already sure that it will end up being longer than McAfee’s chapter itself. Furthermore, and somewhat alarmingly, what we will find out is that this chapter actually ends up to be nothing about morality or worship, let alone a possible contradiction between the two. The chapter is essentially more about the possibility of a just God sending “morally good” people to hell than it is about anything else. McAfee’s summation of what the “prerequisites” to be saved from sin are (p.21-22) steer extremely close to blatant worksbased righteousness and Pelagianism, both of which are far from the orthodox or historic Christian position (a common mistake among many critics of Christianity). To summarize the Christian position as work based is an error on par with saying that Libertarians love big government bureaucracies and massive entitlement programs. What McAfee still seems to miss is the Christian doctrine of salvation by sheer grace and his summations of the Christian religion and its answer to the chief problem of the human condition are just gross distortions. McAfee seems blissfully unaware of the various positions on salvation and sanctification that have arisen from within the

Christian tradition30and thus in turn falsely sees the Christian concept of morality as a simple absolutist placation of some animistic deity like we would find in Hinduism or the Greek Pantheon. That is, if the gods ain’t happy, ain’t no body happy – something we will never find knitted on God’s apron. Furthermore, McAfee writes that “those who have not heard of the teachings of Jesus will likewise be condemned” (p22-23). Or again, “If it is the case that nonbelievers are punished based solely for nonbelief, and this is the purpose for early Christian missionaries to spread the Gospel, then we can conclude that those individuals who haven’t heard or cannot understand the teachings will be likewise damned” (p.24). This kind of gloss is a manner of diversion by a half truth. Is someone condemned because of their disbelief or lack of belief, or is one condemned because of their actual judicial standing before a righteous and just God? While McAfee seems to think Christianity teaches the former, the Christian position has always been that of the latter. 30 e.g. Free-grace vs. Lordship; Pelagianism/Semi-Pelagianism vs Augustinianism; Arminian vs Calvinistic/Reformed; etc. not to mention all the work done on natural law, sanctification, and the array of topics that fall under the heading of Moral Philosophy.

While repentance and faith is the means by which one receives salvation (though one can only receive something that is being offered to them), this does not mean that the rejection of the offer is what condemns the unrepentant sinner. That would be like saying that a criminal who has been offered parole and yet refuses it is a criminal because of their rejection of freedom rather than because of their crimes. The refusal simply maintains their present location. They are a criminal because they committed a transgression of a law that they had an obligation to keep and were pronounced guilty by the authority of a rightful judge. So too in Christian theology we are guilty because of our sins against God and his law. We are not condemned because we do not believe or refuse to repent – though this may increase the transgression. In fact many theologians have

even argued that we do not believebecause we are condemned sinners, not vice versa.31 He digs this hole of inaccuracies even deeper when he says, “in order to be forgiven for any sins, you must accept that Jesus Christ is God incarnate” (p.23). This is a gross misrepresentation for several reasons. Firstly even if the content of belief that is required for salvation is that Jesus is God incarnate, it is not the act of believing that forgives our sins but rather it was the substitutionary atoning death of Jesus on the cross in our place that procures our salvation. That is, regardless of the content of belief, the impetus for salvation has always been the cross, not the confession. The confession is the means by which salvation is applied and not the fact that accomplished it in the first place. 31 I have argued in a paper called “The Noetic Affects and Effects of Sin and Grace” that sin is first and foremost a staunch insistence on our autonomy from God. It is this demand for unauthorized autonomy that drives us to sin and then to even deny that we have sinned or need a savior or even, finally, a God. So it is our sin that leads to unbelief and not, primarily, vice versa.

This is quite elementary Christian theology and one wonders how McAfee believes that he is equipped to disprove Christianity when he so clearly does not understand its most basic teachings. Secondly, it is not the case that the profession of faith is that Jesus is God incarnate (as complex as that theology even is). There have been numerous times and various places, most notably the early church of the apostles before the formalization of creeds, when believers did not necessarily or universally believe that Jesus was God incarnate, or did not mean what we would mean by that now. One does not need to have all of their theological I’s dotted or T’s crossed in order to be saved. It is quite possibly the case that many people are saved in spite of what they believe. This again is due to the fact that it is not our profession of Jesus as God or any doctrinal or creedal consent as some kind of cognitive work that saves us. It is

merely the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus that redeems us– whether or not we accept that salvation is another question.32 McAfee then moves on to the meat of the chapter (again which has nothing at all to do with the chapter title) and makes several massive assumptions when he says, “Would a just God sentence a morally good individual to hell for never having heard of him? And for that matter, would a just God expel a morally good individual to hell who has heard of Jesus but simply finds no evidentiary reasonto believe?” (p.23, emphasis mine). This makes one false assumption, one uncharitable gloss, and one presumptive oversimplification. The first of these will actually take much of the length of the review on this chapter and may in fact exceed the length of McAfee’s chapter itself. As I said, barely six pages on such a dense issue as morality seems recklessly brief. The false assumption is that people are in fact “morally good” (or whatever that even means under McAfee’s naturalism, which we will have to piece together shortly). What McAfee tip-toes around (possibly wisely due to the utter failure of most atheistic scholars to handle this topic in their popular writings) but which I will not let slide here, is the assumption of moral realism littered throughout the book. 32 Here I also recognize the extremely complex and sadly often fiery debate between Christians on Election, Reprobation, Predeterminism and Prescient Grace as well as numerous other doctrines. The ultimate cause of why or how someone comes to believe is not my concern at this point.

Let us begin by assuming that McAfee is correct in his own statement later in the book that “as humanity evolves, our morals and principles evolve with us” (p.108), which is surely the root of his moral philosophy throughout the book. What does this lead us to? Well logically this leads us to a kind of moral relativism, relative to each culture as it evolves in the same way that, according to some atheistic philosophers (and those who adore memetics) religion itself has evolved. What this yields then is a version of evolutionary moral relativism. From this we will examine several issues that this may raise in order to show that even McAfee’s rejection of a God based

on morality is itself a kind of proof for the very God that McAfee desires to disprove. Let us also, as our prime moral case, assume with McAfee that morals are relative and thus rape is only “wrong” according to the culture in which we live and then see where that logically leads us.33 33 For in order to say that rape, the action itself, is wrong and not just wrong because culture has said it is wrong, McAfee must posit a transcendental moral standard which he himself has asserted does not and indeed, cannot exist. While many attempts have been made to liberate atheism from the chilling grips of Nietzschean nihilism all of them have reduced down to social conventions that arose in our evolutionary past to either help our species survive or to maintain social order. They are simply illusory conventions that we use to maintain the fabric of a functioning society but in no way are descriptions of any real or objective moral values or duties. I see no way then that an atheist can maintain that rape is anymore “immoral” than one country

To start, I could ask, why am I obliged to follow the morals of my culture? They are not actually moral/immoral – they are merely a consensus of preference among the majority group to keep the wheels of the social contract rolling. So the action (rape) is not actually immoral as an action, it is only seemingly immoral in the eye of the beholder because if we allowed it, it would be possibly detrimental to society.34Morals now become something subjective like aesthetics – rape is not, in and of itself, immoral; it is just socially taboo – we do not prefer it – or else it is just not practical or expedient to a flourishing society (whatever that would even mean). Morals become something like preference – not obligation. I prefer chocolate ice cream over strawberry which is a real preference yet I am not obligated to eat chocolate ice cream and I in no way expect others to eat chocolate ice cream due to the fact that it is my own subjective preference. In America we drive on the right hand side of the road for the pragmatic reason that it keeps people safe and leads to more human flourishing. However we do not think that England and countries like it are wicked or immoral for deciding as a society to drive on the left hand side of the road. Yet when it comes to morals we recognize a differentkind of obligation than my obligation to driving on the proper side of the road depending on the country I

am in. I know that I am obligated not to rape, not just because I (or we) do not prefer it but also because it is a wrong action in and of itself independent of my opinions about it. I expect that all people during all times really ought not to rape. This is not just because I do not like it, but because the act is in and of itself evil. deciding that everyone should drive on the left hand side of the street instead of the right to protect its citizens.

34 Though there are many species that commonly practice rape as a means of reproduction and do just fine. Philosopher Michael Ruse has a brutally honest, though in my opinion entirely wrong, article entitled “Is Rape Wrong On Andromeda?” in which he argues that it is completely possible under different evolutionary developments that a species might come to believe that rape is a moral good and that they have a real obligation to carry it out in order to produce more offspring with the same certainty that we have in our belief that rape is wrong.

Next we can see another problem with McAfee’s moral theory by asking why the sub-culture of a majority culture is obligated to obey the moral code of the majority culture (i.e. if it is culturally/socially relative, whose culture is it relative to)? We can think of the moral outrage of the homosexual community in California even though the majority of California opposed gay marriage and voted for Prop 8 which banned gay marriage starting in 2008. So is banning gay marriage moral because the majority of people in the state think it is not beneficial to a flourishing society to allow it, or is it actually immoral and thus should be fought for as a right as McAfee seems to think? His own moral outrage about the very social consensus that he uses to base his moral theory on is very telling. What is more, is it possibly “immoral” in California because the majority of its citizens were against it but somehow “moral” in Hawaii where the majority of its citizens favored it? Well what about the subculture of a subculture? And so on. What we end up with at the bottom of any and all socially relative moral systems is a kind of “every man for himself” personally subjective morality. However if that is the case then why is Jeffrey Dahmer obligated to not kill and eat his neighbor? Why shouldn’t Hitler have killed 6 million Jews if it

was what he thought was right and had the will to power to do? And is it simply because it didn’t lead to the flourishing of society (whatever that even means)? Should we think that it should be determined by “the will of the people”in governments that are not built around Western Modern Liberal democracies? Well what if the society was a dictatorship like that of Hitler and the Nazis and what if the society that Hitler wanted to flourish was one where Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and the mentally challenged were not a part of? Who has the right to say which society or governmental organization gets its way? If one holds to subjective morality then one cannot logically say that Hitler was objectively wrong or evil – only that one does not prefer it either personally or as a social group, even that they hate it and think it is despicable – but they cannot say that Hitler actually did anything immoral or wicked or evil. Most Americans do not like ethnocentrism but if subjective morality is true then we violate our own subjective moral distaste for it by imposing our own subjective preferences on others inan act of moral imperialism. What else would the imposition of a Western sense of “human rights” upon cultures that do not share that view but aggressive imperialism? McAfee preciously decried Manifest Destiny but it seems that if he is right about the basis for morality that he is committing something just as or even more heinous. Even though no one moral system would be more right than another (because they are all illusory) McAfee wants to invade the moral landscape of others, plant his flag and claim it in the name of his western, liberal subjective moral convictions. What is more, how does McAfee hope to get away with the contradiction between supposed culturally evolved morals on the one hand, and his moral indignation about the actions of people living two thousand or more years ago in a wholly other culture with different culturally evolved morals on the other? If morality is merely an expression of the social contracts of the time, then on what basis does McAfee expect to us to look at Ancient Israel and their activities described in the Bible and call them actually evil or wrong? He has no more right to do that than we do for saying the British are wicked

for driving on the left hand side of the road or for having an affinity for woefully under seasoned food. If McAfee is right about the basis for morality (or the illusion of it), then he cannot sufficiently ground any objection to the moral behavior of modern Christians (surely a subculture that he is not a part of), let alone ancient Israel. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Next we can ask if we, as a species or a culture, have made any real moral progress. Is America more moral now than during the practice of African slavery for example? Before women could vote? Before African-Americans could vote? If Prop 8 stays overturned, is that moral progress or did a minority preference illegitimately win out contrary to the culture’s moral majority? What sense could the phrase “moral progress” even mean if morality is just a subjective or societal illusion? No moral change would or even could be morally “better” than what preceded it. It would just be morally different or preferred by more people, or, as often is the case, preferred by the cultural thought making elites – how very bourgeoisie McAfee suddenly appears. America, post the emancipation of its African slaves, is not more moral than America pre-emancipation. The social contract and view of whata flourishing society was was not morally better, just different. More people preferred it. Sure it might be numerically more equal. But for someone to say that more equality is morallybetter would either be as illusory as all moral statements, or else it would presuppose that there is something that is objectively morally better, which would itself undermine McAfee’s position. Next, I can point out that if morals are subjective then we could never really be immoral. What is the basis for saying that? Well let us assume that I say I subjectively do not prefer lying. But then I lie. Tsk. Tsk. However, did I violate my own moral code? Well in a fashion, but not really. Why? It is because I set upthe rules to my own game. If my moral code is only code that is true for me, and if I am not judged by an exterior, universal and objective moral code, then it is like me making up a card game where I make up the rules as I go. Yet why would I feel guilty when I break my own rules? That would just be silly. It is like saying “I will not like to eat chocolate ice

cream” then going through some emotional moral crisis because I let a spoonful slide while on vacation. Or worse than that, demanding that other feel guilty for liking chocolate ice cream when I do not. Morals are not personal resolutions that are self imposed, but real obligations that are imposed upon us from a moral law giver exterior to ourselves – as individuals and as a species at large. We actually know that the subjectivist view of morality is wrong when we see kings or dictators trying to live above the law of which they are the arbiter of. In monarchies and dictatorships the ruler literally is the basis of law. Their will is sovereign. But if there is no morally obligatory standard beyond their sovereign will then they can be as “immoral” as they choose because what is the most that their citizens can say? “We collectively don’t prefer that.” Moreover, if McAfee and the naturalists are correct then we can wind up in blatantly paradoxical situations. Think of the cannibal culture who thinks it is right to kill and eat someone despite the fervent protestation of victim who is to be their lunch. In that case it would be a near moral imperative for the majority tribe to cannibalize the one man since that would lead to numerous fat and happy tribesmen, and the victim would no longer be around to even feel or object any longer. Or we could think of the theoretical pre-modern rapist culture whose women all refuse to have sex with the men. Regardless of how we in modern western America may feel about rape, in that culture the men, if the society is to survive, must all rape the women. Is the ongoing mass rape of an entire tribe of women morally obligatory even though the women protest as do possibly the men, but who do it in order to survive? Is the “moral” value of such an action determined by what leads to the flourishing of the society, whatever that even means? Now to be fair a common objection posed to moral objectivity is that of the paradoxes of apparent moral dilemmas. Moral dilemmas are hypothetical situations where no clear “good” outcome seems possible. A common example would be that of the concentration camp inmate. In this paradox imagine that you are an inmate in a concentration camp. A sadistic guard is about to hang your son who

tried to escape and wants you to pull the chair from underneath him. He says that if you do not comply he will not only kill your son but some other innocent inmate as well. You have no doubt that he means what he says. What should you do? There is no morally good option. No matter what choice you make, you will have blood on your hands. Another common example is that of the sadistic bomber. In this case you are a police officer who has captured a notorious bomber. However upon his capture you discover that he has placed several bombs in highly populated areas. The problem is that you do not know their locations and he will not freely confess their locations. Do you torture the bomber in order to save the lives of countless innocent civilians?35 One last example is the famous Train Dilemma. In this moral dilemma you happen upon a stretch of train tracks on which your only son is tied to. A speeding train is barreling down the tracks and unless you pull the lever next to you that will switch the tracks your son will certainly die. However if you pull the lever then the train will derail killing dozens of passengers on board. Do you pull the lever? However, now we can ask if these dilemmas are really an objection to objective moral values or duties? I do not think so and we can see this by asking, why are they dilemmas? It is not because no moral obligation exists but rather because we recognize two objective moral duties exist! Think of another dilemma of the crying baby in the attic. In this dilemma there are several Jewish families hiding in a German attic trying to evade the Nazi SS patrols. In this attic there is a crying baby that is inconsolable and who might reveal the families’ location if it is not silenced. Should the families smother the baby and thus save the majority of the people in the attic or should they let the baby cry and almost certainly lead to capture and likely death of a whole group? Again, the problem is not that there is no objective moral values or duties. The problem is that we recognize two extremely important moral duties and cannot choose one without violating the other. However if morality is just social convention, then

these moral questions are answered by subjective preferences and we should have no more moral angst about choosing the life of one or the lives of many than we do when we are in the grocery store isle choosing chocolate or strawberry ice cream. Sure we might really like both flavors, but we will just choose which one seems better to us at the time. 35 This dilemma came to the forefront of public discussion during the torture debates of the Iraq War. Was it ethical to perform some kinds of torture on terrorist prisoners such as water boarding, sleep deprivation or humiliation if it would save the lives of countless American troops or American and Iraqi civilians?

As if we have not shown enough problems with McAfee’s position, we could also point out that in the end we lose the ability to impose any real justice. “Legislating morality” becomes a totally vacuous and nonsensical term. Why do we ban murder? Perjury? Rape? Theft? Why do we outlaw them if there is no objective moral code? Is it just because it makes for a more functional society? This again begs the question of whatkind of society we want. Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Hoxsa, Mao and others could have said that their vision of society was of a certain kind that would almost demand the brutal treatment of hundreds of millions of people in order to achieve it. In fact this is often the very reason that they did give. It was for the “greater good.” Not only that, but we also lose any concept of civil or human rights. “Human rights” is only possible on the basis that it is as the term says they are – rights of all humans, regardless of race, ethnicity, politics, creed, culture, or time. So think of our moral outrage and objection to human rights violations worldwide. We say that the genocidal actions against the Tutsis in Rwanda at the hands of the Hutus was an absolute violation against the Tutsis not because of some socially evolved factor in Rwanda, but because of what human persons objectively are – real and inalienable rights bearing creatures with intrinsic value, regardless of how any culture, society, or government wants to view them. It is because of this that the Holocaust was a massive violation of human rights because the Jews are rights bearing persons who have a fundamental right to life.

We do not look at lions and call it murder when they eat the gazelles – we call it killing. We do not call it ageism or prejudice when they go for the sick and the old – we call it predatory instinct. We do not call it theft when one gull takes a fish from the mouth of another gull – we call it survival. And on and on and on. Why? Because these animals are not rights bearing creatures. We may feel sad or pity when we anthropomorphically project humanity upon them (think of the term “the humane treatment of animals”) but we do not call the police and report abuse or a crime when the shark eats the seal or even when the praying mantis eats the head of her mate within the same species. Yet if we are just another branch on an evolutionary tree without the interceding special act of God that casts us in his image, then what gives humans certain “inalienable rights” but not other species? If you say “because we have evolved the mental capacity to think so” (or something of that nature) then you are merely pointing out why we think we have these rights but implicitly denying that we actually do posses those rights. It would be like if I believed I was King of America. Well no matter how sincerely I believed it, it just would not be so. Just because we may have evolved to think that we have real rights does not mean that we actually have real inalienable rights. There goes all substantive moral indignation about murder, rape, slavery, eugenics, medical experimentation, capital punishment, cruel and unusual punishment, genocide, concentration camps, racial profiling, privacy laws, etc. or any meaningful moral exhortations to honesty, bravery, love, equal rights of the gay community, women, and minorities etc. This illusory moral outcome of naturalism is actually quite ironic since many atheists, McAfee included, assert that Christians believe in God simply as wish fulfillment for a life after death. The irony is that here they make morals nothing but illusory wishes – we wish people were good so we will make up fictional moral obligation. And that is the extreme irony of all of this. Atheistic morality expressly admits that morality is not objective or real and yet they act as if it is. But what is a larger act of wish fulfillment? The person who mistakenly believes that something is true but is in the end turns out to be wrong, or the person who knows and admits that it is wrong but

chooses to act as if it is real and true? The former might be wrong, but the latter is just self-deluded and admittedly so! This is one of the reasons I take it with a grain of salt when anti-theists try to say that Christians are deluded for believing that God exists. Even if we are wrong (which I do not think we are) at least we believe what we think is true with sincere conviction. We do not choose to believe what we know is false. We believe it is really and actually objectively true. Antitheists will often adamantly deny that they are people of “faith” and use the old Mark Twain quote about faith in order to mock religious belief. Twain said, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Yet in this case who does Twain’s quote apply to more? Surely it is the naturalist who chooses to act as if morals are real and objective even though they “know that it ain’t so.” What’s more, if subjective morality was true we would not be able to make any meaningful moral comparisons. Mother Theresa’s charity to the poor36was her moral preference in the same way that Hitler’s killing of 6 million Jews was his moral preference in order to promote a pure race. If morality is not objective then we cannot say that one is more moral than another because not only is there no transcendent standard by which to measure them, but also because we cannot impose our subjective morality upon others without admitting that it is just sheer imperialistic will to power. Something is only “more” or “less” moral if there is a terminus – a standard by which both can be measured and compared. C.S. Lewis gave the now famous example of a train approaching a station. A train is only nearer or further than another train from the station if there actually is a station and that station is, well, stationary. In the interest of full disclosure, the common objection to what has been said thus far is often an appeal to a kind of golden rule or an appeal to the moral authority of the culture. Yet this merely tries to fix the wind in the air so to speak - what Daniel Dennett would call a “skyhook” - for what does it even mean to say that morals are real because they are relative to culture? So some people will say “well it is immoral to rape because it harms another person” – a kind of “it’s nice to be nice” brand of ethics. To this we must then ask if it is

actually wrong to harm another person for all people and all places and all times or if that is subjective also. It just moves the goal posts back 10 feet. It is immoral to rape because it harms another person and harming another person is wrong. Okay, but is it actually immoral to hurt someone? Am I obligated to not harm others? If it is obligatory then morals are not subjective and we then need to provide a basis for the new moral “thou shalt not harm others” that is being used to base our other “relative” moral codes. In order for that criticism to even make sense, it actually must presuppose that certain things really are objectively moral (namely that it is actually immoral to hurt another person). The problem is that if that is true then the naturalistic position is false. It basically must presuppose that morals are objective in order to say that morals are not objective. But if it is subjectively immoral to hurt someone then it is not an objective basis for other morals and it turns out that we are not obligated to follow it. Thus we could then ask “why shouldn’t I harm another person” to which it is often responded, “because it is wrong,” thus completing a viciously circular argument. If McAfee and the other anti-theists are right, then morality turns out to be subjective because there are objective morals that make other morals subjective. Oh what a difference 360 degrees makes. 36 Christopher Hitchens has written a book called The Missionary Position in which he viciously criticizes Mother Theresa as more wicked than we would think. On this point I am not trying to defend her actions with respect to birth control in impoverished countries or the societal outcomes of banning contraception in countries struggling under the pandemic of the AIDS virus. However, surely even the most ardent anti-theist can see the goodness of devoting one’s life to advocating for the most poor and oppressed people – giving them food, shelter, medical care and advocacy on the global stage all to the total lack of regard for one’s own material comfort or success.

If they still wish to continue defending the dead horse, they might say that we obey the social morals because otherwise the society will take action against us. That is, we act “morally” because otherwise the larger social construct will mete out negative consequences, be it poor reputation, financial loss, or incarceration. However if someone like Jeffrey Dahmer did not care what society thought and was not

worried about prison, then was he not actually more free by kicking off the imaginary shackles of society? And are we the ones letting ourselves be blindly caged up in a self-imposed prison of illusory rules meant to keep us all in conformity? Lemmings stepping to the same whispering beat? The problem, as we just saw, is that the arguments given to support subjectively evolved morals often assume the very objective morals that they are seeking to deny. The objections to the kind of evolved moral thesis that McAfee is proposing, or more accurately presupposing, in order to object to Christianity, could literally go on much longer. This is actually only ashort list of the dilemmas that could be launched against McAfee’s position. I only stop here because I think we have seen that if morals are not an objective standard exterior to all humanity and to which we are obliged to uphold then morals are only “real” in the sense that my preference for chocolate ice cream is real. As I said, this was only a brief list of the massive problems with naturalistic subjective concepts of morality which all ultimately lead to moral nihilism and brutish will to power brands of moral imperialism. It turns out that McAfee’s position leads to the conclusion that morals simply are not obligatory but preferential and utterly illusory. Yet if this is the case, from whence does McAfee’s moral indignation expressed throughout the entire book come from? And the question goes further - why would we want to object to objective morals? In fact it seems that no one rejects objective morals unless they are acutely aware that they are engaging with a position that uses morals to prove, or at least to infer, the existence of God. I doubt that if McAfee were mugged that he would say to the mugger “well I don’t prefer what you are doing.” He would say, if he could muster the courage to do so, “Stop! It’s wrong!” Or if we see a rapist get out of jail too early or get acquitted in the first place, we know a real travesty of justice has actually occurred. This man was wicked and his acts deserve punishment no matter what culture or time he is from! The Nazi elites who escaped judgment at Nuremberg really deserved justice. It is only from the ivory tower in low cost discussions where nothing is at stake that skeptics feel

brave enough to loft their skeptical epithets that “morals aren’t objective.” Try telling a rape victim “I’m sorry you feel violated but that’s all it is - a subjective feeling. The rape wasn’t actually wrong, you just didn’t prefer it but the guy sure did. Don’t be so judgmental.” We know how absurd that is because we absolutely know that rape – the act itself, not just some person’s or group’s subjective perception of it – is actually, objectively, absolutely, really wrong for all people, at all times, in all places, no matter what Ruse or McAfee would say. What many atheistic objections also show is that the atheists presenting them are unaware of the difference between moral codes, moral duties, moral epistemology and moral ontology. That is, the difference between saying that there exists real and objective moral values (moral ontology), how we come to know what those moral values are (moral epistemology), what our duty would be with respect to those values (moral duties) and what would constitute the content of such a moral code (moral codes or applied ethics). Most often people will point to the differing moral codes of cultures and peoples, even between different Christians and say “See! Morals are relative.” By performing such a maneuver, they have actually side stepped the issue. The problem with such naturalistic views of morality is that they skip past what morality is and how we can be morally obligated to act, and zoom in on the specific difference in moral content. It would be like saying that because we evolved the ability to perceive the natural world, that what we perceive is a product of the evolution of our species. Yet that would just be silly. So why do we assume that even if our moral sense evolved with our species, that the morals perceived through that sense are simply a byproduct of that evolution? In addition to this, such critics are often just flat out wrong. While the content may differ in application, it rarely differs in what the basic moral actually is. For example, think of the moral “we ought to honor the dead.” Well in one culture they might keep this moral by burning the body on a pyre, others by burying it, others by cooking and consuming it (which may be abhorrent to us) but all are trying to

apply the ethic of “we ought to honor the dead.” If fact C.S. Lewis points out that if one were to actually study the moral codes of all cultures and people and places you will find universal consent to honesty, love, almsgiving, courage, solidarity and the same denouncement of lying, hate, murder, adultery, etc. They may differ on where to draw the line or how to express it, but we very rarely find one culture that says “murder is great!” What we do find is that they vary on where to draw the line between justified killing and murder. Yet again, why should we assume that just because they differ they are all equally valid? Is it not possible that some are just flat out wrong in the same way many cultures on wrong on their other descriptions of reality? Is it not possible that the Nazis were wrong in saying killing the Jews was a justified killing and that the Allies were right in saying that it was mass murder? Is that not analogous to the fact that some cultures have been wrong in saying that the Earth was a disk when in fact we know it is a globe? This then points us to the fact that there is a moral standard and the challenge is to try and get as close as possible to that objective standard. What this also shows us is that a possible basis for such a moral code cannot be found in any naturalistic scheme or culture. In fact, the only moral theories that have been able to base our real moral faculties are those of various theistic worldviews that base morality within the immutable nature of God himself. Why is rape, in and of itself, always wrong? Because it will always be a violation of the image of God in which humans are created, and is an act of intentional autonomous defiance against the immutable nature of God on which that image is grounded. To this concept many skeptics will object that humans were obviously capable of moral evaluations long before the composition of the Bible, and that many people can be moral without any belief in God or the Bible. What this objection obviously misses however, as stated previously, is that the Christian position is not that morality is based on the Bible (though they may argue that the best summation of much of the content of an adequately accurate moral code is found therein) or on a personal belief in God or the Bible, but rather

they are rooted and grounded in the immutable nature of God and implanted in every human since every human is created imago dei regardless of one’s subjective worldview. It is no surprise tothe Christian when an atheist is ethical. They are simply acting in accordance with the moral law implanted within them because they are image bearers. What should surprise us, if the antitheists are correct, is that humans are moral at all. We are surprised when an ape shows generosity or sympathy because we do not generally consider animals to be moral creatures. Yet if humans are just a more highly evolved primate, then why should we expect that humans have real moral obligations at all? So after all of that, I ask McAfee, is rape actually wrong? Or do we just not prefer it? The answer to that question would be most telling. This treatment of morality (and even this was quite brief and elementary in comparison to the length that a full treatment of morality could have been) should be enough to show that McAfee was wholly unaware, or possibly just uninterested in actually evaluating any real and robust Christian position, or of subjecting his own worldview to scrutiny rather than just presuming it to be wholesale and unassailably true. He seems to think that treating it as if the case has been closed and no defense could be made to the contrary is the most rational position to maintain. Yet he commits a common error for his book – only engaging with the most vapid, shallow and often strawman versions of his opponents’ position while assuming the absolute unassailable truth of his own position. This is simply not how real scholarship is done. Now with that said, we can finally move on to the uncharitable gloss. To summarize the brute force of the gloss we can ask the question, “Would a just God really (fill in the blank).” As noted above, we can sense the real moral indignation oozing from this question – but this is a point in favor of God since, as we have seen above, morality is only possible as a derivative of the immutable holy and righteous nature of God. And since no human, save the incarnate Christ, has been able to keep conformity and obedience to the universal moral

law implanted in us or the revealed will of God given in Scripture and thus no human is righteous then yes, a just God could and would execute justice on all crimes against the very nature of God.37This is easy enough to understand actually. We all like justice. In fact, the demands of justice are actually a wedge anti-theists frequently attempt to use against God elsewhere and are at the root of even this objection by McAfee. The question could be restated as, “Is it actually just for God to condemn unrighteous individuals?” We have engrained in our moral nature a desire for justice to be done. We groan when a rapist is set free or a long hunted mass murder dies peacefully in their sleep before being captured. We want, no we demand, justice to be done except when it comes to God and our own eternal destinies. We find a multitude of ways to escape it – one of which is the objection here. To avoid justice we downplay the nature and severity of sin, or we deny that sin exists by denying the moral law exists (even if we explicitly assert it elsewhere). We do not like that God executes retributive justice and so to avoid the gavel hammering for us we deny that it hammers at all.38 37 For a longer treatment on the actual noetic affects of and effects of sin and grace, one can find my article on it found at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34412031/Directed-Study-TheNoetic-Affectsand-Effects-of-Sin-and-Grace. One could also listen to the episode of my podcast entitled “Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do What Is Just?” for more on God’s justice.

McAfee then continues on by saying, “This is because, according to Christian dogma, it is impossible to be “moral” without Jesus Christ; I disagree with this on a fundamental level” (p.23). This comment actually reveals more about McAfee’s misunderstanding of theism in general and Christian theism in particular and what theologians and apologists have long argued. The reason for this is that most Christian theologians and apologists would stand with McAfee and disagree with that position on a fundamental level. There is, in “Christian dogma” (again as if it is monolithic) a distinction between moral behavior and righteousness. Just because we are sinful people who stand under the right judgment of a just God does not mean that we cannot act in accordance with objective morality. In

Matthew 5 Jesus says, “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matthew 5:45b-47). Notice that while the distinction is made between the evil and the good, the just and the unjust, Jesus also shows that tax collectors and Gentiles are fully capable of genuinely loving people. They are not wicked through and through. In fact Christian theology teaches that even Christians are simil justus et peccator, that is, simultaneously justified and sinful. While we have been redeemed by Christ and stand in a justified position before God in Christ, it does not mean that we are free from acting sinfully or immorally. Paul describes this inner struggle in Romans: 38 What is even more ironic, and we will discuss this later in the section dealing with McAfee’s objection to the Old Testament activities of God, is that antitheists often want to have their cake and to eat it too. On the one hand they say that God is immoral, brutish and wicked in the Old Testament in commanding the domination of the Canaanites – an extremely violent and immoral people from what we know from history. Yet on the other hand they say that the free offer of the gospel is absurd because it would possibly allow for the death bed salvation of truly wicked people like Hitler and Dahmer. They say that God should not allow such men to enter into heaven because they are so evil. The problem is then obvious. They want to say that God is evil for carrying out justice against the Canaanites (even though he was patient and waited over 400 years, allowed the Canaanites to relocate and even offered them amnesty) but then demand that God carry out swift and unrelenting justice against people they think are wicked like Hitler, and that if he offers them grace along with the rest of us, that God is being unjust. So they want God to be just except where it is inconvenient for their assaults on theism. 14 For

we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do

what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (Romans 7:14-25, ESV) This is not the “holier than thou” kind of conception of Christianity that so many people have. Paul, surely a pillar of the Christian faith if there ever was one, is telling us that even though his intention is to keep the perfect law of God, he is conflicted. His sinful nature, even after seeing the resurrected Jesus, even after minister for decades and suffering persecution and trials for being a Christian, even as an apostle, recognizes that he has no ability in himself to be righteous before God. His natural urges and desires continue to pull at him to sin and he seems to admit to succumbing to it more than he would like. Yet would we think that Paul is saying that he is either completely moral or completely immoral? Not at all. This failure by McAfee and others to rightly understand the distinction between righteousness and justification on the one hand with moral action or goodness on the other lies at the root of many of his misconceptions. We humans, Christian or not, are a mixed bag when it comes to our moral activity. The difference between the two is the difference between an exonerated criminal and a condemned one. Both are criminals. One has just been set free in the eyes of the law. Finally the presumptive oversimplification is that all nonbelievers reject God simply because of the lack of evidence. We in fact know that belief is often more about the will and the core worldview of a person than on evidence – and yes I fully know what this means for

the Christian perspective – but I think this means all worldviews are on a level playing field, at least to begin with. We know smokers can intellectually know that smoking definitively causes lung cancer and yet still smoke. Did they have no evidence? No, they are either too selfish, too self-deluded, may not trust the evidence, or may just not care – all of which lead to disbelief in practice. Because of our own worldview and psychological constitution, we often filter evidence and read it with skewed evaluations. This occurs for all of us – mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. But to reduce atheism to a bland intellectual exercise, free of presuppositions and wholly objective when it comes to their disbelief in God seems altogether too simplistic to the universal realities of belief forming faculties within the human mind. Occasionally we get a few honest comments from Atheists about the emotional content of their disbelief (though less within the advent of the evangelical New Atheism and its kissing cousin anti-theistic fundamentalism). William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) was known principally for his skeptical poem, Invictus. As a youngster, Henley contracted tuberculosis and had to have one foot amputated. He suffered much across the years and became quite bitter yet defiant. His disbelief however was emotional,not intellectual. He wrote: In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced or cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody, but unbowed. The late Isaac Asimov once wrote: “ Emotionally I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”39In one of his books, Aldus Huxley acknowledged that he had reasons for “not wanting the world to have a meaning.” He contended that the “philosophy of meaningless” was liberating. He confessed that the morality of theism interfered “with our sexual freedom”.40So to free his sexual desires, he knew he must first become free of God. These comments help to reveal that disbelief is no more exclusively intellectual than belief is.

A common question that is asked often reveals a lack of knowledge about how Christianity specifically answers the question of how a holy, just, and yet omnibenevolent God can coincide with condemnation. The questions is, “How far would a ‘merciful’ Christian God go in punishing non-believers?” Well according to the Bible, the Christian God would personally go as far as Calvary! A merciful God would go so far as to take the very place and punishment of the sinners. The cross, the central concept in Christianity’s answer to the question of sin and evil, is utterly lacking in McAfee’s discourse on this issue. It is extremely strange that he would omit Christianity’s central answer to these issues for millennia when the subject of his book is Christianity. He is either so uninformed on what Christianity is that he does not know how Christianity has historically addressed these issues, or willfully wants to keep them hidden from his readers. Caveat lector. 39 Asimov, Isaac (1982), “Interview with Isaac Asimov on Science and the Bible,” Paul Kurtz, interviewer, Free Inquiry, pp. 6-10, Spring.

40Huxley, Aldous (1966), “Confessions of a Professed Atheist,” Report: Perspectives on the News, Vol. 3, June. p19.

He then asserts that the Bible makes no mention of children in the afterlife (which is actually downright wrong and reveals not only a lack of Biblical knowledge but also a lack of research into Biblical passages like 2 Sam. 12:23 or the Calvinistic doctrine of Election.) Following this, he says that, “it is easy to conclude that, logically, children who die when they are too young to know Christ’s word may not have a place in eternal communion with God” (p.24). Sure it may be “easy” but it is not correct. In fact that it is easy to say what he has should have tipped him off to the fact that a religion which has been around for millennia and has captured the hearts of more than its fair share of brilliant minds might just have something more to say about this than he is letting on. What he seems to intent to miss is that it is just as easy to say that children (or in other contexts, people with mental defects) are elected by God and granted salvation in the same way that believers are prior to being regenerated to faith. A simple understanding of theordo salutis (order of salvation) would

reveal that belief/faith are not what actually achieves salvation but are simply the means by which salvation is accepted by a regenerate and fully developed mind. This presumes the ability of the person to comprehend and believe. What is left unanswered by McAfee is why must this be a necessary condition for people without such a cognitive ability. The Bible is nearly silent on the subject of the salvation of people without such a cognitive ability (although I think that Romans 2 makes a pretty strong case that people are only judged according to the information that they are capable of perceiving and as such persons with mental defects, to the degree that they cannot reasonably be expected to understand the basic message of the gospel, could easily be saved by the simple electing and sovereign grace of God). McAfee then states that the Christian conception of salvation due to faith (which is quite different from the orthodox Christian perspective of salvation by grace, accepted by faith)41 leads to a system where “a murderer can be forgiven and sent to heaven, whereas a loving and caring skeptic would be cast into damnation” (p.19). This comment of extreme moralism makes several massive oversights. To begin with, and as stated before, is that depicting people as pure innocents regardless of their sins before a holy God is a kind of strawman, where assumptions are injected or facts are removed in order to posit the opponents position as something weaker than it actually is. In this case McAfee injects the assumption that people, regardless of their standing with God, are morally pure and innocent of any deed worthy of God’s judgment and thus removes the facts of the holy and just nature of a righteous God and our failure to maintain our duty to obey him and act in accordance with righteousness. The atheist does not need to believe that any of this is true but if they are going to offer a critique of Christianity, they must do so with a complete version of it and not by cherry picking features that help them while ignoring ones that do not. Beyond this, McAfee also seems to miss that the skeptic and the unbeliever, just as easily as the murderer, can be forgiven. It is not

as if skepticism is the “unforgiveable sin” that no matter how much the unbeliever bangs on the gates of heaven wanting to get in will be told that there is no room for him at the Pearly Gates Inn. The difference between the forgiven murder and the condemned skeptic is not some inverse view of the severity of their sin. Rather the difference is that one repented and one did not – one has humbly accepted God, the other still pridefully rejects God and maintains their own autonomy.42 Why does the murderer who repents and accepts Jesus go to heaven and the unrepentant skeptic go to hell? It is not because unbelief (or disbelief) is a more grievous sin than murder, but it is precisely because one repents and one does not. This is not a question of comparable moral standing but of forensic justification – one is declared innocent and the other remains guilty. Or as put before, one criminal accepts the offered freedom, one does not. One chooses to accept his freedom and leave his cell, the other refuses to exit the open door that would let him out because he denies that he is a criminal in a cell to begin with. 41 We can see this clearly expressed by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians: “8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9, ESV)

We can see examples of this in our everyday relationships. Imagine two couples. In both couples the men have broken the trust of women (for this we must imagine that the women are willing to offer forgiveness regardless of the severity of the transgression because of their great love – no matter how true to life this may be). In the first case the man had cheated but was truly repentant and genuinely asked for the forgiveness that his wife was offering and in response to that forgiveness redefined his priorities and attitudes and strove to live as a faithful husband from there on out. Their marriage could then be restored. In the other couple, the other husband merely lied to his wife about what he did with some money that they had tucked away (presumably this is bad but not as bad as adultery). This husband however was prideful, unremorseful, and actually totally determined to not only not repent, but even to deny that he had done anything wrong. Their marriage remained broken. How can it be

healed if one of the participants refuses to even admit there is a problem? In the first case, the husband now stands forgiven and the relationship can be restored. In the second the husband is not and the relationship will only become more strained and the couple more estranged. While the severity of each of their sins is obviously disproportionate, it is actually their attitudes and ability to take responsibility for their actions and to accept the grace being offered to them that determines the outcome. So the situation created by the Christian conception is one where both the murder and the skeptic are guilty of sin and deserving of God’s righteous judgment, and both are equally able to be saved.43It is precisely because the skeptic is an unrepentant sinner who refuses to accept their sin and therefore cannot accept God’s forgiveness for that sin which distinguishes between the two. 42Here I am also not going to explore the Reformed doctrine of Unconditional Election that also undergirds this issue.

The real tragedy in this chapter however is the non sequitur that concludes it. The entire chapter had been focused on the perceived conflict between a loving God and a God who damns “innocent” people to hell, but at the end McAfee surprisingly states, Not only do I believe that it is possible to maintain moral standards without the crutch of religion, but I would argue that it is the only way to achieve true goodness. Free from the constraints of organized religion, a human being is able to express true decency from ones self—as opposed to attempting to appease whatever higher power he or she may believe in. By separating worship and morality, we can act in accordance with our own human morals and be able to be less selfish in our motivations for kindness and moral behaviors,” (p.25-26). 43 Though here it should also be added that the skeptic is not only guilty of unbelief but, along with every other human, a whole host of sinful actions and attitudes expressed in a lifetime of rebellion against God.

What is so strange about this is that no basis has been given in the preceding context for a viable basis for moral realism, moral obligation, or transferable moral content from a non-theistic worldview. In fact as we have seen in this book McAfee has consistently argued against objective moral values and duties and undermined every one of his moralistic proclamations. So this statement is completely drawn from a hat – it hangs from Dennett’s skyhook in the clouds. It is literally incoherent on McAfee’s own worldview. Not only that, but whereas McAfee argues elsewhere in the book “… our morals and principles evolve from us” (p.78, which I addressed above) in this context he seems to assume that thereis such a thing as “moral behaviors” but without defining or basing such concepts – they are simple and ungrounded assumptions actually borrowed from a Christian worldview in which they are able to be based as we saw above. As the Christian theologian Cornelius Van Til used to say, McAfee is attempting to sit on God’s lap in order to slap God’s face. MAINSTREAM THEORIES OF DISPROVAL As I have noted about the previous chapter, the title of this chapter itself seems strange. I am not sure why any of the content of this chapter would be called “mainstream” since nothing about it is actually mainstream, whatever McAfee even means by that term. In fact, many of the arguments are quite subpar to what would normally be advocated for by even your garden variety academic atheist, but seem to be common faire among the rising trend of atheistic fundamentalism and the so called New Atheists.44If this is what counts for mainstream, then it is mainstream in the same sense that holocaust deniers are mainstream historians. 44 One of the most pervasive criticisms of even Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion, and which could rightly be said of McAfee’s book, is that it was so superficial as to make one wonder why he thought he had enough research done to write a whole book on the subject. In the London Review of Books vol.28, no.20, Terry Eagleton wrote a masterful

review of The God Delusion entitled “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching.” In the review he writes this scathing but entirely accurate remark: “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have

Beyond this procedural critique, there are several challenges that McAfee raises as subheadings within this chapter. I will cover them briefly, as my desire is to spend the majority of the remainder of this review on the final three chapters which finally arrive at the Biblical text itself and then move into the appendices that are new to the second edition. This current chapter deals more with what we could call philosophical, or theological, or even possibly theoretical dilemmas posed as objections to the consistency of Christian theism as a theological or philosophical system or worldview. The Natural Disaster Argument – In the introduction to this problem, McAfee again reveals his lack of research in stating several things. First is that he introduces it by prefacing it with the classic argument about evil by Epicurius45 – but the introduction of this is only by way of preface to the actual problem McAfee wants to get to since Epicurius’ argument is an argument about evil in general while McAfee’s argument is about natural evil in specific. While they may be related, they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, identical. a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Cardcarrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least wellequipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster… There are always topics on which otherwise scrupulous minds will cave in with scarcely a struggle to the grossest prejudice. For a lot of academic psychologists, it is Jacques Lacan; for Oxbridge philosophers it is Heidegger; for former citizens of the Soviet bloc it is the writings of Marx; for militant rationalists it is

religion… Dawkins, it appears, has sometimes been told by theologians that he sets up straw men only to bowl them over, a charge he rebuts in this book; but if The God Delusion is anything to go by, they are absolutely right. As far as theology goes, Dawkins has an enormous amount in common with Ian Paisley and American TV evangelists. Both parties agree pretty much on what religion is; it’s just that Dawkins rejects it while Oral Roberts and his unctuous tribe grow fat on it.”

Secondly, as John Feinberg aptly points out in his work on the subject entitled The Many Faces of Evil: Theological Systems and the Problem of Evil, there actually is no “the problem of evil” but rather as many problems of evil as there are theological and philosophical systems and thus as many proposed solutions to the problems of evil as well. Furthermore, problems of evil can be even further divided into the logical, the evidental and religious (or existential) problems of evil and even these can be refined to the pure logical, moral, or unattached problems of evil. To be quite blunt, McAfee’s clear lack of understanding about centuries of discussion both within and without Christianity makes his statements more autobiographical about his own ignorance than anything else. Finally, because of his lack of understanding about even the most basic factors within the centuries of scholarship and discussion on this highly complex and robust topic concerning the various problems of evil (and thus the various answers given) McAfee makes the common mistake of positing the most elementary form as if it has never been responded to. It is as if this simplistic argument is to be seen as some new revelation, some wonderful manna given as a gift from the gods of skepticism through McAfee’s inspiration. I am sure this will come up again at another point, but suffice it to say now that the Epicurean objection has been so thoroughly answered that not many philosophers (if any) still maintain this protest, even the atheistic ones. This is due to the fact that it has been proven to quite literally be a strawman in that it only challenges a lesser notion of God – something that is not surprising since Epicurius wrote during the late 4thto early 3rdcentury BCE and was probably engaging with a very pagan conception of gods and would have likely been wholly unaware of the Biblical notion of God. Epicurius would have been

even more in the dark to the notions of God’s attributes that were developed as Christian’s engaged in specifically philosophical and systematic theological reflection upon them that we have access to today. So when the concepts of omniscience, holiness, and/or justice are inserted (only omniscience is really needed for the task) then the question does not become if God could allow evil and suffering, but if an omniscient God could possibly have sufficient reasons for allowing the evil and suffering that he does. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga has shown that proving the contrary is logically impossible (to prove the universal negation that such a being could never have sufficient reason would require one to be an omniscient being) and therefore it has been completely proven that there is no logical contradiction between the God of the Bible and the evil in the world. We will see how this plays out in the discussion below. 45 As restated by David Hume, “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”

So let us now hash out how the problem is posed by McAfee. He here summarizes the Epicurean objection, but develops the problem to apply not just to moral evil in general, but to natural evil (like the death toll caused by Hurricane Katrina for example), and how such natural evil cannot be reconciled with the concept of an all good, all powerful God – even possibly a God who is the cause of such natural disasters. While many may not find this answer to be of great comfort, since McAfee posited this as a logical dilemma and not as an existential one (what Feinberg calls the religious problem of evil), I will assume it to be sufficient to respond to it precisely as the logical dilemma of natural evil since that is the argument McAfee himself makes. This version of the problem of evil is actually quite easily resolved as stated above. McAfee states, “If a just, merciful, omnipotent God existed and loved all mankind, it is difficult to fathom why such a loving Creator would not only allow these disasters to occur and kill innocent nonbelievers and believers alike, but actually cause them,” (p.28). Firstly just

because something is “difficult to fathom” would never be accepted by McAfee himself as a reason to reject anything outside of religion. Quantum Mechanics, Plank Time, Relativity, Quarks, Higgs Bosons, and String Theory are “hard to fathom.” Does our trouble in understanding something count against it being true? Not in the slightest. In addition to this, it is naïve to the extreme to cast God as the “cause” of disasters. While the concepts of sovereignty and freedom are hard concepts to understand, there have been centuries of literature on how God could work through means and allow, even predetermine certain events to pass without causing those events to pass. To try and portray the Biblical teaching on sovereignty as God causing natural disasters is specious at best. To go further, if we merely inject into the argument the notion of an omniscient God, that God might know certain factors and outcomes that we do not have access to which would make allowing some disaster to occur morally justifiable, then McAfee can no longer say “a loving and omnipotent God would not do…” Now McAfee must prove that such a God who also is omniscient cannot have sufficient reasons for allowing such disasters. This objection then slides from an impossible to prove speculation, to an impossible to maintain contradiction. For now McAfee must state a universal negation about what an omniscient being would do given its omniscience, and this is something that would require McAfee to posses the very attribute he says that no being can have – omniscience! Thus no sooner is the problem stated as it dissolves into absurdity. McAfee then tries his hand at forming a logical syllogism when he summarizes the argument as follows: 1. We have established that the religion of Christianity presupposes an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent God and Creator. 2. If a Creator knew all, saw all, controlled all, and loved all, said Creator would not allow innocent men, women, and children

(especially those who are too young to have sinned) to die by natural disasters or disease. 3. Because we know that innocent men, women, and infants, Christians and non-Christians alike, do indeed die by acts of God on a daily basis, we know that an all-loving and allpowerful God must not exist. 4. Therefore, Christianity, which proposes the idea of such a Creator, must not be an accurate representation of true events. (p.29) Is this a logically valid argument (does the conclusion follow logically from the premises)? And is it a logically sound argument (is the conclusion true and logically follow from true premises)? I am tempted to spend the time to show why the logic is not valid to begin with, that is, that the argument is actually a non sequitor, but the rub lies in the fact that at least one of the premisesis demonstrably false so we will focus on that instead. Let us even grant premise 1 even though I actually think that all worldviews presuppose the existence of God in order to provide an adequate basis for laws of logic by which they even evaluate other worldviews. The problem then begins in the premise 2. How does McAfee know that such a Creator would not allow innocent men, women, and children no matter their age, to die by natural disasters or disease? My first gut reaction is to point out the very strange position of an atheist who does not believe in God in the first place asserting what that God would and would not do. It would be like me saying what the Queen of England would do even though I do not know the first thing about her personal character. However, beyond this all that McAfee has done is to commit himself to sheer assertion. He has no evidence for that claim and I see no way that he could prove it to be true. In fact, as I have stated above, if God actually isomniscient then he would surely know more of the factors involved in every moment of creation and might very well have access to information that we simply do not have that could give him morally sufficient reasons to allow said disasters to occur. Further, we have a mountain of analogous scenarios for this even in our finite sphere as

humans. How many times have we felt indignant about the outcome of some event and then upon discovering more information found out that the event really made much more sense? When we judge the President’s actions do we think that we would do anything different if we had all the information that he had? It is unlikely or at best, unclear. How much more so would an omniscient being have access to more information than we would that would possibly make allowing certain disasters morally permissible? How do we know that if God permitted the alternative outcome that it would not result in even worse disasters? What is important about this response is that the Christian does not need to show what that information or morally sufficient reasons must be that would causeGod to allow disasters to occur. They must only show that it is possible for God to have such morally sufficient reasons to defeat premise 2 that a being like God definitely would not allow such events to occur. It is possible, given morally sufficient reasons unknown to us at the time, that God would allow suffering to occur.46 Another problem with premise 2 was discussed in the last chapter and that is that McAfee assumes that all people who die, or at least some people who die in natural disasters are “innocent.” Rather than rehashing the previous discussions about the sinfulness of humanity, I would like to offer a novel response to this critique. That is that this critique is actually a strawman objection. A strawman is a logically fallacy where a person sets up a caricature, weaker, or substantively lesser version of their opponents position in order to more easily knock it down. The reason that this is a strawman objection is that it only objects to a lesser concept of the Biblical God than what Christians believe in order to reject to it. In order to object to a position, you must object to the position as it is held by its proponents. The concept of God and man that is held by Biblical Christians is that God is holy and righteous and just as well as omniscient and that humanity en masse is not innocent and deserves judgment for our individual sins, such that it is even by the general grace of God that we still exist at any moment. The Bible

teaches that God allows the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. If McAfee is willing to allow a God that is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent but ignores the other side of the coin about the holiness of God in contrast to the fallen nature of humanity, then he is dealing with a lesser conception of the relationship of God and man than what Christians actually believe in. That is, by definition, a strawman. In order for McAfee to show that the Christian conceptionof God and man is false (as he concludes in premise 4), he must engage with what the actual Christian conception is. Premise 2 is an obvious avoidance of that very thing. Thus his argument is not only invalid in its construct and unsound due to a fallacious premise, it also commits a strawman fallacy. McAfee may think that this objection is a haymaker but it really is just grasping at straws. 46 Tim Keller has a very helpful lecture entitled “How Can a Good God Allow Suffering?” in which he shows that our inability to perceive or know all the reasons God has for allowing something to come to pass is at the heart of the book of Job.

The True Love Argument

This argument states that there is a contradiction in the notion of heaven and the reality of true love. It is true love that is the proposed wedge that will break up Christianity and its doctrine of heaven. It basically states that the belief in true love, that one could not be happy without the other person, runs contrary to the doctrine of heaven in many cases. We can think of a husband and wife who are blissfully in love but where one is a Christian and one is not. If heaven is the everlasting life lived in pure happiness then how can the spouse in heaven be truly happy while their partner is languishing in hell?

One of the many problems with this objection, as we will see, is again the fact that it is riddled with unchecked, uncritical, and unfounded assumptions not only about what the Bible and Christianity teach about God, people, love, and heaven, but also about what true love is or should be. McAfee again seems to nowhere assume that there may even be flaws in his own presuppositions nor does he interact with the numerous possible

objections that could be made by Christians – such as what would make a person truly happy in heaven though McAfee, I assume, has never been there.

To be honest, I know that the response that I give will, I admit, fall on deaf ears. Since McAfee is objecting to internal “inconsistencies”, in order to refute them, I actually do not need to prove Christianity true on these points, only that it is not logically inconsistent in the way that McAfee says that it is. While some of us may not like the answer given, it still makes this objection provably false as a disproof for some supposed internal contradiction within Christianity. Even if McAfee and others may not like what Christianity teaches he still cannot say that his distaste for it is the same as it being logically inconsistent.

Firstly, the Bible does not teach what even most modern Christians seem to think that it does – that humans will live for eternity “in heaven” or that in heaven we will be 100% happy or live in some euphoric ecstatic state for all of eternity. In fact the Bible teaches that heaven is only an intermediate stage between now and the resurrection and after the resurrection God will redeem not only humanity but also all of creation itself, such that humanity will live on a redeemed Earth in the way that Adam and Eve were meant to from the beginning. It does not say that we will be euphoric but rather that we will live at peace in the presence of God with complete sinless innocence and shalom.

To go further, I think a demonstration that R.C. Sproul used to give in his graduate classes will be helpful in our understanding regarding this point. He would select one student to play Jesus, another student to represent Hitler, and then a third student to represent the Apostle Paul.47He would then ask, “Where on this continuum between Hitler and Jesus, do we put the Apostle Paul?” The students would often put Paul closer to Jesus than Hitler, but they are in fact incorrect. He is closer, infinitely closer in fact, to Hitler. Even Paul, by his own admission, says that his best, most righteous works are like filthy menstrual rags (Phil. 3:8

– something he learned from Isa. 64:6). Paul called himself the “chief” of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15) and an apostle as one “untimely born,” (1 Cor. 15:8). Sproul would then point out that there is in fact a

chasm that is impossible to bridge from our end between both Hitler and Paul at one end and Jesus on the other. The gulf between the two banks is so immense that the separation between Hitler and Paul is negligible at best when compared to their distance from the holiness of God. What does this mean? Well it might sound extremely harsh48 but the point is well put by John Gerstner’s own comment to Sproul during his graduate days under Sproul’s instruction - that we will be able to look at our own loved ones in hell and rejoice in the real justice of God. Does this mean we will be glad for the fact that people are in eternal separation from us and God? Absolutely not. The Bible teaches that human sin grieves God himself (Eph. 4:30), so why should we think that believers will not also grieve the sinfulness and condemnation of their loved ones? But it does mean that we will no longer look on our fellow sinful people as if they are “morally innocent” and undeserving of God’s right justice. We will see God’s actions as just and right. Basically the true love objection can be responded to in the same way that Jesus did – who will you love more? When McAfee says that the husband can only be truly happy if his wife were to join him in heaven, he misses that his assumption is oblivious to the fact that a person in heaven is truly happy because they are in the presence of a perfect, holy, and glorious God and not because of who else is or is not there. Again, one might not like the answer, but the point is that the objection no longer reveals a necessary internal contradiction.49 47Here it is important to note that Sproul believes that Paul was, apart from Jesus, likely the most holy man to have ever walked the earth.

48Which I think most atheists should actually appreciate since a common apologetic for atheism is that it is, if anything else, brutally honest about the harshness of life in a meaningless universe. Should they not also appreciate the backbone that it takes to say the brutally honest truth about the fact that when we are with God we will understand just how unrighteous humanity actually is, even those who were most dear to us? Does this make me happy? Absolutely not. In fact it is for this very reason that Christians what to share the gospel with others.

The Jesus on the Cross Argument –

This, like many of the others, is not actually a new objection. The basic summation of this question is another one, “Who killed Jesus?”

In other words, if all actions are predetermined by God, and thus Judas was predetermined to betray Jesus, if the Jewish leaders could not do anything but call for Jesus’ death, and if the Roman authorities could not have done anything but hand him over to the executioners, and if the centurions could only do what was predetermined for them to do when they tortured and crucified Jesus, then in what possible sense can we ever say that they are guilty of any immoral action? Michael Shermer in a debate with Dinesh D’Souza has actually said that it might make more sense to build a statue in Jerusalem in honor of Judas since without him, Jesus would never have been betrayed and killed and thus die for our sins. So should we actually thank Judas rather than pity him?

Due to the fact that this objection is essentially asking the question concerning the relationship between predestination and free will in general, and Divine sovereignty and Human responsibility in particular, to adequately answer this objection I would need more space and time than I have already committed to writing this increasingly lengthy review or that you would probably consign to reading it. So rather than giving a concrete answer (since doing so would be quite lengthy indeed) let me give two brief procedural thoughtson why such an objection, as formed by McAfee, is entirely inadequate.50

First I would like to point out that this is not merely a problem for Christianity. This is actually a problem for all worldviews but McAfee has attempted to skate in through the backdoor of this already convoluted problem and apply it to Christianity as if this were only a problem for the Christian. Yet when we think of the work done by philosophers, ethicists, and scientists on something like philosophical, biological or chemical predestination,51 in which some materialists say that our emotions, thoughts, wills, etc. are all necessarily determined from the direction taken by the very first chemical reaction that ever occurred in the universe, we can see that applying this as if it is a problem just for Christians may be a immeasurably overstated. So let us be aware that this objection may ask you to swallow a gnat but you really must choke down a camel.

Second, because of the nature of any discussion about sovereignty and free-will will be highly complex (there are more than a handful of

different conceptions of both predestination, divine sovereignty and human free-will, let alone how they interact with each other) I am inclined to think that any objection so simply stated and so flatly assumed, will be guaranteed to err in some manner simply by its reductionism and over simplification. To show that McAfee’s objection is entirely inadequate, we can just think of the differences between views of Arminianism, Calvinism, Hyper-Calvinism, Moderate Calvinism, Molinism Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, and others on predestination; not to mention their various views on Libertarian free-will, Soft-Compatibalistic free will, Hard Compatibalistic-free will, fideism, and everything in between. Can McAfee actually think that absolutely no possible answer has been given to the tension between sovereignty and freewill – or at least that such a simplistic single question could function as a disproof? Again, this can only be due to an utter lack of research or understanding or, most likely, both. 49 It should also be pointed out that there is even quite a bit of controversy over if people will even know spouses, children, siblings, parents, etc. in heaven or on the new earth such that this may not even be a real problem for Christian theology to begin with.

50Since my comments will be procedural rather than specific, here are some resources that one might want to read for more in depth answers. D. Basinger and R. Basinger (eds.) Predestination and Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom. (1985). John Feinberg, The Many Faces of Evil. (2004). Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will. (1525). Jonathan Edwards, (1754). Norman Geisler, Chosen by Free. (2001). R.C. Sproul, Chosen by God. (1994). Thomas Flint, Divine Providence: A Molinist Account. (2006). Bruce Ware, God’s Greater Glory. (2004). Stanley Gundry (ed.) Divine Providence.(2011).

51I am thinking specifically of preeminent biophysicist Dean H. Kenyon’s book Biochemical Predestination (1969) which he co-authored with Gay Steinman (before Kenyon changed his mind by reading an A.E. Wright book entitled The Creation of Life: A Cybernetic Approach to Evolution (1981), which was way ahead of the game on information theory in microbiology, and Kenyon subsequently became a proponent of Intelligent Design) or of C. De Duve in this 1995 book Vital Dust; or even Eric T. Olson’s book The Human Animal: Personal Identity without Psychology (1999). This has also been endorsed in recent years by Sam Harris in his book Free Will (2012) and in numerous articles put out by biologist Jerry Coyne.

The Origin of the Universe Argument

This was one of the sections of the book where one marvels at how someone could so easily, and on such a fundamental level, misunderstand and misrepresent an opponent’s view, and yet feel competent to write a refutation of it. Here McAfee engages with what has come to be called the Cosmological argument.52 To illustrate the objection, he imagines a conversation between two people – a Christian and a Nonbeliever. However there are four major problems with this mock dialogue as presented by McAfee.

The first glitch is that there is no explanation after the dialogue that would explain why McAfee believes that he has successfully handled the Cosmological Argument. While in his mind he may think that he has thrown the mantle down and the problem with the Christian position in the dialogue is obvious, nothing is actually developed. It amounts to just bald assertion. He simply (or rather, simplistically) places words, and very poorly thought out words at that, that come nowhere close to how any theologian or apologist would ever argue for God as the best explanation for the beginning of the universe, and then leaves it at that. It would be as if I imagined a mock dialogue between a Christian and an atheist where the atheist was a bumbling, angry, almost comically inept character and hoped that just that dialogue would pass muster as a reasonable critique of atheism, or worse, as a reason to accept Christian theism.

Second, the Christian position is totally misstated and misrepresented. Here McAfee has the Christian saying, “Everything has to come from something” to which he then has the Nonbeliever eventually ask, “Where did God come from?” From here he imagines the Christian response that God did not come from anything and therefore opening the door to allowing the atheist to say that the universe then did not need to come from anything either. We will see in our next two comments why that digression is also problematic, but let us first look at the misstatement of the Christian position. No version of the cosmological argument states that all things must have a cause (i.e. that everything must come from something), but rather that all effects (also commonly called contingent entities or entities that come into being) must have causes. This is a drastically different position than the one McAfee wants his readers to think that

theists adopt. Thus we can say that since we know that the universe came into being at the Big Bang, that the universe must have a cause where as if God existed eternally then he would not be contingent and thus would require no such cause.

The third problem that McAfee stumbles over is his irrational mock question, “where did God come from?” This is basically the child’s question, “who made God?” And yet philosophers and theologians have long recognized that this is a child’s question for a reason – it is childish. What the question fails to understand, since it failed to adequately understand the Christian argument (and is actually a strawman of a lesser concept of a god than the real Christian conception of God, where that being would be the result of another more grand cause – thus trying to disprove by God by redefinition) is that it makes the mistake of still thinking thatall things must have causes. Again, when we realize that only contingent or emergent entities need causes, and since God is by definition eternal, then to ask what caused God is like asking what shape are square-circles, what color numerical sets are, or what the name of a marriedbachelor is. It becomes a nonsense question since God, who by definition is an eternal and necessary being, would require no cause. However this is not the case for our contingent universe.

The final problem is that McAfee thinks that positing an eternal universe will relieve the problem for him. To start off with, the fact is that this is a widely discredited position. We know that the Steady State Theory of an eternal universe has been demonstrably disproven by the work of Albert Einstein, Georges Lemaître, Fred Hoyle, Stephen Hawking, and thousands of other physicists and cosmologists and that its disproof has been reconfirmed many times afterward. Yet besides being manifestly false, positing an eternal universe also misses the point that even if other theories of the emergence of the universe were proven to be true,53they would only push the problem back one step. They would still be, though possibly infinite in number, individually finite in matter, time, and space. They would not be able to escape the clutches of infinite regress, the problem of why there is something rather than nothing, why there are contingent objects, etc. Not to mention that hypothesizing more natural causes does nothing to alleviate the problems posed by the

arguments of fine tuning, information, laws, minds, persons, thoughts, etc. within this universe. It would be like saying that cars arose by natural means without any intelligent source because some factory was fully automated. To which we could then ask, “Well if the cars were made by the factory, who designed the factory?” This is not only the problem of infinite regress, but also that the presence of information, fine-tuning, purpose, and design demand an intelligent cause. To say that the natural universe does not need to account for these facts by pointing to another natural universe equally incapable of explaining the emergence of such facts, and to do as ad infinitum, is like putting a bottomless bucket inside a bottomless bucket and expecting it to magically hold water. With this argument, McAfee ends up with empty buckets and wet feet. 52 What is also missing from this chapter is that there is not just one argument about the origins of the universe. There are numerous versions of the Cosmological Argument, the Argument from Contingency, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, the Argument from Design, the Argument from FineTuning, the Argument from Information, and The Transcendental Argument in relationship to uniform laws of nature, laws of logic, and the existence of immaterial entities, minds, persons, and morality. All of these successfully ask the question “Where did X come from?”

The Age of the Earth Contradiction-

This again is an objection so under researched in its understanding and so hastily written in its execution, that my comments will be a kind of procedural refutation. Not only is calling it a “contradiction” misleading (since the Bible does not say something like “the Earth was created in six days and it was not created in six days”), but McAfee objects to Christianity by objecting to one kind of Christianity – the so called “Young Earth Creationists.” Here he summarizes the position (to a modicum of accuracy though with not much clarity or charity in the sense that even the weakest defendant of this position would be able to defend against his slightly skewed and over literalized objections) but never really takes in to account any rejoinder that a Christian who holds this position might say in response, or what a Christian who does not hold to this view would say in response. In fact, his reading of Scripture makes one wonder

if he has ever actually read any Christian scholars or exegetical and theological commentaries on these passages, or if he has only read the atheistic blog-o-sphere criticisms of this view since his treatment of it is so glaringly reductionistic. It is becoming more likely that he has not – in which case we should ask, why write a book on such a profound topic when one is not willing to put in the proper effort to research it? Nevertheless, by way of response let me simply say one comment, and then one expansion of that comment. 53 I am here thinking of things like String Theory, Membrane Theory (M Theory), and the Multiverse theory. What is interesting about these theories is that precisely because these other strings of energy or universes would exist exterior to our own, the physical laws of our own universe would absolutely prohibit our ability to discover them. Dinesh D’Souza has pointed out that irony of the anti-theist who, in an attempt to escape one eternal God, must, on the back of zero physical evidence (their own absolute standard) resort to positing by faith the existence of an infinite number of unknowable, improvable transuniversal universes! Occam anyone?

What McAfee seems to miss (like he does in so many other places) is that Christian beliefs on some things are not necessarily monolithic. There are some beliefs that one must believe in order to be called a Christian.54No matter how much some groups call themselves “Christian” the fact that they deny such basic fundamentals requires that they may be similar but not really Christian.55 However there are many other issues where Christians have disagreed with each other down throughout the ages. One of these is the age of the universe and the meaning of the early chapters of Genesis. Because of McAfee’s inability (or refusal) to notice distinctives,56he makes a major blunder in making loaded statements like the following: “If the Bible is to be considered… the literal word of God, and all of its statements truthful, then this should mean that scientific evidence would support such claims” (p.35-36, emphasis is his), i.e. that the Earth was created in 6 days less than 10,000 years ago. What this fails to understand is that the meaning of the term “literal,” as used by Christians, very rarely means the kind of wooden technical literalism that McAfee means but rather means that it is “literally true” in what it affirms. It is then our duty to

determine what it affirms and that meaning may involve symbolic, literary, theological, polemical, idiomatic, and stylized language. This passage is a prime example of the multiplicity of ways in which the creation passage can be taken. There are several lexicographical senses that ‫( םוֹי‬yom), the Hebrew word for “day”, can take. It can mean a day immediately followed by another day, or it can mean a day followed by an indefinite period of time before the next day occurs (so the time span between the 24 hour days could have been millions of years). It can itself mean an indefinite period of time such as its use in 2:4: “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven” (NASB) where the first six “days” are all called one “day” – this is in the same way that we use the word when we say expressions like “my day in court” to refer to a long court battle. In this case “day” itself may mean nothing like a literal 24 hour day, but can still be literally true since such a conception of a day-age is a perfectly acceptable rendering of ‫םוֹי‬. In fact while some Christians battle very heavily to show that Genesis 1 is proof for a scientific reality, others who take the text just as seriously, interpret it not as a scientific text but poetic, or literary, or even as pure theological prose so that what is being said are statements meant to reveal realities not about the universe, but about God (such as Creator, Orderer, Sustainer, Diversifier, Establisher, etc.) and that it should not be read as a scientific text.57 Even others say that this passage, and others like it, are examples of Polemical theology – a kind of contextualization for the heathen culture in which the Jews found themselves when it was written.58So where as many cultures saw deities in the sun, moon, stars, rain, harvest, animals, even humans themselves, the point of Genesis 1 was not to give us “just so” stories to explain normative functions of the world, but rather inhabited ANE thought and literary forms in order to 54This would be the content of basic Christian orthodoxy as spelled out in the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Creed of Chalcedon.

55Here we can think of the Christian cults of Mormanism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Science, etc. This does not divide between denominations or between Roman, Protestant or Eastern traditions since they all hold to basic orthodoxy – what Lewis called Mere

Christianity. 56He does this on this point, but also several times he seems unable to see that while Mormons of Jehovah’s Witnesses may claim to be Christian, they in fact deny the orthodox fundamentals of the creeds listed above. This is not some desire for in group/out group dichotomies but rather simply the way it is – we can think of McAfee’s response to someone wanting to call them self an atheist even though they believe in God, angels, demons, and reject naturalism. They simply do not meet the criteria of the definition of atheism to rightly be called an atheist no matter how sincerely they believe they are one. 57 For a thorough presentation of this position I recommend several works by John Walton. His book The World of Genesis One is helpful here. For those more interested in listening to a lecture than reading a book, I cannot recommend for adamantly his lecture entitled “Reading Genesis With Ancient Eyes” which can be found on youtube.com. Meredith Klines masterful work Kingdom Prologue (2006 reprint) is excellent on the literary structure of the text.

58For a lengthy treatment on this I recommend John Currid’s lecture series at Reformed Theological Seminary entitled “Crass Plagiarism?” available on ItunesU or his book Against the Gods (2013).

militate against those positions by showing that God is not in those entities but rather created all the universe. The sun is shown to not be a god to be worshipped but as a simple natural entity created by the one true God and thus to worship anything within the universe was shown to be nothing short of idolatrous. Thus what we find are Christians, all of whom take the text very seriously and indeed “literally” (since they say that it is literally true in what it seeks to affirm but not all would say that it affirms Young Earth Creationism), who hold positions such as Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, Day-Age Creationism, Theistic Evolution, Polemic Interpretations and Framework Interpretations to name a few. For McAfee to address a singular position as if it were a problem writ large for all of Christianity and a direct rebuttal of the Bible, and even a very narrow take on that singular position at that, is nothing short of irresponsible and academically inexcusable. The Modern Miracle Argument-

This next objection is, in some of its statements, actually just an expansion of the problem of evil raised at the beginning ofthe

chapter. Why doesn’t God do miracles today? Why doesn’t he heal diseases or heal amputees? Since I believe I have answered this objection (“why would God allow pain and suffering?”) I will answer the part of this objection that is brought up for the first time here. That is, why does God not do miracles today? Well, the possible answer is three-fold.

First is the common sense theological answer that miracles where not common place in Biblical times either. In fact what we see in the Bible was that miracles clustered around important events in redemptive history. The Bible may give the impression that miracles were common place because they are frequent in Biblical narratives but what this myopic view misses is that the Bible tells relatively few of the events from those time periods. In fact, it only seems to tell the ones that most clearly show God working.59Think of it like a biography of Abraham Lincoln. Does the fact that one book mentions the acts of Abraham Lincoln mean that most of what happened during his lifetime around the world all involved him? Not at all. In fact it tells a very narrow sliver of all of the occurrences or nonoccurrences of that time and only describes the ones that are important to the narrative at hand. The author would be selective of relevant events, even from among events that involved Lincoln. The same is true of the Bible which spans not one lifetime, but thousands of years from cover to cover. So we may get the impression that the Biblical authors thought that miracles were common place, but in fact they wrote about them precisely because they were not common place and were thus unusual and awe-inspiring even to them.

Furthermore, we commonly see, even in the pages of the Bible, that those involved typically doubted and had a hard time even believing that a miracle had just occurred. This is why the common presentation of ancient people as “back woods goat herders” who saw everything through religious eyes is just historically inaccurate. The resurrection, for example, was an amazing event to the Biblical authors precisely because they thought it was a one of a kind, unusual, and unexplainable event.

We also notice that God performed groups of miracles bunched around singular events – often the expansion of revelation, or when a covenant was being renewed or reaffirmed, or when a person or

message was being confirmed and approved by God. Thus we find them primarily at creation, the covenant with Abraham, the setting apart of Israel, the giving of the Law, the preservation of the covenant with Israel during mass sin, the validation of the prophets, the ministry of Jesus (including his birth and death/resurrection), and the authentication of the Apostles as the foundation for the church. In fact a concept common in Christian theology throughout history is the concept of the age of miracles. We can see this in that it was one factors that the early church laid down as a determining element in which books were canonical. The ruled that if a text was writtenduring an age of miracles where God supernaturally confirmed the message and ministry of the Biblical writers then it could be considered for canonization. Those books that were written outside such an age of miracles were rejected as candidates. So if this view of miracles as confirmations of new works of God is correct and the canon has been closed, and that the next event in redemptive history is the return of Christ at the end of the world, then we should not expect to see large scale or frequent, obvious miracles. The next problem with this objection is that McAfee’s question assumes that there are no miracles that occur today. While I have not had this discussion with the him, my hunch would be that he would reject any testimony concerning modern miracles or afterdeath experiences as delusion, wish fulfillment, etc. So what the argument really says is something like, “there are no modern miracles and any evidence for a miracle must be rejected because miracles cannot happen therefore the evidence must be false. Therefore miracles do not occur today.” Basically, it presumesthe truth of naturalism and the non-existence of miracles and then demands that the only evidence that it will allow as possible evidence for miracles, is evidence that also assumes the truth of naturalism.60That is, unless the evidence adheres with naturalism (thus implicitly rejects supernaturalism) it will not even be considered. Therefore we can never actually prove a miracle because the evidence is never admissible in the court of skepticism. It feigns at being “objective” but stridently refuses to allow any evidence that would contradict it. It assumes the impossibility of

miracles and then sets the standard so that all contrary evidence is disallowed before even being allowed to be presented.

Finally there is the presumption that God would do a certain kind of miracle just to prove to people his existence – as if God were a kind of dancing monkey or cosmic butler there just to prove to us that he exists at every human whim. While this may not prove much to McAfee, we can ask what level of hubris it must take for the created being who has dedicated his life to disproving God to demand that the God of the universe prove himself tothem! To say, as a finite person, what an infinite, omniscient being should do in order to appease our own fulsome desires is the pinnacle of prideful autonomy. Is it any wonder that God does not bow the knee to such mutinous demands? 59 The most obvious exception to this is the book of Esther where God is not mentioned once. This absolute lack of the divine in the book is however a screaming silence – pointing to God’s providence even when God was not directly acting; something analogous to the present answer about miracles in modern times.

Disproving the Concept of an Infallible God

McAfee claims that this final objection is “a relatively simple concept regarding the ability of God to make mistakes” (p.40). The import of this objection is that in the Bible we are told that God is perfect and infallible, but then also find passages that seem to suggest that God repents, changes his mind, and feels jealousy. McAfee claims that if God were infallible, then so too would his creation be infallible – “not only spiritually but physically,” (p.41). There are two things that are clear from this objection. The first is that McAfee has zero understanding of anthropological language in reference to God; that is, we must, by necessity, talk about God in human terms. In fact, for millennia theologians have recognized that since God is transcendent all language about God must be analogical. Thus the passages used by McAfee to try and show that God can change his mind, show remorse, repent, etc. can be easily explained by understanding that these are merely human ways of describing the actions of God. There are further more complicated explanations that go into things like illocutionary language and speech-acts,61 but

space is here is too limited to explore them now.

The second is that he seems to make the illogical conjecture that a perfect being would necessarily create a physically perfect world. As we have seen previously, this is simply not actually a necessary corollary. This again demands that an omniscient God could not have sufficient reason for creating a universe just as we find it. We could show this by simply asking, “Why can’t a perfect God have created, for sufficient reasons, a world chalk full of imperfections?” In fact, some Christians have, in regards to sin, said an imperfect world is actually a better candidate for what philosophers call the “best possible world” in that its function may be to drive our consciences to an understanding of our need for God, and that the ability to sin or perform evil is a necessary aspect of our having free will, true love, and to preserve what makes us human and not robots or angels. It would also reveal more to us about the nature of God. How would God reveal that he is just if there was no need for justice? How would he show that he was merciful if there was no need for mercy? How would he show that he is gracious or sacrificially loving? Thus by extension we could even say that it is not only possible for God to have created an imperfect world for these and other similar reasons, but also likely that this is exactly the kind of world that an omnimax being would create if one exists. What McAfee’s objection amounts to is not a problem within Christianity, but actually for McAfee’s own atheistic fundamentalism that forces him to demand contradictions where none exist. 60 This is largely the same problem that Hume suffers from in his book On Miracles. For a great treatment of this, see John Earman’s book Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (2000). You can also see my article “A Hume Divided Cannot Stand, http://freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-hume-divided-cannotstand.html.

61I recommend the work of John R. Searle or John L. Austin on these linguistic studies and philosophy of language or John Currid and others in its application to Biblical interpretation. Richard Pratt also has an excellent series available on iTunes U called “Lectures of Prophecy” where he addresses this very issue in regard to conditional covenants and promises and why God may repent/relent given certain changes in the actions of the people involved.

CONTRADICTIONS IN SCRIPTURE AND IN PRACTICE We have now finally reached the portion of the book where McAfee begins to address actual Biblical passages and what a journey it has been. However what we have discovered along the way should not be jettisoned when we begin down this next corridor of the book for one simple reason. We have already established several things about McAfee’s interaction with Biblical content, Christian hermeneutics, and theological interpretation – that they are wholly uninformed, hopelessly reductionistic, deceptively misrepresentative (though my hunch is that this is more out of ignorance than intentional spite), and entirely too shallow to be even begin to be considered adequate by any rational reader. So we should continue reading his book with the warning - Caveat Lector. One major problem that we will find added to this going forward is not only the removal (or flat out ignorance) of centuries of various nuanced and robust treatments of the problems posed in the book thus far, but also, and I will point this out as we go, that while McAfee has shown himself to be disinterested in the Bible from its theological and literary context in history and in the church, he now will remove the Bible from any contexts at all. The passages that McAfee will cite are never handled with considerations or even comments concerning their literary, grammatical, theological, sociological, cultural, historical, polemical, or illocutionary contexts in mind. Verses become free floating proof texts without any context and treated as if they were written two to three minutes ago in the next room rather than two to three thousand years ago halfway around the world to a completely foreign audience. This age does not make them wrong, invalid or even antiquated (in the polemical sense), but it does mean that they were written in a certain and very specific context that informs what the original authorial intent might have been – both human and divine. Yet not once do we ever see McAfee site a scholar or a commentary (critical or otherwise), engage in exegesis or even crack a lexicon to see what the original language may have involved and how it might influence the translation of the text into English or our interpretation of it.

As with the previous chapters, the title of this chapter is also problematic. Often what McAfee is going for in the arguments that follow are more like factual errors rather than contradictions and almost nothing is said about any kind of contradiction “in practice,” whatever that would even mean when we are looking at ancient texts. So let us now briefly explore this first chapter concerning Biblical passages and McAfee’s list of suggested “contradictions.” Jesus Falsely Predicts His Own Return

Jesus Falsely Predicts His Own Return

34 and Revelation 1:7-862to demonstrate that Jesus may have predicted his return, but that he fully believed it to be within one generation of the prediction.63In fact, what is surprising, and this can only be attributed to the fact that he has done an abysmally shallow level of research, if any, is that McAfee seems to think that because various Christians throughout history have made false predictions concerning the return of Jesus that this is somehow a problem for the Biblical text when in fact this precise objection is one made commonly by most Christians worldwide and throughout history.64This can be clearly seen in objections to what has come to be associated with some modern versions Dispensationalism, or in the history of premillennialism that has been prevalent in American Christianity. McAfee’s own reference to the rapture (a doctrine exclusive to Dispensationalists - a theological Johnny-come-lately first advocated at the end of the 19thcentury by John Nelson Darby) in conjunction with this objection, shows that he himself is unaware that his proposed reading of the passage only addresses the overwhelming minority reading in the long history of the church. While some like Walvrood, Ryrie, Jenkins, LaHaye, and Lindsey do take this to mean something other than the first century listeners would have,65most have known that Jesus was in fact talking about a first century fulfillment. The problem with McAfee’s critique is not the time frame of Jesus’ prediction but that it misses exactly what Jesus predicted. Was Jesus predicting his imminent return as the end the world? Or was Jesus predicting something else entirely?

62 I will not respond to the Revelation 1:7-8 passage since it actually makes no reference to the time of Jesus return but only that he will return. Thus it really serves no purpose in the objection – a fact McAfee seems to miss. 63While this will be a short treatment here, I have written a full length series entitled “Did Jesus Predict the Rapture within 40 Years of his Death?” that can be found on my blog at http://freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com/2011/05/didjesus-predict-rapture-within-40.html

64The most ardent critics of these predictions are typically Christians who not only find them ridiculous but actually argue that they are contrary to the clear teaching of Scripture – a positon I myself hold.

65LaHaye has actually defended his position by stating, “We believe ‘this generation’ refers to those alive in 1948.” To which Hank Hanegraaf quipped,

Jesus’ statements are quite varied and comprise a response given to a two part question posed by his disciples, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?” (Matthew 24:3). Jesus’ reply answers both of those questions through what is called telescoping. This means that he begins from the present generation and moves on to the “end of the age” but not really in chronological order (1st century Jews were almost universally more concerned with theological or thematic development of thought rather than strict chronology). He even gives us the interpretive grid through which to use when he states concerning the false christs, the wars and rumors of wars, the rising up of nations and kingdoms, of famines, and earthquake, that they are “but the beginning of the birth pains” (24:8). That is, there are events that begin a long painful process – it is not a singular event in view but an epoch. While I do not have the time or the space to write a full exegetical treatment of this whole section in Matthew 24 (known as the Olivet Discourse and of which I have done so elsewhere, see footnote 63) suffice it to say that Jesus was not actually referring to his second comingby the end of the generation, but that they would see the signs that the culmination of history had begun – principally in the abomination of desolation, the siege of Jerusalem, and the utter destruction of the temple. Notice that Jesus did not say that they will see the return of Jesus, but that they will see “all these things” (24:34). So the most common interpretation of this passage by Christians is that Jesus did in fact prophesy about

events that would occur within one generation of the sermon such as the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple66– his bodily return to earth was simply not one of them.67 “[that] is about as believable to a discerning skeptic as Clinton’s quip, ‘it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.’ In fact the moment dispensationalists such as LaHaye utter such statements, our baloney detectors must surely flash, “Warning! Grammatical gyrations ahead!’” The Apocalypse Code, p77.

This raises a new issue that we should keep in mind. That is the Christian doctrine of Realized or Inaugurated Eschatology68, or, more colloquially put, the already/not yet. For most of the history of the church, even when large swaths were millenarian, held to an eschatological view that was built under the framework of inauguration, continuation, and consummation. What this means is that “end times” is not so end timey. For example, the kingdom of God was inaugurated with the coming of Jesus as “King of the Jews”, continues as he exercises dominion over all creation generally and over the church specifically, and is consummated when all powers and authorities bow the knee to his authority when he comes in power at the final judgment. Or we can see that our salvation via the messiah was foreshadowed in the garden with the promise of the savior who would crush the serpent and then throughout the themes of the Old Testament,69 was inaugurated at the death and resurrection which procured it for us, continues as believers continue to come to faith in Christ and is consummated when our bodies are resurrected on the last day to enter into eternal rest with God. Once this inaugurated framework is understood, it is almost impossible not to see it underlying nearly all of the future promises of God. When we examine portions of the Bible that seem to be dealing with future “predictions” there are almost always intrinsic inaugural threads that run through them all. 66 Which did occur within that generation when it was sieged and destroyed in CE 70.

67Hank Hanegraaf, The Apocalypse Code. (2007). pp.77-94. Kim Riddlebarger, A Case for Amillennialism. (2003). pp.157-179. R.C. Sproul, The Last Days According to Jesus. (1998)

68Eschatology is the theological branch that deals with what many people call “the end

times.” The problem with that equation is that it isn’t really accurate. It should be said to be dealing with anything pertaining to “the final things.” The difference may not be totally obvious so an illustration is in order. Eschatology defined as “the end times” means that it is addressing only those things which occur at the terminus of history. So it would be like only talking about the last chapter of a book for example. Whereas when we define Eschatology to mean all aspects of history pertaining to the final things, we mean anything that might foreshadow, highlight, lead up to, inaugurate, etc. events or themes found in the end of days. So if we think of the book, we might think of rereading a book and noticing all kinds of foreshadowing, allusions, themes, archetypes, antitypes, etc. that we did not even recognize until we finished the book the first time. This means that all kinds of things in the Bible are “eschatological” even though they are not, strictly speaking, part of the end times.

It is for reasons such as this that the kind of wooden literalism that McAfee tries to force all Biblical passages to adhere to is nothing more than the imposition of his own skepticism onto the text in order to force it to say something other than what the original author could have possibly meant for it to say in ancient Israel. One Hundred and Twenty Years

For this objection McAfee actually divides it into two parts that address two different verses. The first is from Genesis 6:3 which states, “Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years,” and Psalm 90:10, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” He sums up the problem by saying, “This verse indicates, and most biblical scholars agree, that the Lord is limiting each human’s lifespan to one hundred and twenty years of age,” (p.47). I am sure by now that you may be able to guess the problem with McAfee’s objection without even needing to look it up. Per usual, McAfee is just flat out wrong. Most Biblical scholars in discussing Genesis 6 donot agree that God is limiting each human’s life span to only one hundred years. Here some kind of reference in support of this assertion would be beneficial and yet, per usual, McAfee provides us with zero support for such a claim. Surely, if most biblical scholars agreed with McAfee, then he should have no problem finding citations in critical commentaries to that effect. He

offers up none. In fact should we think that the author of Genesis would be so foolishas to make this claim and then contradict such a factual claim within just several chapters when he gives ages that exceed 120 years?

So does Genesis 6:3 promise that no person will ever exceed a 120 year age cap? Again, even a simple reading of the passage in the narrative in which it is found (which explicitly states that people after the flood lived much longer than 120 years in Genesis 11 without needing to go all the way to Psalm 90) reveals that this is not the case.70This verse is found in the Noahic cycle of the book of Genesis and is not a prediction of the life span of humans generally, but of the time span of the generation of the people of the region before the flood in particular. Notice that this statement is explicitly followed by God’s comment, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land…” (6:7).71 The very passage itself militates against the reading that this is a prediction of the lifespan limit for all human life but is rather a pronouncement of the judgment that was about to befall the sinful humanity of Noah’s day. Since Genesis 6:3 does not teach that there is a life span cap, there is no contradiction between the verse in Psalm 90 as McAfee so naively asserts. 69 For more on this I recommend several works: Vern Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (1995); Alec Motyer, Look to the Rock (1996); O. Palmer Robertson, Christ of the Covenants (1981); Walter Kaiser, The Messiah in the Old Testament (1995); Christopher J.A. Wright, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament (2014); D.A. Carson, The Scriptures Testify About Me (2013); and Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery (2013).

70I am thankful to see that McAfee did abstain from the even more unreasonable objection that this passage might actually mean that God predicted humans would live exactly 120 years.

Prayer versus Freewill

We will start to see that McAfee begins to rephrase and recycle the same arguments in multiple places. Does he think that presenting them multiple times will somehow make them stronger? Since the question raised here is really an extension of the divine providence versus Human free-will issue discussed and answered previously, I

will bypass this objection for brevity’s sake so as to avoid unnecessary repetition of responses. God’s Happiness

This objection is also just a restatement of the previous objection to the perfection of God and the imperfection of nature. As we stated before, these verses concerning God’s “regret” over creating humans who sin are quite easily explained as the anthropomorphisms and illocutions of analogical language. I will not waste time on repetition here either. Warrior God versus Peaceful God

Here McAfee states the common objection, one alluded to previously and will be recycled again, about the Christian concept of a peaceful God not squaring with the vengeful, warrior God of the Bible. Since I have addressed this before, and will again toward the end, let me simply make two statements about the objection in its current form. 71 Here I also do not have the space to go into all the interpretive difficulties with trying to interpret the flood narrative as a global flood rather than a localized one but let me just state that I am also assuming here a localized view of the flood, where land (‫ ץ ֶר ָ֫א‬- “eretz”) can just as likely mean the land of the Levant just as much as it can mean something like “Earth.”

To start I would simply like to point out that atheists will often mock God heads and tails – that is, God is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Atheists mock God for executing swift and total destruction for the sins of humanity in the Bible, for that is what the passages that McAfee cite are all about. They describe a God who will no longer allow one people to oppress, rape, pillage, murder, worship false deities through blood letting, prostitution and human sacrifice, to get rich through oppression, and promote vicious and violent societies and so he pours out his wrath on them in perfect justice. To be blunt, they get what they deserved. However atheists also mock God for not executing swift justice when people sin today. I remember listening to a debate featuring the brilliant rhetorician and devout anti-theist Christopher Hitchens in which he blasted God for his vengeance against Sodom and Gomorrah (which were in fact

judged for something radically more disturbing than simple homosexuality) and then within five minutes was blasting God for sitting back with folded arms doing nothing while people are victimized today.72 72 Hitchens is always delightful to listen to just for the sheer beauty of language and swift wit. But one marvels at the fact that he does not realize the incongruity of his arguments – he is a polemicist; not a logician or philosopher. It is odd to demand an audience to marvel at the cruelty of a celestial being who would pour down fire to consume a thoroughly wicked people and then turn around and demand them to marvel at the utter immorality of not raining down fire upon every rapist and murder there ever was. Hitchens’ stated, “How dare God unfold his arms over the plains of Sodom, but keep them folded over Auschwitz.” While I cannot say why God would overtly punish the one and not the other, to demand that God is evil when he executes his wrath and evil when he does not, seems utterly unreasonable. Not to mention the very deep

The second comment is in regards to McAfee’s statement that such acts of God in the Bible are “acts of unnecessary violence…” (p.53). Here the comment is framed in a wholly question begging manner. This is of a similar case mentioned above – for McAfee to say that the just acts of God are actually “unnecessary” he must presume he has the very thing that he himself precludes any being from having, namely, omniscience. How does McAfee know what a necessary act of justice would be for the Creator of the universe? I think God’s question to Job would apply here: 1 Then

the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:2"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?3Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. 4"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?Tell me, if you have understanding.5Who determined its measurements— surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, 7when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:1-7, ESV)

problem that this poses for atheism. Hitchens lambastes Christianity for believing, or so Hitchens seems to think they believe, that heaven sits by with folded arms as the Holocaust unfolds below. Firstly is the fact that Christian theology does not say that heaven sits by with folded arms but that God himself comes down from heaven to enter into suffering on our behalf so that not only can God redeem us when we do violence to others but also that he can bring justice to those who do violence to us. Jesus was not just in heaven but in Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, the Gulags, and the rape rooms of Iraq. But secondly, and equally important, is the problem that this poses for atheism. As with the problem of evil, if atheism is correct then there is no problem. Evil just is – but it is not, indeed cannot be evil in any meaningful sense of the word. We would be living in a universe “where there is no why.” Hitchens might want to accuse heaven of indifferently watching on, but if his worldview is right then the universe actually is indifferent. In Christianity there is hope for ultimate redemption, restoration, justice, and peace. Wrongs can be made right. However if Hitchens is right there is no hope, no redemption, no restoration, no justice, and no peace. The victims of great crimes suffer and die and often the offender will get away with it. Even if Hitchens is correct and that is the cold hard truth, he has no basis to make the emotional appeal to heaven folding its arms and watching on as if his position is any better, when it is in fact it is far worse.

Does McAfee have the ability to tell God how God should run his universe? Where was McAfee when God laid the foundations of the universe? Again, the atheist may not believe that what he Bible says is true, but the objection is that it is contradictory. However, if we take the whole Bible into account including the passages on the fallen and sinfulness of humanity, then there just is no contradiction and McAfee’s objection misses the mark yet again. Genesis and the Order of Creation

In this objection McAfee attempts to draw a contrast between the created order and the days therein. This is a common objection, but to be honest I am quite baffled at why so many skeptics think that it is so powerful. Here McAfee states that on the first day God made light, but it was not until the fourth day that God created the sun and the moon. This objection baffles me for two reasons (well two besides the procedural and interpretive ones about handling the creation account listed above in my previous answer on this topic).

First is that a very common response to this, even by scientists and if

we assume a wooden literal interpretation of Genesis 1 (which I do not actually hold), is that this is precisely how it would have appeared through the hydration cycle of the cloud cover on the early earth. In fact, the order of the days of Genesis 1 has been confirmed even though skeptics think that it has not because there is so much debate over the timeline. The debate is almost never about the order of the days of creation, but always about the length of time that creation spans. What has surprised so many people is that Genesis 1 is entirely accurate to the hydrologic cycle of the early Earth as it would have appeared to someone standing on the Earth and looking out. First dim light would have shone through (much like we see on cloudy days ourselves) and then only after a lengthy time would we ever actually perceive the sun and the moon and the stars.73

The second problem, which is somewhat related to the first, is that there is no contradiction between the appearance of light followed by the appearance of the sun and moon. Or does McAfee think that the only light we see is from the sun and moon? Some early Jewish and Christian interpretations of this passage involved views that put God himself as the prime source of light on the earth, something bookended with God being the ultimate source of light in the new heavens and new earth seen in Revelation 21:23, “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”

During this objection McAfee also reveals what could be a lack of basic analytical literary skills – something much more vital than basic reading comprehension. When McAfee cites Genesis 1:27 as proof that God created Adam and Eve simultaneously and then seeks to show a contradiction with Genesis 2:21-23 as saying that Adam was created first then Eve, he makes such a juvenile blunder that I am surprised that he even believes it himself. The problem is not in the verses that he cites, but in the ones that he does not. First we must notice that Genesis 1:27 is a summation of the final day of creation – not a detailed statement. We should also realize that there is a transitional verse that takes place. 73 However before someone comes to the conclusion that I think that we should even read Genesis 1 as if it were a scientific account of how God created the universe or even that it is

talking about the material creation of the universe, they should revisit my comments above on the days ofcreation in Genesis 1. I actually take the view that it is a polemical expression of an Ancient Near Eastern functional ontology meant to discount other creation myths of the surrounding cultures. While footnoted previously let me here recommend John Walton’s excellent lecture “Reading Genesis Through Ancient Eyes” that can be found in video format in several places online. 4 These

are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.5When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground,6and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 7then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (Genesis 2:4-7, ESV) What is occurring in Genesis 2 is a recapitulation of the creation account in Genesis 1. This is not a new account, it is a zooming in. It is a common Hebraic literary device known as a narrative couplet. Genesis 1 merely states that on the sixth day God created man and woman. Following the transitional statement of Genesis 2:4-6, Genesis 2:7 then zooms in and details how that creative act came about in specific. It would be like me saying that on Saturday I went to the store and to the gym. Nothing about that entails that I did those two activities simultaneously. For McAfee to say that this is a contradiction is simply to strain at credulity. The Problem of Incest

This objection is one of the few that McAfee gives that I have to admit I have struggled with at length myself. However, here I would like to do McAfee a favor and strengthen his argument so as not to deal with the weaker versions of the skeptical arguments, but the stronger ones (a courtesy very rarely, if ever, offered from McAfee for the Christian). McAfee merely asks why God allows Adam and Eve’s children to commit incest, but later strictly forbade it in the law of Moses – even on pain of death. That is a stout objection if it were

valid. Yet the stronger version goes as follows: If God knew that incest was evil and would eventually ban it, why did he create only two humans in which incest would not just be an option of freewill, but a mandatory occurrence for the propagation of the species?

Now that is a challenge. And to be completely frank I am not sure how equally strongly I am able to answer this objection. However, while I do think this challenge is daunting, I think that one small objection, even if it is successful, does not overcome the mountain of responses we are able to give to pretty much every other comment in this book. Nevertheless, I do not believe it is successful or even entirely unanswerable, or that it poses a contradiction within the Bible. The only reason I say that it is a challenge to which my answer cannot fully explain is because it asks us about the hidden will in the intentions of God. To askwhy God would do a certain thing and then not possess a robust answer is an expression of our ignorance, not God’s incoherence. I can give suggestions of answers, or point the way to an answer based on what I think we do know about God and his actions in the world, but it would never be more than a speculation, much like I could speculate on what a friend might have done in a certain circumstance from what I already know of him. It is not wholly unfounded, it is just not assured. So what is the possible answer?

There are several solutions that have been proposed. The most common resolution is simply to say that it was not a sin because it had not been forbidden yet in the law given to Israel three books later. This however seems to be a somewhat problematic answer since neither was murder, rape, lying, adultery, etc. If something is not wrong by the mere fact that the act itself is wrong within a set context, then those actions would also not be wrong until they were expressly forbidden by God. This was in fact part of my answer to the moral objection above. It seems to me that not only common sense but common decency refutes this. I also think that even the Christian doctrine of the imago dei whereby people are created in the image of God with a moral sense also rebuts it since Adam and Eve would have been image bearers and have known that incest was immoral. One of the answers that I find more compelling, though not

absolutely compelling, is the one given by Keil and Delitzsch in their famous commentary on the Old Testament, The marriage of brothers and sisters was inevitable in the case of the children of the first men, if the human race was actually to descend from a single pair, and may therefore be justified in the face of the Mosaic prohibition of such marriages, on the ground that the sons and daughters of Adam represented not merely the family but the genus, and that it was not till after the rise of several families that the bands of fraternal and conjugal love became distinct from one another, and assumed fixed and mutually exclusive forms, the violation of which is sin.74(p.116, emphasis mine.) This answer works if we assume that Adam and Eve were created by a special act of creation. That is, that Adam and Eve actually were the only homo sapiens in existence because God created them directly rather than through evolutionary processes. It is possible that incest is only immoral if other options are available. If no other options are available, then incest might be the moral option. However the answer that I find most compelling is due more to my acceptance of evolutionary processes rather than direct human creation and as such believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans to be in covenant with God and not necessarily the first or only humans alive at the time.75This solution simply says that incest did not occur because there were other humans around and that Genesis 1 and 2 are not referring to the material creation of humanity but rather their new functional role as the federal heads of God’s redemptive plans. Nowhere in the text are we told that Adam and Eve or their children engaged in incest. That view is simply an inference from the assumption that the text is best understood as a material account of the first humans and as such would entail incest in order for reproduction to occur. In fact, since Cain left the clan and went far away and yet was able to find a wife shows us that it is unlikely that the author even thought that they were the only humans alive at the time.

While this objection is powerful at first, McAfee then, as if almost on cue, muddies the waters by pointing to other instances of incest in the Bible, as if they are stories of approval. After bemoaning that God chose to bless Sarah with a child, he states, “If the Bible should be used to teach morals (the vast majority of Christians would say that it should), yet it contradicts itself on these very “moral” issues, how can it be considered the “Good Book”?” (p.59). This is the classic mistake of confusing description with prescription, that is, confusing what the Bible adds as simple narrative facts with moral prescriptions of how God desires us to live. In fact the great irony of this within this context is that we only find out that Abraham is Sarah’s half-brother after he disobeyed God, lied to King Abimelek and allowed her to be given to Abimelek as a concubine. Furthermore, when Abimelek pleaded his innocence to God, God said, “Yes, I know you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against me. That is why I did not let you touch her,” (Genesis 20:6). If the narrative of Abraham’s aberrant actions was the equivalent to the Bible approving of it is a moral example, then why would the narrator have God interject that he knew Abimelek was innocent in the situation and kept him from sinning? Should we go along with McAfee’s assumption that just because the Bible is a book used to teach morals that every passage, especially ones that clearly state otherwise, are prescribing morally injunctive commands? Obviously not. When reading these passages in context one wonders how McAfee could make such simple errors that ignore not just contexts that might be revealed after detailed study, but simple facts explicitly stated in the text – such as God expressly condemning what McAfee says that the condones. 74 C.F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament in Ten Volumes: Volume 1, The Pentateuch.(1866).

75Rather than delving into various interpretative issues surrounding Genesis 1 within this context, let me just again point you in the direction of John Walton’s lecture “Reading Genesis Through Ancient Eyes.”

In fact, as one becomes increasingly familiar with the text the more it becomes obvious that the Bible is more often than not a teaching us

what not to do. It is often the character’s penitence, not their initial piety that gets them recognized as a life worth chronicling. It is the fact that these characters are not worthy or special that makes the stories of God working through them anyway so inspirational to billions of people. Since the major theme of the Bible is God’s actions in history to redeem his people, time and time again we see humanity, and indeed God’s own chosen people which he supernaturally intervenes to protect, fall into the same traps of sin and temptation as everyone else, if not more so. To so fundamentally misread an entire book is almost humorous if it wasn’t so tragic. Reading the Bible and thinking that it is making only, or even mostly, positive moral injunctions based on the actions of the people involved when in fact more often than not the lesson we are to glean is what not to do, would be like reading Romeo and Juliet and coming away thinking that you just read a modern comedy chronicling the plight of the urban hipster. Divine Jesus The doctrine of the hypostaticunion, that is, the doctrine concerning the two natures of Jesus Christ,76is simple enough to understand in principle, but at the same time highly complex in the extended questions such a position might lead to. Here we cannot address everything that countless scholars have written whole book series on, so I will, as usual, attempt to shed light on some of basic misunderstandings and flaws in McAfee’s argument against it rather than delving into a lengthy commentary on the doctrine itself. 76 The hypostatic union is probably best defined in the Chalcedon Creed of 451 CE. The counsel that wrote this creed was responding to several Christological heresies that were spreading in the church regarding the nature of Jesus. The creed confirmed the position of both the New Testament and the earliest church that Jesus was God incarnate and was both fully man and fully God with no diminishment of or conflict with either nature. It states, “We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us

according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures,

First of all, McAfee reveals his lack of study in stating that the titles “Son of God” and “Son of Man” were not references to divinity. This is so uninformed that it may be one of his more unapprised statements thus far. These titles were almost exclusively used to refer to the divinity of Jesus and that is certainly how the early Jews would have understood them. We notice that when Jesus referred to himself by these very titles that the Jews did not say, “well duh, you’re human, that’s what ‘son of man’ means.” What they did do was pick up stones to kill him for blasphemy for claiming to be equal with God. These were clearly terms of divinity and were readily understood as such by his hearers who understood their usage not only in the Hebrew Bible but also in their 1stcentury colloquial Hebrew. Therefore for McAfee to state that these terms were not references to divinity would be as erroneous as saying that calling the President “Commander and Chief” has nothing to do with him being the senior officer of the US military forces. inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God (μονογενῆ Θεὸν), the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.”

Secondly, McAfee seems to think that there is some contradiction in being both man and God. This is easily resolved in two ways – one theological and one by analogy to science. The theological answer is the doctrine of the incarnation. That is, that the second person of the Trinity (the Son) was incarnated in a total human being. There is no contradiction when the hypostatic union is viewed through the lens of the incarnation. It is an act of addition, not of dilution and not even

mixing. Jesus remained entirely divine while he took on to himself a human body and everything that makes a human a human. Accusing it of being a contradiction would be like accusing me of committing a contradiction by saying that my wife is both wholly my spouse and wholly the mother of our son. There was a time when she was only my wife but through the act of procreation and child birth she also became the mother of our son. Does the addition of a wholly new feature mean that there is a contradiction or that one must decline to make room for the other? Not at all. The analogy to science is the common one made to the “wavicle” – the cheeky term used to summarize the wave-particle duality of light where light has been discovered to have the properties of both a wave and a particle; a concept vital to the formulation of quantum mechanics. There is no contradiction and in fact it is fundamental to much of what we know about the universe. Then on p.60, to add insult to ignorant injury, McAfee tears a verse, as he usually does, drastically out of any context whatsoever and attempts to use it to show that even Jesus denied that he was God.77He cites Mark 10:18 where Jesus asks the question, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Without any reference to the circumstances of the conversation that Jesus was having with the rich young ruler, McAfee hopes to slide his jab in unnoticed. He then moves on so quickly because he is either unaware of the massive misstep he has made and thinks his objection so forceful as to need no word of defense or explanation, or he knows it is asinine and simply wants to move on before his reader has time to reflect on its anemic vapidity. 77 What I always find so ironic, and somewhat dishonest, is that skeptics like McAfee will on the one hand attempt to deny that the New Testament is even an accurate depiction of what Jesus said, but then cherry pick verses out of context to try and show what Jesus “really” would have believed. Is it any

There are however three problems with his statement. The first problem is that within the context of Mark 10, Jesus is conversing

with a rich ruler who has come to him to ask about what he must do to inherit eternal life. The man begins by calling Jesus “Good teacher” but Jesus, like usual, is keen to reveal the intentions of a person’s heart before he answers their question. This man, as the conversation will reveal, thinks that his works will be what saves him. He says that he has kept every law since he was a child (a comment that one can hardly believe is true when we know the heart of man). What Jesus reveals first is that this man is not as righteous as he would like to think himself to be. He comes to Jesus and calls him “good” even though he clearly does not believe Jesus is God. Jesus, ever the Socratic, presses the inconsistency home. Why does this man who will attempt to posture himself as a righteous Jew call what he believes is a mere man “good” when only God is good? It is this inconsistency in the comment of the man that Jesus is addressing. He is not saying that the man is wrong that Jesus is good and thus that he is also God, but that the man is really not as pious as he would let on if he is willing to attribute to Jesus attributes only possessed by God while at the same time not confessing that Jesus is God. surprise that such ideological cherry picking almost always severely severs the text from any discernible context in order to force it to mean what they want it to mean?

This leads to the second problem for McAfee’s statement. The entire point of the passage is in contrast between the rich young ruler who was not willing to sell everything he owns to follow Jesus precisely because he does not think Jesus is God, whereas the disciples were willing to give up everything to follow him. After Jesus proclaims that it would be easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven, Peter chimes in and says, “We left everything to follow you!” to which Jesus responds, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel,30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with

persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life,” (Mark 10:29-30, ESV). The contrast is between the rich young ruler who came looking for how he could earn eternal life through flattery but was not willing to part with earthly riches and the disciples who were willing to part with everything to follow Jesus only to later find out he was God. It is clear that McAfee is plainly not engaging with the text and is rather merely cherry picking verses without any concern as to what they mean in their narrative contexts. The final problem for this argument is that this is not the only passage that Jesus speaks about his own nature. Does McAfee think that if Jesus was God that every statement he ever made about himself would be about or entail that fact? Do we watch the president and wonder if the real president had been abducted because the man we see doesn’t with every breath and every encounter tell each person he meets that he is the President? Or do we recognize that the President has more pressing matters than to continually and at all times reassert his role as president just in case we had forgotten who he was? To go further with this theme, there is no shortage of passages where Jesus refers to himself directly as God. We could look at passages where Jesus performs actions that only God could really do such as when he claims he can forgive sins, a subtlety not lost on the priests who were present and who muttered among themselves, “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7, ESV). Or there are passages where Jesus accepts worship as God such as in Matthew 14:33, “And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’” Yet there are even more telling passages. We could look to the numerous “I am” statements of Jesus found in the Gospel of John. The most prominent of these statements is found in John 8:58 at the end of a dialogue between Jesus and the Jewish leaders. They go back and forth on several points but when Jesus says, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it

and was glad,” (John 8:56, ESV) the Jews mocked him by asking, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” (John 8:57, ESV). I doubt that they expected the answer that Jesus gave in v58 when he said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58, ESV). The Greek here reads,ἐγὼ εἰμί (ego eimi). While I know that most of you will not be fluent in Koine Greek the import of the grammatical construction here should not be missed. In Koine Greek the person is wrapped up in the verb. This means that εἰμί is literally rendered “I am” without the pronoun ἐγὼ(“I”). When the pronoun is attached to a verb it has the redundant sense of “I am” as well so that this whole clause is literally rendered “I am I am” or “I am that I am.” This is actually an unusual construction in Greek because the pronoun is utterly redundant and we almost never find this superfluous grammatical construction anywhere else beyond Jesus’ usage of it. I say almost because we have one extremely important other example of it. This rare construction is used in the Septuagint78 when God appears to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3 where God reveals his personal name – YHWH (“Yahweh”) – which means “I am that I am.” It is striking that Jesus takes the very personal name of God, a name so holy to the Jews that they did not even dare speak it and never wrote it without abbreviating it in order to honor it, and they most certainly would never claim it for themselves! This was not lost on Jesus’ audience. We see the response of the Jews present when Jesus claims this title for himself, “So they picked up stones to throw at him,” (John 8:59a, ESV). As modern English speaking Americans the claims to deity that Jesus made may be lost in translation but they were fully recognized by Jesus’ audiences. Next, McAfee’s last few comments in this section reveal another startling lack of comprehension on his part. He claims that the concept of the incarnation (mentioned above) is especially present in the Catholicism (p.61) and its subsets. What an utterly bizarre and asinine statement. This would be like saying belief in God is especially prevalent among Presbyterians. The incarnation (one of the orthodox fundamentals of all historic Christianity and expressly stated in the Bible) is not especially prevalent in Catholicism any

more than in any other Christian tradition. To so misconstrue the differences between orthodox denominations is such an obvious blunder on McAfee’s part that one wonders if he is truly using academic sources or just blissfully coloring outside the lines as he goes. 78 The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was composed in the 3rd century BCE and would have been a translation that the Jews of Jesus’ day would be extremely familiar with. In fact there is strong evidence that sometimes when the Gospel writers quoted from the Old Testament they were actually using the Greek construction of it.

The final problem that I have with this section may be a touch nit picky but what are historical facts among friends right? in his zeal to make any scathing comment about the Bible, McAfee seems to muddle his own mocking statements. An insult against the Bible common among atheists (one McAfee has made on numerous occasions in conversations with me) is to say that the Old Testament was a written by “Bronze age goat herders” (this remark has almost become a slogan repeated verbatim by atheists the world over) and yet McAfee here says, “It seems as though the evolution of Christian thought has steered the religion into a much more Jesus-centric system than it may have been originally intended by its bronze-aged creators,” (p.61). For even the freshman history major, this anachronism is apparent. The Late Bronze Age (let alone the height of the Bronze Age generally) ended in 1200 BCE, over a millennium before Jesus even lived, let alone had any traditions that developed about him. It truly would be a miracle to have an evolution of a Christian “Jesus-centric” system of thought over 500 years before Jesus even existed. I only point out this somewhat trivial error to show that while McAfee wants to present himself as a religious “scholar”, to call the Christian tradition a bronze age development would be on par with saying that McAfee is a medieval atheist. To miss by almost 1000 years is telling of the kind of research and scholarship presented in McAfee’s book. Many Gods versus One God

It seems that McAfee has what I like to call a shotgun skepticism. It is on points like this where I think McAfee is more concerned with finding any critique of the Bible to present as plausible no matter how absurd and understudied it is and throw them all up in a blitzkrieg of nonsense frantically hoping (praying?) that something will stick. Maybe he is operating under the assumption of something like the law of large numbers that if he can just launch a barrage of objections he might overwhelm the theists with a shock and awe atheistic campaign, or that if he try tries again, that something might make it through the defenses of logic and reason. While some cults (notably Joseph Smith and the LDS Church) say that the Bible teaches a plurality of deities, McAfee seems to here think that the Bible actually teaches this and that somehow this means that Yahweh is just viewed as a kind of greater among equals, a position which is actually called Henotheism. Here McAfee is going out largely on his own position where not many religious scholars have found compelling evidentiary support, and for good reason. There is a kind of wisdom in knowing that if a person has a novel or minority thought about something, particularly something that billions of people have thought a lot about for over 4 millennia in some of the most academic settings in history, and without any new information to back it up then they are most likely mistaken and should curb their hubris in such a bold assertion of it. This is especially so if the assertion seems to ignore nearly everything ever said or thought about the topic by scholars. Here McAfee cites several passages from the Bible that clearly teach the sole existence and oneness of God and then seeks to pit other verses against them. However, in doing so McAfee is in effect being more autobiographical about his incessant desire to disprove the Bible even to the detriment of his own rational mind rather than stating anything substantial about the text itself. Since, as a Christian and a monotheist, I agree with the verses cited for the oneness of God, let us look at a couple of the plurality verses and see if they stack up. Here I will not address all seven passages that he cleaves out of context, but rather will address the overall problem – lack of research and absence of intellectual clarity or charity.

The first passage he cites is Genesis 1:26 which reads, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.,’” (NASB). While I cannot address in total here what exegetes have written entire volumes on, let me simply point out three of the most common interpretations taken by both conservative and liberal scholars. The first option taken primarily by conservative Christian scholars is that this verse represents the earliest appearance of the Triune nature of God in Bible. Even the fact that the chiastic structure79of the verse itself is a kind of Trinitarian tercet80 has led many scholars to say that the Trinitarian nature of God is being implicitly reinforced in the narrative even by its grammatical presentation. Combine this with the fact that the word for ‘God’ used in this passage is not the proper name of God (‫ הוהי‬- YHWH) but the title for God (‫םיהלא‬ Elohim) and the case for the Trinity becomes even stronger. Why? Well we can tell from the ending ‫םי‬- that the structure of ‫םיהלא‬shows itself to be a singular-plural, a construction that we do not really have in English. It is a term that is both a singular and a plural at the same time. The closest we have for this is the Royal “We” where a person of royalty or high status refers to themselves in the plural third person. However in Hebrew this may show that while there is only one referent (i.e. God) that the nature of the one referent is itself a plurality. So not only do we have plural pronouns, but we also have a singular referent being shown as internally plural. 79 A kind of literary structure frequently used in ancient and premodern texts where recapitulation, reversal, or repetition of lines, words, themes or even grammatical or syntactical structures are used for emphasis. There are chiastic structures that follow a kind of ABCCBA structure at the level of verses, small passages, or even whole narratives. Some scholars have even said that the reason such structures were extremely prevalent in the writings of predominately oral cultures, was to serve the function of mnemonic devices to ease with the memorization and transmission of the text accurately. Thus they were not only aesthetic but highly practical.

80“(1) So God created man in His own image, (2) In the image of God, He created him, (3) Male and female, He created them.”

The second option, taken by most Jewish (liberal or conservative), most liberal scholars and some conservative scholars, is what is called the “plurality of majesty” position. This is the position that takes the Royal “We” mentioned above as the interpretive meaning and that royalty of the time would have referred to themselves in the plural form. Therefore the author represents God with reverence through the use of plural pronouns and the plural form of ‫םיהלא‬such that it was not a statement of ontology but rather of veneration. The final option which is held by scholars from all schools of thought, is that the plural title ‫םיהלא‬may refer to either the Trinity or to the plurality of majesty (depending on one’s theological convictions), but that the plural pronouns are reference to God and the heavenly courts of angelic beings. This would mean that God would have been decreeing the creation process and commissioning the angels to their roles in the created order as well as stating that humans (like the angels) would be personal, moral, rational creatures whom God had created. So when God says that he would make humans in “our image” God was addressing the heavenly host, decreeing that man would be somehow like God and the angels (likely referring to their personal nature). Without going into the various strengths and weaknesses of these three views, the mere fact that no serious Biblical scholar, conservative or otherwise, sees this passage as a reference to a plurality of deities should have tempered McAfee’s treatment of the passage in such a simplistic and uninformed manner. That he so brazenly pronounced his false position should be evidence enough that McAfee simply did not and possibly does not care to do the research. The other kind of error is that of his lack of intellectual clarity and charity. This means that where several options are available, McAfee seems to consistently and unswervingly select the weakest option and present it as if it is the only option available to the reader, or at

least as the Christian position. A prime example of this can be seen in his treatment of verses like Exodus 18:11 which reads, “Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods…” Here McAfee is uncharitable just about simple meaning. To him this is a 100% statement of fact that the writer believed that God is greater than all of the other real gods found throughout the universe when even upon the simplest possible reading a much more consistent understanding is likely. The author more likely meant simply that God is greater than all of the other gods that people believe in, real or not. This in no way requires that the writer believed that any such deities actually exist. Moreover, the fact that they do not exist would make it even more obvious why God is greater than them and it would comport itself with the rest of the Bible’s own view on the subject. We see the Bible making this explicit in Isaiah when the prophet condemns the idol makers:

nourishes it.15Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. 16Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, "Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!" 17And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, "Deliver me, for you are my god!" (Isaiah 44:14-17, ESV). 14 He

cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain This is declared even more unequivocally in Jeremiah, “Do men make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods!" (Jeremiah 16:20, NIV). In fact, we use this kind of language to talk about people’s perception of their deities even today. As a Christian I can speak of the “gods” of Hinduism without committing myself to their actual existence. I would simply be referring to the supposed gods which many Hindus venerate. We can also mean the term “god” in this sense to refer to realities that are not a personal deity like God but rather hold sway over people’s lives like the gods of money, power,

greed, drugs, sex, relationships, etc. It is in these senses that the use of “gods” in the Bible is almost an exact synonym for its use of “idols”. As we have seen throughout this chapter, McAfee seems to present these passages without any interaction with the grammar, theology, history or any other kind of context found around these verses, and without regard to any of the work done by scholars the world over to adequately interpret these passages in those very contexts. This is a gaffe we might expect from a paper submitted for credit in a freshman introduction to religion class but not something one should consider worthy of published print by a man who is a self-proclaimed “scholar of religion.” How anyone could take his work seriously is astounding to myself and others who have interacted with McAfee over the years. MINOR CONTRADICTIONS The first sentence of this chapter should have been in a 24 point, bold, double underlined, italicized, and highlighted font. This is not because it was deeply profound or even very introductory, but because it serves as a warning that should send off flares and red flags to any even halfway informed reader. McAfee opens the chapter by saying, “Here I will simply create a list of contradictions within the text of the Holy Bible…” (p.65, emphasis mine). We should be worried about the “Simply.” What a loaded word. One should view the objectivity of McAfee at this point with the same suspicion that one would the person who declares their editorials to be a “no spin zone.” That kind of rhetoric cautions us that it will likely be an “only spin zone.” Here McAfee again reminds us that he will be drawing primarily from the King James Version and that he will be showing the incongruities of a “literal” interpretation, which we showed before should send our already heightened misgivings about his objectivity through the proverbial roof. When, in the next clause he encourages us that no matter what version we use the meaning will be the same, it forces me to wonder why then he chose to use only one of the oldest and most textually insecure and unlike modern English in both

grammar and lexicology versions available to us today.81 Furthermore, when he encourages us to read any version of the Bible, I wonder if he is aware that even a simple knowledge of the original languages will usually defeat the assumptions of his arguments and thus render the objections that are built on them totally invalid. This is because many objections that are made against the Bible only make sense because of structures particular to a particular English translation. When we read the original languages it is not just that these problems are lessened but actually are more often than not simply nonexistent. So, would he encourage us to deal primarily with the original texts rather than any other text if he knew that they undo nearly all of his arguments?82Again, the Bible stands or falls not on how well we translate it into English but on what the original authors would have meant when they wrote it. We will see here that this list really is more simplistic than simple. 81 As stated previously, this is actually not a knock against the KJV since for its time it was quite a good version, though the Geneva Bible in the same generation was exceedingly superior. What I mean is that when dealing with textual issues, there are versions available to us today that are significantly improved both in its use of modern English grammar and word meaning which convey the text more accurately to modern readers, as well as reliant on drastically better manuscript evidence that was simply undiscovered when the KJV was produced. 82I have noticed in my many discussions with skeptics that when I point this fact out they mock that it takes an intimate knowledge of Koine Greek or ancient Hebrew to be able to understand the verses – as if they think study and research are bad things? The problem however is that while the general meaning of the text might be clear in the English, often the objections are about the fineries of English grammar, syntax or the range of lexical meaning of an English word that is not implied by the word it translates in the original languages.

Does God Tempt Man?

Here McAfee points to Genesis 22:1 where God is said to have “tested” Abraham, and James 1:13 where James says that God does not “tempt” anyone. A simple lexicographical search would have revealed that the Greek wordἀπείραστος (apeirastos or the verb apeiradzo) used in James 1:13 and its Hebrew equivalent, ‫הסנ‬ (nasah) used in Genesis 22:1, carry the meaning of “to try, to prove”,

as well as “to tempt” and thus can refer to two related but different kind of actions. A temptation is a situation meant to cause someone to fail – failure is the desired outcome. A test is a proving ground meant to evaluate or even to cause someone to succeed and grow. The intention behind the two is diametrically different and thus the actions are different. What McAfee calls a “solid contradiction” turns out to be nothing more than a badly informed oversight of meaning due to a lack of any reference to or study of the original words of the passages. Is God Angry Forever?

For this objection McAfee commits a kind of category error. Here he attempts to pit Jeremiah 3:12 (a promise to Israel that God will not be angry with them forever) and Jeremiah 17:4 (a statement that God’s anger over sin had been kindled and will burn forever) against each other. In doing so he reveals again that where atheistic zeal is concerned, almost anything will pass for a justification. McAfee seems gleefully unaware (or totally unconcerned) with the fact that he is comparing apples and oranges. In the first passage God is calling Israel to repent of their sin and turn back to him and promises that his anger will not burn against them forever if they do. In the second passage God is referring to those who do not turn back to him and how his anger against sin will never end – that God will never one day say “yeah, that whole sin thing, I don’t really care about that anymore.” Thus the contexts reveal that what is being addressed are two totally different situations – the objects of God’s wrath are different between the two verses in context. One addresses God’s forgiveness of persons, the other God’s holy hatred of sin. They are simply not even talking about the same things and thus cannot be contradictions. Can Man See God?

This objection is based on the concept of vision and seeks to show that where the Bible says that “No one has ever seen God…” (John 1:18) that it contradicts itself by showing that some people have in fact seen God – such as Jacob at Peniel (which actually does mean “I have seen God”) in Genesis 32:30 and when God passed by

Moses on the cliff in Exodus 33:23. Here McAfee again makes hard and fast woodenly literal uses of words and allows for no nuances or varied meanings. What John is referring to is the total lack of any human on earth standing in the presence of God sitting on the throne and the coming back to tell about it – his point was that only Jesus has ever done that very thing and is thus a better mediator and a more reliable source of grace than Moses. So what of these visions of God elsewhere? Even John in Revelation sees God seated on the throne of heaven and writes a whole book about it. So has McAfee hit a homerun on this objection? Not quite.

What is obvious is that such experiences are manifestations or visions of God – for an omnipresent and spiritual being cannot really be fully seen here on earth. In fact we use the word “see” in precisely the same way all the time in English. We can say, “I see what you mean.” But do we actually see with your eyes the meaning of the invisible words? We can say “I see President Obama,” when watching television. But do I actually see President Obama or just a manifestation of him on my television? Or we say “I see what I need to do now.” But do we actually mean that we have become psychic and can visually see what we will do in the following days, and even then not just a vision of it but the actual events of the future? We in fact see this in the very passages given about Jacob and Moses. Does Jacob see the omnipresent God as God? No. What he does see is the manifestation of God as a man83 with whom he wrestles and loses. And what about Moses? In the context, if McAfee had taken the time to actually read the surrounding contexts, God expressly tells Moses that he cannot see God (specifically his face, which in the Hebrew world often meant something akin to “personal presence”) and that Moses must hide in the cliffs and once a manifestation of God’s glory (not even God himself) has passed by, Moses will be allowed to peer out and the see the dissipating shadow of the passing glory of the manifestation of God. God even warns Moses that he cannot see God’s face in prior to the event in Ex. 33:20 when he says, “You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” So the very passage that McAfee wants to draw from explicitly states that Moses did not, and indeed could not, see God. The passage itself makes it abundantly clear through this triple

level of distancing that Moses did not see God at all. Thus even the selections cited by McAfee militate against his own argument. Who Was Joseph’s Father?

In Matthew 1:16 we read that Joseph’s father was Jacob, but in Luke 3:23 we read that his father was Eli.84 This is one of the rare places that McAfee seems aware that there is at least one argument that explains this problem from the Christian perspective although even there he does not really represent it. McAfee states, “many Christians argue that the term “begat” used in Matthew 1:16 can refer to a grandfather as opposed to a father,” (p.69). But as we will see in a moment, that is not actually the argument. However, even with his poorly summarized acknowledgment of some argument he has heard about through the grapevine, he still refrains from actually engaging with it. He just states it and dismisses it without any substantive comment why. 83 Many believe this to be what is called a Christophany (also called a Uiophany for the Greek word υἱὸς meaning ‘son’) where Jesus appears in the Old Testament.

There are two compelling responses that can be given for this discrepancy (more can be given but I think these first two are enough to prove the case). The first option is that the term “beget” (γεννάω: gennaō) can be used to refer to the descent of a person from their father, their grandfather, or really even any male from any generation past as McAfee has noted. However, McAfee rejects this by saying that “’beget’ is often used in the scripture as synonym for ‘fathered’,” (p.69). While it is truethat it can often refer to fatherhood, the fact that it often means this does not mean that it always means this. This is an exegetical fallacy that holds that just because a word usually means something in many contexts that it must always mean that in all contexts. What McAfee would need to do is show that it plausibly means “fathered” in Matthew 1:16.In fact, that genealogies will frequently commit what is called telescoping – a feature of a genealogy where the writer compresses the genealogies by skipping several generations - reveals that this option is entirely viable.

84Eli can also be rendered “Heli” depending on the preferred transliteration from Greek to English.

What actually bolsters the case for this option, which McAfee seems to have entirely missed, is that γεννάω is used in Matthew’s genealogy but not in Luke’s. This means that even if γεννάω should be rendered “fathered”, it simply does not apply to Luke 3:23, which dissolves the contradiction. Even if Matthew 1:16 refers to the fact that Jacob “fathered” Joseph, we still see that Luke 3:23 merely says that Joseph was the son of Eli – nothing about begetting. This is where McAfee has missed the common Christian response. It is not that “beget” can mean something more than direct fatherhood (which it can), but that Matthew says “begot” whereas Luke only infers “son of,”85 which was an extremely common phrase to indicate biological sons, sons-in-law, adopted children, grandsons, future descendants, disciples of a rabbi, etc. or even someone that shares a likeness (or does McAfee think that James and John were biologically “Sons of Thunder”?). It was more akin to “In the line/likeness of” rather than a direct biological father/son relationship. Moreover, while our English versions (presumably for grammatical clarity) insert “son of” in reference to Joseph and Eli, in the Greek there is no such clause. Luke 3:23 tells us that Jesus was 30 years old when he started his ministry “being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Eli.” The problem is clear when we realize that rather than following our English translation, theoriginal Greek is actually “Ἰωσὴφ τοῦ Ἡλεὶ” (Yoseph tou Heli) and thus the verse ought to be rendered more literally as, “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph,Joseph of Heli.” The Greek of Luke’s text does not say that Joseph is the son of Eli at all. So even if McAfee’s objection works for Matthew 1:16 (which it manifestly does not), it seemingly has nothing to do with Luke 3:23 and definitely cannot be used to show a contradiction between the two passages. We notice that Joseph’s lineage from Eli is likely being compared to Jesus’ lineage to Joseph – which Luke did not even presume to be genetic! When we remember that Jesus was not the biological son of Joseph but an adopted son, then the comparison between Joseph and his father-in-law Heli becomes

more obvious. This point will be important to the next option, which I think is the superior one. 85The text of Luke’s genealogy does not even say “son of…” but rather “Joseph of Heli.” We will see the significance of this shortly.

Matthew begins his genealogy with the patriarch Abraham and works his way forward to Jesus. Luke begins at Jesus, and works his way backward to Adam. These are thus two distinct genealogies, with two distinct purposes. Matthew appears to give the genealogy of Joseph, and Luke represents the genealogy of Mary. Matthew, penning his gospel with the Jews in mind sets out to establish Jesus' qualifications to be the Messiah through Joseph's genealogy. Thus, beginning with Abraham, Matthew traces the Jesus’ genealogy through David, and the kings which followed. He presents Jesus royal lineage (through the males) through "...Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus..." Luke on the other hand writes to Gentiles with a view toward the humanity of Christ. The concept of one being both God and man would seem strange and foreign to those accustomed to Greek and Roman gods therefore Luke begins at Jesus and follows the genealogy of Mary, passing through the patriarchs, ending with the very first man, Adam. If Luke was tracing the genealogy of Mary, why does he cite Joseph's name? Today, it would be politically incorrect to map a woman's genealogy through her husband. However, in Luke's day, it was proper and correct. That is, this is how genealogies were done at the time. Luke follows Mary's genealogy, beginning with the name of Joseph, her husband, Eli's son-in-law (in legal terms, his son by marriage). As we saw above, this is entirely consistent even with the fact that Jesus is called the “supposed” son of Joseph, and (more literally) “Joseph of Eli.” Here we see that Joseph is just as much a son of Eli as Jesus is of Joseph. And how much is that? Well considering that Jesus was only the legal son of Joseph through adoption, then here Luke seems to be clearly showing that Joseph is only the legal son of Eli – a Son-in-law by his marriage to Mary.

We see once again that when we look at the original historical and literary contexts that this objection dissolves as a house of cards built on unfounded assumptions. The Prophecy Foretold the Messiah Would be Named Emmanuel

This is quite honestly one of the sillier objections that McAfee has stated thus far in his book. He attempts to say that the prophecy from Isaiah 7:14 was not fulfilled in Jesus because he was not named Immanuel. I almost considered not responding because I did not want to dignify such an asinine statement with a response, but in the name of full disclosure, I feel compelled to do so. We see in Isaiah 8:3 that the same child is also to be called Mahershalal-hash-baz, which means ‘The spoil speeds, the prey hastens’, then again in 8:8 he will be called Immanuel, and again in 8:6 he will also be called “wonderful counselor”, “Mighty God”, “Everlasting Father”, and “Prince of Peace.” In fact, the very section in which the Emmanuel title is drawn from also has the child being called a handful of other titles. Is this because the Bible thinks that the child will be named all of these names? Not at all. A simple reading (and use of even a modicum of reason) would show us that the child’s actual name is not in view, but rather what he will be called, that is, how people will view him and speak about him. So the child need not have “Immanuel” on his birth certificate, but rather will be called Immanuel which literally means, “God with us” – something that Christians have done from the very beginning of the church and is at the core of Christian Christology, that Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus is Immanuel. Jesus is “God with us.” Does Jesus Bring Peace or a Sword?

For this objection McAfee again seems to think that all language is created grammatically equivalent. Here he cites Matthew 10:34 which reads, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword,” (ESV) and John 16:33 which reads, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace,” (ESV). Here in fact McAfee does not actually even pit these two verses together, but rather the concept of non-violence and Jesus’ statement that he would bring the sword. Several things

can be said about this “dilemma.”

First is that a massive misconception here is obvious from the fact that McAfee seems to insinuate that Jesus was advocating the expansion of his kingdom by the clash of the sword when in fact we have Jesus being arrested and strictly forbidding his disciples from using their swords. He even performs a miracle to undo what Peter’s sword had done. So to say that Jesus was advocating such a position of evangelism by violence is sheer nonsense.

Second, and more to the point, is that McAfee again has shown that he can be quite heavy handed in his treatment of Biblical passages – often ignoring the very passage in which a verse is found and forcing an extremely wooden literalism that we never really find in any language. Matthew 10 as a whole passage is a warning and exhortation to the disciples that God will care for them even during times of immense persecution and that the disciples should not take up arms, but rather trust in God, to welcome people into their homes, to give cold water to the thirsty. They should not be surprised when the gospel disrupts families and households. Some in the house will believe, some will not believe, but a true disciple of Jesus will learn to trust in God and love God more than his family.86McAfee seems unwilling or unable to realize that while not all Scripture can be reduced to symbolism, there are many cases where idioms and rhetorical devices are used. This seems to be an obvious case. When a preacher of non-violence uses the image of a sword, it is a good bet to assume that a literal sword of violence is not meant. This position is supported by the fact that the Bible itself is referred to as the “sword” of truth or the “sword of the Spirit,” (Galatians 6:17). The fact that the Bible is called a “sword” should tell us that the Bible is to be the only “weapon” for Christians instead of actual swords in their defense of the Gospel. In fact, the warfare language of the spiritual disciplines is so interesting precisely because of the minimizing effect that it has in mind of real blood shedding warfare. Is it any surprise that in John’s apocalypse that when Jesus is seen coming as the conquering king in Revelation 19, he does not come bearing a sword but that the sword protrudes from Jesus mouth – a clear symbol of his words. This would be a strange picture indeed if we did

not understand that Jesus conquers the world through his words rather than through swords and armies. 86 This view is regularly mocked by atheists. They see a kind of irony in Christians being so “pro-family” but also saying we should love God more than our families. The point is not that we should love our families less but rather that we should keep God as the highest priority. It is a belief about the importance of God, not the unimportance of families.

God Decrees that Adam Will Die Upon Consumption of the Fruit

McAfee presents this objection as something like an appeal to possible unfulfilled prophecy. God tells Adam in Genesis 3, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden,17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” (Genesis 2:16-17, ESV).This objection is not new. In fact, it was the first temptation – the very one stated by a serpent. It was part of the original temptation of Satan to Eve, “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die’,” (Gen. 3:4, ESV). Here McAfee explicitly states the same objection. In pitting the word of God that Adam and Eve would surely die the day that they ate with the fact that they did not immediately die, he shows that he is again unable to handle the text in anything but the clumsiest strokes. As we saw before, the Hebrew word for “day”,‫( םוֹי‬yom) does not always mean a literal 24 hour day time frame. It can easily mean large swaths of time and in fact, in their due course, Adam and Eve actually did die as a result of their sins. Thus God’s warning they their disobedience would result in death did come to pass. This reading seems eminently more likely than McAfee’s overly literal one. In this objection McAfee reiterates what has been one of the thematic problems of his book thus far - the use of loaded statements. He says, “Taken literally, Genesis 2:17 indicates that God himselflied to Adam and Eve…” (p.72, emphasis mine). If I were to say to you, “Thanks for raining on my parade,” what would the literal meaning of that phrase be? Would you think that I really did have a parade and you really did cause rain to pour down onto it and that I was in fact thankful about it or that I would be somehow lying to you? I highly doubt it. The real literal meaning is that I am being

sarcastic and that you had somehow said or done something that took the excitement out of something that I was doing or feeling. Because this is a common idiom in English I chose it to illustrate that the literally true meaning of a statement does not require a kind of wooden literalism. The failure to understand this and to see that Christians do not use the term “literal” in this wooden manner will continue to be a besetting problem that plagues all future writing on this subject by McAfee. Does God Change His Mind (Repent)?

Since McAfee has made this exact same argument and we have addressed this above by showing that all language about God is necessarily analogical and can be quite anthropomorphic and that God can even use illocutionary language in expressing his plan and purpose, I will again skip past this objection at this location. How Many Animals Were Saved by Noah?

Here again we find such a flimsy objection that one wonders why it was even included. If this made it into the book, the mind reels with wonder about what kinds of arguments McAfee thought too shallow to leave out. McAfee looks at two verses where Noah is commanded by God to take different numbers of animals into the ark with him. In one verse God tells Noah to take two of every animal in with him. In the other, Noah is commanded to take seven of the clean animals with him (presumably he would need extras of the clean animals for food and sacrifices since neither could be done with unclean animals). Besides that, it takes almost active irrationality to arrive at the conclusion that these are contradictory because it is extremely simple to see that Noah is definitively able to follow both. So we should ask McAfee if he could carry out contradictory commands or if he would only be able to carry out complimentary ones. The fact that Noah can carry out both shows that they are not contradictory. To see how he could carry out both we need to only think of a simple analogy:

Imagine I sent you to the Farmer’s Market and I told you to get me two of everything but also get me seven of each of the cheeses. Would you say to me, “that’s impossible! That’s a contradictory

command!” Not at all. You would go to the Farmer’s Market and by me two of everything and then buy five extra (in addition to the original two) of each of the cheeses. You would then be able to deliver to me two of everything and seven of each of the cheeses. That McAfee sees this as some kind of contradiction riddled narrative is beyond comprehensible. God’s Flood Did Not Destroy the Giants?

For this objection, McAfee again performs his normal MO: to make false assumption, lapses of information and reason, and to reveal his inability to consider other options available as answers. In this argument (which actually turns into a smattering of unconnected thoughts) McAfee first begins by mentioning Genesis 6:4 that said Nephilim87lived on the earth, then Genesis 7:21 that all living creatures not aboard Noah’s ark perished, and finally Numbers 13:33 that says that during the mission to survey the promised land, giants were noted among the inhabitants.

My first thought on this is that McAfee seems to miss that at bare minimum, more than a thousand years had passed between the flood of Genesis 6 and the survey of Numbers 13 (drastically more if one takes a non-literalistic view the prehistory in Genesis 1-11) in which time Nephilim could have easily reemerged as a branch of humanity. To ignore this is a colossal oversight on his part.

The second response to this objection is that the narrative in which the giants are found in Numbers is a section where the spies are known to be severely overstating the case for the impregnability of Canaan by the Jews after leaving Egypt. The fact that they gave the report that there were people like giants does not mean that there actually were giants, only that they seemed impossible to conquer (the observation that hyperbole is also used when the spies stated, “we became like grasshoppers” seems to support this view concerning exaggeration). In addition to this and as stated above, in these passages the “giants” are not even called “giants” but are called ‫( םִיִל ְפ ַנּה‬Nephilim) which is not only extremely hard to translate but even harder to interpret what was actually meant by it. To make an entire objection rely on the 1611 King James translation of an ambiguous Hebrew word with an even more indefinite referent in the

context of a showing that a group is prone to exaggeration, seems negligent at best.

Within this objection, McAfee also goes on quite the little tangent that would have made more sense in the previous section than it does here. At this point he tries to state that taking two of every living creature on the Ark would be a logistical nightmare (which it would) not just for space but would also result in utter carnage – we are not in heaven; the lions would not have laid down with the lambs. Yet this response seems totally unnecessary. First of all, the ark was not to carry two of every animal, but two of every kind (family) of animal. To make this number even smaller, many people have made compelling arguments that the flood was not global but was local to the area. The word translated as “world” (‫ץ ֶָר ָא ה‬, ha-erets) in the flood narrative more often just means “land” or “ground.” In fact the view that the passage refers to a global flood has become the minority view of Biblical scholars. Not only would this mean that not all humanity died during the flood, but also that Noah would only have had to care for two of each kind of animal local to Palestine. That is a radically smaller number.

Second, and I admit this would not be compelling to such an ardent atheist as McAfee, but logically it is helpful, is that since this question is asking about the feasibility of the Ark if it actually happened how the Bible said it did, then it is also stated that God was the one who commanded the building of the ark and was able to flood the world as promised and keep the ark safe as promised and bring all the animals in as promised, then could that God not also keep Fido from eating Fifi?

Finally, I wonder if McAfee avoids zoos for fear that pandemonium could break out at any moment. Multispecies locations are quite frequent. With the right barriers and procedures, why should the ark end in carnage, even apart from any divine protection? Does McAfee picture only the Sunday School flannel graph with all the happy animals peaking over the railing of the ark, waiving to the children with a bright sun wearing sun glasses shining in the background? Why must we not assume that the animals, especially the predatory ones, would not be totally sectioned off from the each other and the rest of the general animal population?

87 Nephilim is commonly, though probably not accurately, translated as “giants.” Many scholars have noted that difficulty of knowing what the word even means and could refer to simply a kind of rebellious people.

Can Man Be Righteous?

The answer to this question is actually quite simple. No. None can be righteous. The passage cited by McAfee from Romans 3:10-23 is quite right – “none are righteous, no not one.” So why are there passages that seem to indicate that man can be righteous before God? Here McAfee has really revealed his complete lack of research and abysmal understanding of the Christian religion and doctrines. I am almost at a loss to know where to start because a vast amount of basic information is clearly missing from McAfee’s understanding on this. How do you explain the orbit of the moon to a person who thinks that they are an orange? So let me briefly answer.

First, the Bible has made it clear that none are righteous on their own standings. Christians are righteous not because we are better than anyone else in our own rights, but only because we have the righteousness of Christ imputed (or credited) to us by God. Lot was righteous on account of Abraham’s intercession for him. Abraham was righteous because of God’s own election of him,88and on and on. So people are only righteous because God has imputed his own righteousness to them.

Secondly, “righteous” is actually a legal term where someone is declared “righteous” (literally, in “right standing”). We use the term when we refer to a “righteous kill” made by policemen. This term describes a legal killing – often out of necessity to protect oneself or others. In English (because of its “melting pot” nature of many languages) the word “righteous” cannot be made a verb (to righteousify) and so we have a different principle part – “just”

– as in “to justify.” This means that we have two words that mean approximately the same thing. However in biblical Greek there is only one word (δικαιόω, dikaiao) which can carry the concepts of both the legaland moral senses. Thus even though we may say with Romans 3:10 that no one is righteous (moral), we can also say with Romans 4:5 that Abraham was righteous (justified) because of his faith.

Finally, we see that the differing uses of these terms in Paul and James help to illustrate this point. In Romans, Paul says that we are justified by God through faith, and not by works. James says that we are justified by faith with works, and that faith without works is dead. Is this a contradiction? Not at all. We in fact use the word “justify” in the exact same two ways. Paul was speaking of legal standing before God. That is, before God, our good works cannot compensate for our violation of the law. We cannot be so good that our good outweighs our evil and compels God to forgive us on our own merits – we cannot forensically justify ourselves. We cannot make ourselves legally innocent and ultimately must throw ourselves on the mercy of the court. We can think of a case in which Mother Theresa commits murder (this is purely hypothetical and not meant as any slander on her). Should we think that her lifetime of service to the poor should outweigh her one murder? Should the court be compelled to declare her innocent? Not at all. In the same way, no good work we do can compensate for the due penalty of our sin. For James however, justification is not used in this forensic sense, but rather in the same sense as the concept “wisdom is justified by her children.” That is, it is shown to be wise by its fruits. James’ point was that if a Christian is going to claim to be a follower of Jesus, his faith is only justified (shown to be real) by his fruits. Interestingly, this is one of the texts used to show that those who commit crimes in the name of Jesus are actually not justifying their faith in Jesus because they have violated it with their works. What they are justifying (proving) is that they are likely unregenerate, selfish, and vainly ambitious and should not be considered in any way as representative of the normal Christian life or of Christianity as a whole.

Due to these factors, we can see that this objection which consists of only two brief sentences is nothing more than a superficial and entirely puerile handling of the Biblical texts. 88 In Genesis 15:17-18 we see that in God’s covenant with Abraham, God actually caused Abraham to become paralyzed for a brief time so that only God could proceed in the covenant making ceremony. But this was not to bind Abraham, but to free him. For God entered in as both parties – that is, that God stood in Abraham’s place so that even if

Abraham sinned, he would not violate the covenant and God would eternally keep the covenant in good standing. Thus Abraham is righteous only because God stood in Abraham’s place – a picture of the atonement of Christ if there ever was one.

Does God Deliver Commandments unto Moses through a Mediator?

Sometimes theists stand accused as people who are wholly incapable of admitting when they are wrong. Well, I will go on the record and fully apologize because I was wrong. I had said previously that one of McAfee’s arguments was the weakest of the entire book. I was wrong. I actually think that this may be the weakest of the entire book (though maybe one in the final chapter will prove me wrong yet again – who ever said I’m not open to being corrected?). In this objection McAfee pits two verses against each other. Exodus 20 (the first giving of the Decalogue – the Ten Commandments) and Galatians 3:19-20 which reads: “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. 20Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one,” (ESV; “intermediary” in the ESV stands in for “mediator” in other translations). Here McAfee states, “This contradiction has been studied extensively by Biblical historians and remains a mystery; because of the mismatched accounts , it is left open to interpret whether or not Moses actually heard God’s voice in the delivery of the Ten Commandments,” (p.79). For those interested, please look up the Galatians passage and read it for yourself. The objection becomes so obviously false on even the most cursory reading that I doubt McAfee himself even buys it. Although let us treat this as if McAfee actually believes it himself (which I highly doubt).

First of all, let us place the Galatians text in context. Paul had been talking about the covenant made directly with Abraham and then moved to a comparison of covenants of grace/faith with covenants of law/works and has brought up the law – commonly called the Mosaic covenant. Now we will assume that McAfee has never done a page of research (since to even read a tiny portion of scholarship on this passage would have kept him from putting it in print), and point out that the Mosaic law was not a covenant with Moses but rather was a

covenant with Israel through the mediation of Moses. So who was the mediator which Paul was talking about? Moses! So did God deliver the commandments to Moses or did he deliver them to Israel through a Mediator – yes. Moses received the commandments as the mediator between God and Israel.

Second is that when McAfee attempts to cast this passage as some kind of mystery, he is actually right. There is quite a bit of debate about this passage. While it is not the most difficult passage in the New Testament, let alone the Bible, some have said that next to Galatians 6:16 (“The Israel of God” verse), this is possibly the most difficult passage of Galatians. However, what McAfee is wrong about, and if he would have actually read any commentaries on this passage he would have been quickly became aware of the fact, is that the controversy is not who the mediator of the Law was. The controversy is actually about the role that God and Christ play and the relationship between covenants of faith/grace and covenant of law/works. It literally has absolutely nothing to do with who the mediator was or how many there were or any nonsense like that. So McAfee actually is either deceived or deceitful about what the problem of this passage really is and what kind of “research” he has done on the passage. I wonder who these so called “Biblical historians” are that he has in mind. Sadly, note a footnote is in sight to corroborate his assertions and of the dozens of critical commentaries that I own and searched, not one scholar mentions this “problem.” One wonders how McAfee can even begin to think that he is justified in stating, “We can certainly say, however, that these passages cannot be reconciled and The Bible therefore must be fictional to some extent, and cannot be in any way considered infallible, as many Fundamentalist Christians would argue,” (pp.79-80). We most certainly cannot say anything of the sort from this objection. Unfortunately McAfee did not cite any sources so we cannot even check his supposed “research” on the theoretical scholars who are debating this issue. Is God All Powerful?

For this objection McAfee tackles the common problem of God’s

omnipotence – that is, is God all powerful? He makes two arguments against the proposition that God is the Almighty. The first of a juxtaposition of two Biblical passages, the other is an appeal to a common proposed philosophical conundrum. The passages he cites are Revelation 19:6: “Hallelujah, for the Lord Almighty Reigns” (ESV) and Judges 1:19: “And the LORD was with Judah, and he took possession of thehill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron,” (ESV). Here he asks the question (though not in such brevity as I will summarize it here) “If God is all powerful, why could he not cause his people to prevail?” As usual, the answer is actually found in the context of the passage itself.

To start off, there is the simple grammatical point that the ones not able to drive out the Canaanites from the hill country were the men of the tribe of Judah. The NASB makes this more clear: “Now the LORDwas with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had iron chariots.” In the KJV and ESV and other’s that translate it as “he could not drive them out,” it is because the tribes of Israel are commonly referred to as singular males because they referred to their name sake, in this case, Judah. So the subject of the verb‫“(שׁ ֶֹרַיּו‬to drive out”) is Judah, not YHWH. So McAfee may be simply starting off on the wrong foot in thinking that the text is even saying that God was the one not able to drive them out.

Also we see that so soon into the conquest of the Promised Land, Israel had already defaulted on their end of the covenant with God. They had failed to worship God alone, and had failed to drive out the inhabitants of previous regions – but rather let them stay and establish their own settlements just outside of town. So when we reach 1:19 about the conquest of the land given to the tribe of Judah, we find that they have already abandoned God and thus were on their own for the conquest. In fact some scholars point out that the passage need not be translated that they “could not drive out the inhabitants” but rather that they “would not drive out the inhabitants.” That is, that it was not the strength of the iron chariots that subdued the Israelites, but it was the glitter of the appeal of the iron chariots – they were seduced by the wealth and engineering of the chariots and

therefore abandoned God for material gain.

We see this explicitly in the beginning of the very next chapter where we find the Biblical author’s own answer to McAfee’s question (which makes one wonder if he read the whole narrative or if he just read some atheistic blog where this “contradiction” was cited without context). Later in Judges 2:1-3 we read God saying the following to Israel in reference to why they failed to win the land: "I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, 'I will never break my covenant with you,2and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.' But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? 3So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides,and their gods shall be a snare to you." (ESV) God himself said in effect, not that he could not help them, but that he would not help them because of their sin. Quite the interesting statement since this is precisely what we say about the Israelites ability to remove the Canaanites – not that they could not but that they would not remove them. God basically said in response, “I will give you what you want.” It is God, rather than man, who ultimately says, “Not mine, but thy will be done.” So not only does the Hebrew grammar point to Judah as the one who could not drive out the inhabitants, but also the context states why God did not intervene to help do so. The next part of this objection is again quite juvenile. It is the classic question, “Can God create an object so heavy that he cannot lift.” While almost all philosophers for centuries have pointed out the absurdity of the question (even if they do not believe in God), McAfee seems to think it is still valid. So let me just quickly sum up two related reasons why this question is actually a nonsense question. First, is that it is asking for God to create a logical contradiction. That is, if God created a rock (a finite thing) the question demands that

God create an infinite rock. This would make the rock a finite-infinite. This is what we call a logically nonsensical statement. We have pointed out others previously, like a square-circle, a marriedbachelor, or a self-created universe (a non-existent existence). So the question demands the creation of a nonsense concept. The second point that flows from this is that no Christian says that God is omnipotent in the sense that God can do literally anything. The Christian concept of omnipotence is that God can do any logically possible thing, thus keeping with his own perfect and superrational nature. Because God is himself the basis for reason, and because God will not do anything contrary to his nature (the essential essence known as immutability), God therefore cannot create a logically nonsensical entity. To do so would for God to cease to be God. When Christians say that God is all powerful only over logically possible things, many atheists object that Christians are trying to wriggle out of some logical dilemma. I understand that they may feel that they are being duped. However, limiting omnipotence to logical possibility is actually in the favor of the atheist. Imagine that the Christian doctrine of omnipotence was that God could do all things without even the boundaries of logical possibility. What possible charge could the atheist ever hope to bring against theism if that were the case? If God could make true contradictions such as a square-circle, or a married-bachelor, or a finite-infinite rock, then the atheist would have no hope of ever finding anything false in Christianity. What would it matter if they could prove a contradiction to obtain within the Bible or Christian doctrine? God could make true contradictions and thus the Christian could just accept that it could be a true contradiction. So if God can make contradictions true then the answer is solves – God could make a rock so heavy that he could not lift and then he could lift it. If the atheist objects to that as being a contradiction it would be irrelevant because God would be able to reify contradictory states. So when Christians limit God’s omnipotence to logical possibility, the atheists should see that it makes theism open to falsifiability and welcome it with open arms.

Yet if God is only capable of bringing about logically possible realities, then the answer to the question of the finite-infinite rock is no. No, God cannot make a rock like that in the same way that he cannot make a square-circle or a married-bachelor. There is contradiction and the problem is solved. Simple indeed. At the close of this chapter, McAfee tries to get in one final jab that does not fall under any of the previous headings. Here he has the Bible as a whole in mind. He states: “we are left with written works and practices that have been altered substantially from their original state over thousands of years and today consist of various stories and “moral” teachings that often contradict each other,” (pp.81-82). Here one can only imagine that McAfee has in mind the notion that the Bible is the product of a kind of ancient version of the telephone game and has undergone massive alterations through time, thus rendering the current state of our manuscript evidence for the Bible in total disrepair. This however is wildly overstated as textual critics (of nearly all theological conviction or otherwise) agree that the Biblical manuscripts that we have are upwards of 96-99.9% accurate to the original autographs and are getting better every day with every new manuscript discovery. While discussing this would, like in other places, make this review dozens of more pages in length, suffice it to say that anyone familiar with the textual evidence for the accuracy of the transmission process of the Bible89will no doubt find the kool-aid pill that McAfee is shoving down our throats impossible to swallow.90 89 A prime example is that of the Isaiah scroll found in Qumran dated at between 335107BCE. Prior to this Dead Sea Scroll discovery, the earliest manuscript of Isaiah was dated around the year 1000 CE. This means that we jumped back between 1100 and 1300 years. But did researchers find massive discrepancies, alterations, additions or omissions? Not in the slightest. What they did find was that over 1100-1300 years of transmission, the text was over 95% accurate and that the 5% was made up almost exclusively of “errors” related to grammar, spelling, word order (which does not matter in the Biblical languages like it does in English) and are all quite obvious during an initial reading. There seems to be

no examples of any substantive alterations to the text, either intentionally or otherwise.

90 For books on this see footnote 1.

ATROCITIES AND ABSURDITES At this point, before starting this chapter, I feel the need to remind us of a reality that will bear on our understanding of this coming chapter. This reality is to remind us that McAfee’s own moral outrage over supposed atrocities91 presupposes the existence of real and objective moral standards whereby he feels justified to make statements of real moral outrage. This however, as we have seen, is actually a point in favor of the theist for it places McAfee of the horns of a real epistemological dilemma. He must either admit that there are real violations of some universal moral law but then must denounce his atheism for it can surely never ground such a law, or he must accept his atheism but reject his use of a universal moral law and thus his use of this objection against God. It seems he must choose here between his atheism or his love affair with this kind of objection from moral indignation. Something tells me however that the cognitive dissonance will not be powerful enough for him to abandon either and that he will continue to blissfully hold both contradictory positions. 91 And I agree that we should feel outraged about atrocities when they are real, but will disagree with McAfee’s appraisal of the acts of God as atrocities.

What should also be brought to light at this point is the kind of strawman that this brand of objections often are. The reason for this is because they take on the form of cherry picking which passages are allowed to come to bear on the problem and thus only deal with a lesser concept of God than the one presented in the Bible.92For example, they might decry God’s wrath but they ignore all of the passages that talk about why God is wrathful based on his holiness and man’s depravity. They might say that God is unjust but they only do so by ignoring all of the passages that would justify God’s actions. They just ignore the severity of sin or the holiness of God as they are presented in the Bible. They need not believe that these concepts

are true or that they are descriptive of reality, but if they are going to present and internal critique of Christianity and the Bible, they must do so with what we actually believe in whole and not simply cherry pick passages out of context and ignore others that contradict their thesis. This is a kind of confirmation bias in action. Unfortunately when this is pointed out, they often fall back on, “Well the Bible is just fictional anyway.” Here is the problem with that kind of response. Objections based on God’s actions in the Bible function as a kind of “for the sake of argument” style of reasoning. That is, even though atheists do not believe in God or the reliability or inerrancy of the Bible, they are willing to set that all aside and, for the sake of the argument, assume that God exists and that the Bible is an accurate portrayal of what has occurred in God’s interactions with humanity in history. They are saying, in essence, “Okay, if God exists and if he acted in the way that the Bible describes, then God is a moral monster.” This means however that they must be willing, for the sake of argument, to allow all that the Bible says about that subject or incident to enter into the discussion. When they are shown that other passages must be allowed to come to bear on the subject or that they alleviate or resolve the issue, they cannot then fall back on, “well God doesn’t exist anyway.” They have, for the sake of argument, allowed that God does exist. So in this case they must either show why those new passages do not in fact alleviate the issue or else abandon the objection because it was addressing a strawman of a lesser concept of God and his interaction with humanity than what the Bible portrays. Again it does not mean that theism or Christianity are therefore true, only that that specific argument against them fails. 92 As stated before, for more on this the reader can find the episode of The Freed Thinker Podcast entitled, “Shall Not the Judge of All the Earth Do What Is Just?”

Now, with that preface in place, let us look to the passages that McAfee has provided us with and see if he fares any better in this chapter than he has in the previous ones.

God Controls Who is Made Blind, Deaf, etc.-

This objection is not new but I do understand how McAfee himself thought it was worthy to add in the second addition. It is a challenging verse indeed and, I fully admit, we only have limited answers to it because it involves asking about the secret will of God in allowing specific conditions to come to pass. He beginsby citing a small portion of dialogue between God and Moses in Exodus: “But Moses said to the L ORD, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”11 Then the LORDsaid to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” (Exodus 4:10-11, ESV) McAfee intends this to show that God is the one who makes people “blind, deaf, etc.” and says, “this biblical passage in Exodus indicates that it is, indeed, God that creates these imperfections in all humans,” (p.85). My first question would be, where does McAfee get the idea that it shows God creates these “imperfections in all people”? The passage just says nothing of the sort. In fact, in the context Moses had just been shown several miracles confirming that God would indeed be with him as he went before Pharaoh, but Moses was still worried about his ability to be an emissary for God because he did not think he was eloquent enough. Yet with that being said, Moses did not have a handicap. He just felt he was not a great orator. And God’s response to him was to tell him, basically, that if God called him to be his emissary that he would be able to carry it out – that there is no excuse Moses could give that would relieve him of his obligation to that calling. It is in this context that God makes the statement that he does. As Terrence Fretheim observes, the passage does not imply that God picks and chooses which individuals will be deaf, mute or blind, “as if God entered into the womb of every pregnant woman and determined whether and how a child would have disabilities.”93One of the many reasons for this is that the Hebrew word translated here as “made” is‫( םוּשׂ‬suym), and does not refer to the act of creation but

rather to establishing or setting something in its place. The Hebrew verb that would be used for that concept of “to create” is‫ארב‬ (bara)94and that is the word that would be used if a Hebrew writer wanted to show that God created something, such as in Genesis 1 where it is used when God creates the heavens and the earth. That the author of Exodus chooses ‫ םוּשׂ‬over‫ארב‬is telling. Since ‫םוּשׂ‬does not mean that God creates or makes the blind and the deaf, what does it mean and why do so many translations translate it as “made”? Well the answer as to why translations choose the English words that they do is complicated since they not only have to choose the corresponding word or words that most accurately represent the original meaning, but they must also make it work within the confines of the English language. It is for this reason that the translators likely chose “made” rather than “sets” or “establishes” because the meaning of the English statement, “Who establishes the blind” would be grammatically awkward. What this passage really denotes is that God created the kind of world where humans may become disabled due to the course of nature but that God is free to use anyone to achieve his goal. God created a world in which natural processes can be corrupted and that mortals are sometimes “flogged” with defects like deafness and muteness but he is not constrained by the handicaps of humans for his purposes. If God has established a blind man to do his ministry for example, the blind man cannot get off the hook by saying, “But I’m blind!” God wanted Moses to know that as the Creator God is able to work around such obstacles in achieving his objectives and can do so through whomever he desires to call. In the ministry of Jesus, God went further and demonstrated that the presence of his Kingdom is evidenced by overcoming such obstacles altogether such as healing blindness. Moses could not get off the hook by claiming he was a poor orator just so he would not have to do what God was calling him to do. 93 T. Fretheim, Exodus, Interpretation Series (Louisville, KY: John Knox, 1991), 72.

94 There is also the Hebrew term‫ה ָָשׂ ﬠ‬, (asah) which is often translated as “to create” but really has more of the overtone of “to make” and refers more to the process of fashioning something than it does the causal concept of creation.

While I do not think the purpose of this passage is to say that God directly creates people blind or death, I would also like to add that the handicaps that people possess have been orchestrated by God as part of his grand tapestry of redemption. They are not punishments by any means. Remember that in the gospel of John when Jesus approached a blind man John says, “As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.," (John 9:1-3, ESV). God has made you and by whatever means you are either seeing or blind. He has made you and by whatever means you are either hearing or deaf. Yet why did He do that? Is it a kind of punishment? Is it due to some generational sin that your parents or grandparents committed before you were born? No, but because He loves you. It may sound strange but God allows it because He wants your life to glorify Him. He wants His works to be displayed in you and in your life. The reason that this answer feels so clinical and cold to some of us (like myself) who do suffer from chronic and debilitating conditions is because we put so much weight on this life and these bodies. We so badly want physical comfort and security here and now. We look at the blind or the deaf or the poor and say, "What a terrible shame! God, how can you allow this?" Yet we must remember that the picture of life that the Bible presents to us is that this life is so short and eternity is so very long. The Scriptures consistently attempt to expand our view on life and how inconsequential so much of it will seem from an eternal perspective. This is not to diminish the importance of this life and the need to make the most of it while we are here. As other responses before, showing the vastly more important value of eternity does not diminish the importance of this life here and now, only that when viewed from the position of eternity the sufferings in this life are put into a much clearer perspective. The apostle Paul, a man familiar with brutal suffering, wrote “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth

comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us,” (Romans 8:18, ESV). So what we find in statements from McAfee such as this one, “The idea that God creates painful, difficult, and unjustified disabilities insome humans and not others seems arbitrary and contrary to the modern teachings of a loving Creator,” (p.85) is that McAfee makes several assumptions. Not only does he make the false assumption, as stated above, that this texts means that God makes people blind or deaf, but we also see that he assumes that disabilities would be “unjustified” in a theistic universe. This brings us back to the problem of pain. Does McAfee have omniscience such that he knows all facts in order to know whether or not God would have morally sufficient reasons for allowing what he permits to come to pass? Last I checked McAfee hardly understands much about the topics he is attempting to refute let alone possessing omniscience. God Sends Bears to Maul Forty-Two Children This passage is actually truly interesting for several reasons. It is not only a very strange narrative replete with difficult words to translate, let alone interpret, but it is also chalk full of cultural idioms and customs that are wholly unfamiliar to our modern sensibilities. Let us comb through McAfee’s objection and see if his summation of 2 Kings 2:22-24 makes any sense. First, he says that the 42 youths were “little children.” The Hebrew word is ‫( רענ‬na’ar) and while it can mean “child” its predominate lexicographical meaning is something more along the lines of “young man,” “youth,” or “lad” and would refer to someone between 12-25 years of age. While that is still a young age in our culture, considering that average life expectancy in ancient cultures, these young men would have been adults by any definition of the term in ancient Israel. We should also point out that there was not one or two of them, but there were at least forty two of them.95 This was not just some friends hanging around playing kickball or trading baseball cards. In

the ancient world, this amount of young men traveling the barren countryside was not a traveling tee-ball team, but a gang of brigands looking for defenseless travelers to assault, rob, and leave for dead. Also, did God see fit to call bears upon them simply because they were insulting a man with male pattern balding? That seems like a strange insult does it not? Well we actually know that “go up” was one of the ancient ways of saying “why don’t you die already” (which when coming from an angry mob may be more of a statement of intent than a rhetorical flourish) and that “bald head” was actually a derogatory term applied to people even if they themselves were not balding. It was an illusion to the sickly appearance of those suffering from leprosy or some other skin disease – a condition that rendered someone ceremonially unclean and forever abandoned and scorned by society. Thus in effect these were children of the covenant who should have been taught the law of God, where instead violent, hostile, and derogatory to the chosen prophet of God at the time – he was God’s chosen messenger. This is an Old Testament similarity with the Pharisees who said that Jesus may have casted out demons, but that he did it by the power of Satan, rather than by the power of God. 95 42 of them were mauled. This means that even if every youth there had been mauled there were 42 of them. However chances are that many more escaped and so the mob would have likely been quite a bit larger.

Historically speaking, it is during the period after the loss of Israel's main prophet Elijah that gangs of brigands attempted to exert their power unchecked by the intervention of God. This group in particular was just outside of Bethel, the main center of worship at that time which had now become a cultic center of calf worship even though it still was to be a major location for Yahweh worship. So they would have been harassing, robbing, beating, probably even killing, many of the people traveling to Bethel to worship God and stealing their tithes (i.e. their sin offerings to God). This has lead to two different thoughts – that these youths would either be a threat to the religious life of Bethel since they were willing to rob and steal from people

coming to worship and to insult and potentially kill the very prophet of God and thus they would have had no fear of causing chaos in the religious center of Israel, or that they were something like emissaries from Bethel meant to drive the prophet away. That is, the city that was designed be the place where God’s people could go to be redeemed was in a state of active rebellion, sending out a violent horde to kill God’s messenger before he could enter the city. In this case God would actually be acting in judgment on the hypocrisy of the people inhabiting Bethel who would have been keeping true worshippers from coming to worship God in peace. In either case, this scenario is nothing like God capriciously killing forty two little children for just joking about male pattern baldness. What makes this passage even more insightful is that it is part of a narrative couplet which compares the fruits of two different cities. Elisha uses the fruits of the first city (Jerhicho) to perform a miracle of healing and restoration because the city was righteous. It was the fruit of the second city (the wickedness of their youth) that was the basis for Elisha's miracle of condemnation. It was a call for Israel to repent and return to God and a warning to those who did not. And the warning was well taken. Even the wicked kings instantly came to respect Elisha as the prophet of God. Now, while you may not find these answers compelling or you doubt the historical reliability of the documents, the point is that a surface level reading of a passage is the cause of all kinds of confusion. Ancient literature is vastly more nuanced than we think and once we study and research the passage, we see that McAfee’s objection is vapid at best. Human Beings as Commodities and Property

Here McAfee cites Exodus 21:20-21, which ends with the statement “for the slave is his money” and objects that this shows immorality in the law of God because it shows people as property of other people. Since I have stated that I will be brief for this last chapter, I will try to do my best to be concise where I can. This will be easier on some rather than others since some of these objections are so trivial that

to give any substantial answer would require page after page to merely catch McAfee up, and thus the comments will be largely procedural. This is one of those points. I will only have three brief comments about this objection.96

First is that here McAfee fails to note the different types of slavery that he is thinking of. Commonly when we hear the term “slavery” we think of African Slavery in Colonial and Early America with its viciousness, racially driven motivation and massive death rate. This however is so far from the picture of ancient forms of slavery that to not mention it is almost be deceitful on McAfee’s part. When we consider that Joseph was a slave in Potiphar’s house and was second only Potiphar, and then again a slave to Pharaoh’s and second only to Pharaoh in all of Egypt, a largely different picture emerges. Consider an African slave in Early America being second in power, wealth, and authority to only that of the President and then you will understand the difference in concepts. We can also look at almost all ancient cultures where slavery was not racial in the slightest but actually was the result of some other nation’s conquest of another, or of a person voluntarily selling themselves into servitude to pay off debt.97 Those who survived the conquest were sold as slaves. But this did not mean they were sold into abject poverty or dismal conditions. Often slaves were indistinguishable from freemen in ethnicity, class, wealth, clothing, etc. We even see many people sold themselves into slavery because it was often basically the ancient equivalent of modern trade schools. They would sell themselves to a great man to learn a trade from him then buy themselves out and would frequently be self-made by that point. In many of the Greek and Roman cities some high ranking public offices could only be held by slaves such as city treasurers. This does not mean that there were no cases of wide spread abuse of slaves (we can even just think of Israel in Egypt prior to the exodus). But to miss this drastic difference between ancient forms of slavery and the common picture we as modern Americans think of is just dishonest.

The second point that I would like to make is that Christians believe in what is called Progressive Revelation. That is that God and his will became more progressively revealed, and he revealed more of his

moral law in clearer ways as redemptive history developed. We can see clear examples of this when we look at comparisons between the 10 commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. For the 10 commandments, Moses was to tell the people not to murder – no unjustified killing. But Jesus says that if we hate someone in our hearts (consider them worth less alive than dead) we have committed murder by harboring premurderous thoughts in our hearts. Whereas Moses reveals the standard of an eye for an eye, Jesus says to turn the other cheek. Moses was to command that adultery was not permissible. Jesus tells us that to even lust after someone else’s wife is adultery. The moral law of God becomes more refined as redemptive history advances. This is not because God becomes more moral, but because Israel was growing and becoming more capable of understanding. This applies to the slavery question because the practice was not just an addition to ancient culture, it was a basic assumption of all cultures at the time – to contravene the practice completely would be to basically demand that the Israelites remove themselves from the world. So God became subversive and did two things.

The first is that he heavily restricted the practice. He set limitations and gave the slaves more rights than they ever had before or anywhere else in the ancient world. But God also revealed other attributes of what made for proper worship of God (compassion, charity, forgiveness, care for the oppressed, protection of the sojourner, etc.) so that the true seeker of God might begin to have a real dissonance between their worship of God and their socioeconomic custom of keeping slaves and servants. He was beginning to crack the shell in a destabilizing manner. We can see several examples of this. Think of the law an eye for an eye. Is that what is required by the law or what is the maximum allowed by the law? Most Christians contend that it is the latter – that God was beginning the slow refinement and restricting of immoral cultural practices and that his intention was to ultimately lead to the Christ-ethic whereby believers would obey the inward law of Christ rather than just outwardly obeying the law of Moses. We see a prime example of this in the story of Joseph and Mary. When Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant but was still in the dark that Mary had not actually had

an affair, Joseph was called righteous for his response of choosing to divorce here quietly. Why? Well according to the Pharisaical interpretation of the law, he could have had her shunned, exiled, or if there were witnesses to the illicit relationship, stonedto death. But he resolves to divorce her quietly so as not to isolate her, shun her, shame her, or have her executed. He was within his legalrights if he chose the public alternate route and yet he resolved to act in compassion and charity, rather than punitively. That is why he was called righteous. The law was primarily a civil code for geo-political Israel and its actions in and among the other nations. To demand that all of the laws were moral obligations or to miss the concept of progressive revelation reveals an inadequate understanding in one’s knowledge of how the Mosaic law operated.

The final point is that we find in the Bible something we findin no other ancient text. We find slaves being given rights. We see that slaves could not be killed accept for crimes per the Mosaic law just as with all other citizens. We see that if they are injured they must be given their freedom. By law slaves could not have fair wages withheld from them (yes they we paid) and they must have been given a share in the crop that they worked. There were many laws like this but one of the most shocking things about the Biblical law concerning slaves is that God actually mandates a year of Jubilee – a period of total emancipation. Every 49thyear, Israel was required to hit a reset button. All land must go back to the original clan that owned it, all slaves must be freed, and all debts must be cancelled. This is absolutely unheard of in the ancient world. In fact, God was so adamant about it that much of his condemnation of Israel leading up to their captivity was over their failure to follow this specific law. He condemns them repeatedly for failing to observe years of Sabbath rest (every 7 years, with the seventh 7thyear – year 49 – being the year of Jubliee98). In essence God was immensely concerned with the social justice given to slaves so much so that he judges and condemns Israel for not treating them with the same concern.

In conjunction with the previous response, we can note that while Jubilee and freedom where expressly given to Israelites who sold themselves into slavery to pay off a debt, the notion of progressive

revelation and moral progress reveals that the illocutionary intent of the law could have been to have a Jew notice that he was to not mistreat his brothers that were under his control and then to examine the way he treated foreigners who were under his authority since he is also commanded to treat a foreigner like he would a neighbor in the land. While the law was set in place as a curbing effect of evil, the moral law of God behind the civil laws were to refine the moral sensibilities of the people. To caricature the Bible’s treatment of slaves as just property is again to simply fail to do any research on the issue or even consider any of the possible the responses. 96 For a more in-depth look on the issue of slavery and servanthood in the Bible, I recommend the multipart series of The Freed Thinker Podcast that deals directly with the relevant passages.

97A modern pop culture example can be seen in the hit television show Alaskan Bush People where the sons of the family are often offered up as free labor in order to borrow money or pay back debt. No one looks at that and sees them as slaves in the chattel sense, but we understand it quite easily in the debtbondage sense. This is often precisely what happens in the Old Testament.

98There is some debate about whether it was the 49thyear or the year following it – the 50th year.

Moses to His Soldiers99

In this objection McAfee uses for his proof text100 Numbers 31:17-18 to try and say that Moses’ command to take the women and children who were left alive after the conquest as some kind of command to take them as the “spoils of war” for “sex and labor,” (p.88). In response to this extremely brief statement (yes he only presents it in one singular sentence), let me just point out that again, intercontextuality will solve all of the problems that McAfee thinks he sees.

For example, when we look at the parallel command in Deuteronomy 21:10-14, we read, 10 "When

you go out to war against your enemies, and the LORD your God gives them into your hand and you take them captive, 11and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you

desire to take her to be your wife, 12and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. 13And she shall take off the clothes in which she was captured and shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14But if you no longer delight in her, you shall let her go where she wants. But you shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her as a slave, since you have humiliated her. (ESV) 99 Some good articles can be found here:

http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=45

and

http://www.epsociety.org/library/articles.asp?pid=63.

100 “Proof text” is used here in a technical sense in which a small section of a verse or passage is used to support a concept or doctrine that may or may not appear in it or that the meaning poured into the text may in fact be contrary to the passage as a whole. This is frequently abused by Christians as well but is also commonly used to support the biased objections by McAfee and other antitheists to support their antitheism. As the clichés go, “a text without a context is a proof text for a pretext,” or, “Jesus is Lord but context is king.”

From this passage we see that what is commanded is actually quite different from the picture presented by McAfee in his summation. Moses was not commanding that the Jews could take women and children for “sex and labor” but, according the context of the law, was giving protective rights to women of a conquered nation – a right given by literally no other nation of the Ancient Near East where raping and pillaging was the expected norm. What we find in the law is that should an Israelite want to take a refugee woman into his house, he is expressly forbidden to do anything like take her for “sex and labor.” In fact they are told that they must take them into their house as a wife with all the full rights that that entailed rather than as a slave. In addition to this they were expressly forbidden from sleeping with her for at minimum one month (if not more) until she had properly grieved the loss her parents. And should she not “delight him” (not a sexual term but a relational one for this refers to other Hebrew marriages in the Bible as well) he must let her go wherever she wants andnot sell her into slavery or keep her as a

slave since he would have “humiliated her.” In the ancient world were women usually were subjected to rape, sex slavery, and labor following a conquest as McAfee is probably thinking, the fact that this is explicitly forbidden in the Israelite legal code is without equal in any other Ancient Near Eastern law or moral system and does the exact opposite of the caricature that McAfee would have us believe. Lot and Incest

I’m actually at a loss for why this objection is even in the book and did not get cut for the second edition. There are two parts to it, with the first being that Lot had incestuous relations with his daughters and the second was his offer of his daughters to the men of Sodom to dissuade them from raping the angels he was harboring.

As to the first of these points, I’m not sure how this can be a problem for Lot since it was his daughters who got him drunk and then while he was passed out, they had relations with him. Calling this a problem for Lot, besides his taste for moonshine, seems quite uncharitable – like blaming rape on the victim. There is even an apparent narratival condemnation for Lot’s failures. Due to Lot’s doubts, he and his daughters only travel as far as Zoar and do not reach Abraham where they would have found husbands among the tribe. As a result of this, Lot’s daughters are left without marriage prospects and apparently felt compelled to resort to incest to procure an heir. We are then told that their children which result from the incest with their father are the founders of the Moabites and the Ammonites, two of the most bitter enemies to Israel. This is telling in that one major feature of Hebrew narrative is that the moral value of an action is seen via the resulting outcome. Here, the author of Genesis is highlighting just how much Lot failed to lead his family in righteousness by showing us that the fruits of his actions were two nations that would be hostile to Israel throughout her history. So the Bible does condemn the action of Lot and his daughters. McAfee is just mistaken.

Now as for his offer of his daughters to the Sodomites, there are many commentators who say that Lot’s intention was to draw the evil consciences of the Sodomites away from an action that they did not recognize as immoral (homosexual gang rape), to an action that any

ancient culture would have seen as a serious crime, even a capital one in some cultures – the rape of a virgin betrothed to be married.101 To make matters worse for McAfee is the fact that the Bible says nothing like what he does when he states, “This act is deemed pious by his God, and Lot is spared during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah” (p.90). In fact one of the major dilemmas that Abraham has leading up to this event is that he tries to plead with God to not destroy the cities on account of the righteous that might be living there – surely his nephew Lot was on his mind. And yet God still destroys the city. The theme develops in the narrative that not only were the sinful cities not spared because of anyone righteous living within them but also that Lot is actually not spared because of his own righteousness, but precisely because of the intercession of Abraham on his behalf.102So McAfee’s interpretation is 180 degrees incorrect. McAfee’s objection seems to crumble yet again under the lack of research concerning other possible readings done prior to printing the argument.

Another small comment should be made about McAfee’s research again. I do not mean to split hairs over inconsequential details but it goes as evidence for what I have been pointing out all along – McAfee is much more concerned with mocking Christianity than he is concerned with doing actual research or presenting unbiased statements. He states, “It is interesting to note that Lot and his family are continually deemed righteous by God throughout the Old Testament in spite of the instances of incest, allowed rape, etc. noted above,” (p.91). The problem here, besides the “allowed” rape comment that again seems to want to blame the victim, is that outside of the Abraham narrative Lotand his family are not mentioned a single time throughout the rest of the Old Testament. Not once. How McAfee can say that they are “continually deemed righteous by God throughout the Old Testament” when they is in fact not mentioned once beyond the narrative itself is beyond me. And yet this is what will pass as good and sound reason for many of McAfee’s adoring fans. 101 For more on this, there is a sermon that I preached titled “Sodom: A Salvation Story devoted to this very passage that can be found at

http://freedthinkerpodcast.blogspot.com/2010/08/sodom-salvationstory.html.

102 What McAfee seems to miss in his references to the New Testament comments about Lot being “righteous” is that they depict Lot as being righteous as an example of how we are righteous. Yet, as discussed previously, we are not righteous because of our own good behavior but because Christ imputes his righteousness to us. We are redeemed because of someone else’s intercession on our behalf. So it is with Lot. This matches what Genesis 19:29 tells us: “Thus it came about, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in which Lot lived.” So why did God rescue Lot? Precisely because he remembered the plea of Abraham and honored that request. It was not due to Lot’s “righteousness” as McAfee mistakenly believes, but due to God’s favor for Abraham.

A Rich Man Shall Hardly Enter Heaven

We discussed this passage briefly before in the context of McAfee’s statement that Jesus did not think he was divine. Here McAfee views the passage but with a different goal in mind. In Matthew 19 we find the encounter of a rich man and Jesus in which Jesus makes his famous statement, “it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Here McAfee would like to suggest that we see this passage as Jesus’ claiming that the only way to enter heaven is through utter poverty and destitution. What we will see is that there are a couple of reasons why such a reading is hopelessly misguided.

First is that the passage actually may not even refer to a camel entering through the eye of a sewing needle, but rather the eye of a needle – the name of a very thin passageway found in Jerusalem. The phrase διὰ τρυπήματοςῥαφίδος (dia trupematos raphidos) actually can be read either way since neither a definite or indefinite article are present. Some commentators have pointed out that this would be like the modern equivalent of a big rig trying to turn down a one way street in San Francisco during rush hour. It is not a statement of impossibility, but a statement of extreme difficulty. Why? Because it is difficult for one who trusts in their riches to trust in God to sustain and provide for them. This phrase is an illustrated version of what Jesus says more explicitly elsewhere – “no one can serve two masters.” What does it mean to trust in God’s provision when we are in want of nothing because of personal wealth? That is hard to

say.

McAfee also seems to miss that the context of the passage reveals that this is a conversation in a specific context for a specific person. Notice that this man went away upset because he had great wealth – and presumably was defined by it. We can see that in dealing with other rich people, such as Nicodemus or Jairus, Jesus makes no such demands because it may not have been the idol of their hearts that needed to be exposed. It was not the stumbling block for them in their ability to trust in God. In fact, the demands of Jesus seem to be custom made for each idol held by whoever he may be interacting with. This is bolstered even more when we recognize that people such as Abraham, David, and Solomon are most assuredly members of God’s people and yet they were some of the wealthiest people (Solomon arguably being the richest) in the all of the Bible. Fire and Brimstone From Heaven?

This again is quite a ludicrous objection. McAfee states, “Traditional Christian views of heaven paint the picture of a luxurious oasis in the clouds in which worldly concerns have no place; this quote, however, illustrates the Lord raining “brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven” – indicating that the contemporary ideas of heaven and hell may be different from what the Bible teaches,” (p.93). I’m actually, yet again, in almost a stupor over the fact that McAfee actually thinks that this is even an objection which merits being printed.

There are several reasons for this. First is that while it would be hard to say that the fire and brimstone are some kind of analogy, it is also absurd to say that just because the sky is called “heaven” that it was somehow from the celestial realm in which God and the heavenly host dwell that the fire fell. “Heavens” in the Bible commonly just means from somewhere way ‘up there’. This kind of wooden literalism is beyond intellectually defensible – no matter who it comes from, whether anti-theistic or Christian fundamentalism. Second is the fact that no Christians actually believe that heaven is up in the clouds. To confuse a kind of culturally formed imagery used in artistic expressions with the actual doctrine of heaven as expressed in the Bible or theological beliefs by Christians about it is undeniably intellectually negligent.

The Lord Slays the Ethiopians

This, like others before it, is actually another variation of the “Would a loving God do X?” objection and has been repeatedly answered. Like many other times before, in this instance McAfee again seems to confuse clear hyperbole with wooden literalism. In the Zephaniah 2:11-13 passage listed, McAfee appears to think that just because it says “Ethiopians” (which is actually a reference to the Cushites – just another flaw of the KJV) that it means all Ethiopians. This is obviously not the case since even God’s promises of judgment against his own chosen Israel is also not carried out against every person even though it does come against the nation itself. God promised to judge Israel,103 but also to spare a faithful remnant.104What is also completely lacking is why such a pronouncement would be made and if it is a description or a prescription. Zephaniah states, “You also, O Cushites, shall be slain by my sword.” Here Zephaniah is pronouncing the judgment on the Cushites that due to their sin and wickedness their nation would be struck down. What is utterly lacking is any command for anyone to do it. Here God is not demanding that Israel do it. All that is being said is that the Cushites, because of their wickedness, will be overpowered in battle. It seems to me that if we had modern day prophets we would have heard the same thing about Nazi Germany – but who would say that if God was judging the Nazis by prompting the allied forces to conquer them that their downfall would be an evil thing that God brought about. Here McAfee just completely glosses over what a violent and wicked culture the Cushites had. Breaking the Sabbath Punishable by Death-

In this objection McAfee points out that while the Old Testament law states that the Sabbath (Friday at dusk to Saturday at dusk) is to be kept or the violator could punished up to death, and that Christians do not celebrate the Sabbath but rather the Lord’s day and are thus (he thinks) unwilling to obey the Old Testament law. As we have seen previously, McAfee is wholly unaware of the relationship between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant and the various kinds of laws that exist in the Mosaic law that play a role in the Christian views of the Mosaic law.105

In addition to this, many Christians have actually pointed to this very reality as a kind of proof for the resurrection of Jesus. They point out that the fiercely monotheistic and legalistic Jews of the 1stcentury would never stop observing the Sabbath for anything. The fact that the early Jewish church suddenly began observing the Lord’s day as the Christian day of rest (the first day of the week rather than the last) must have been precipitated by something quite drastic – something like the resurrection from the dead of the one who claimed to be the “Lord of the Sabbath” who freed them from that very obligation. This then may not ultimately be a problem for Christianity but a support for it. 103 One only needs to read Lamentations to see God’s stringent rebuke and announcement of judgment upon his own people Israel.

104This tension between God’s justice and holiness and judgment for sin over against his promises to redeem Israel is a driving theme in the book of Isaiah and results largely in the theology of “the remnant” – a portion of Israel that God will save thus allowing God to judge sin and yet keep his promises to redeem a people for himself.

The Resurrected “Armies” of Bones

I am again at somewhat of a loss for how to respond to this section as well because I am not even really sure what the objection is. After quoting a lengthy section of Scripture where, in a vision, God raised a large desert of bones into a living army, McAfee just states his objectionthat God raised a large army of bones. It should be noted that this was not even a real event. It was a vision – an illustration given to Ezekiel to show that the preaching of God’s message to a people with absolutely deadened consciences would still be powerful and effective and was a strong foreshadowing of the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of all humanity at the consummation of the world – specifically those raised to newness of life by the saving work of Christ.

But McAfee’s objection is, “This quote from the book of Ezekiel, describes a well-known prophecy amongst the JudeoChristian religionists in which armies of men are raised from the grave and given life through the power of the Lord. This is considered to be an extremely absurd and radical idea, to say the least,” (p.98). From this

quote it is not clear what McAfee’s actual point is. Is God not allowed to raise up a‫( ליח‬hayel), a term that can mean army but can also mean “host” (as in the “host of heaven”) and simply mean a large multitude of people. Not to mention that even if a real army is meant (which it isn’t), I am unclear on what the problem with the verse would be. Is he concerned that the Bible teaches here that we should form a Christian army? Well let us put it this way, if we are going to be woodenly literal, if God does raise up millions of dry bones into an army from beyond, I think our last concern will be if Christians should form an army. Not to mention that this army would have been formed only by the resurrecting power of God’s words and not at the behest of some militant church. The kind of wooden literalism that McAfee seems to employ here is also militated against by the fact that the concept itself is denied in the following verses where the newly formed people do not chant battle cries, but express relief at the fact that they were without hope in the grave but now, having been resurrected, that they can return and live in peace in their homelands. Again, had McAfee done any research, it’s doubtful that he would have found this “objection” to be worthy of putting into print. 105 Again, see footnote 2 above.

Hate Thy Father and Thy Mother-

McAfee attempts to say that Jesus’ comments, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters,yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” found in Luke 14:26, means that Jesus taught that one must actually hate their own family. Considering that this same passage says to hate our own life and bodies this kind of wooden literalism, yet again, seems wholly imprudent. What is clearly being made is a comparison exhorting us to love God as our primary love and to not love others to the exclusion of a total love for God. Does McAfee think we should actually take the clause about our body to mean that Jesus thought we should hate our body, starve it, beat it, or even kill it? Sadly he might just. However, this would be totally absurd. We also know that Jesus, one of the

greatest moral teachers of all time, who taught to “love your neighbor as yourself” (which expressly included the despised Samaritans surely would have included one’s own family) also affirmed word for word the fifth commandment (“honor your father and mother”), so to make the objection that McAfee has is just blatantly nonsensical. The Subservience of Women

Due to the highly complex nature of the passages cited (as well as others) I will make only a couple of brief comments here. However, for those interested in more scholarly work on this issue, I would recommend any critical commentary on the relevant Biblical books as well as the work of Wayne Grudem, Andreas Köstenberger, John Piper, Ron Pierce, Rebecca Groothius, Gordon Fee and others on Biblical manhood and womanhood, their equality, as well the role of women in the church.

The first comment that I would like to make is that McAfee states that “Eve was the bearer of original sin,” (p.100) which, for those Christian denominations that hold to the doctrine (which not all do) is just inaccurate since the Bible clearly states that we are all guilty in Adam, not in Eve. This kind of oversight has now become common place for McAfee however. So to attempt to pin the problem on Eve so as to say that the Bible uses that as a basis to oppress women, when in fact the Bible pins the sinful state of humanity on Adam is a major error, even for McAfee.

Secondly, there is no reason to think that the curse of pain in child bearing as a result of the fall in Genesis 3 is somehow a contributive factor in some kind of subjugation of women. In fact, all parties involved were given their own curses for their actions at the fall – Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. To say that Eve’s curse somehow subjugated her just because she received a curse would be thoroughly misleading since Adam also received several curses of his own.

Finally, to point out that part of the curse was that Eve’s “desire would be for [her] husband, but he will rule over [her]” also reveals that McAfee (presumably due to lack of research) is not only unaware of the complex nature of translating that particular clause, but also of interpreting it. What I have found is that many scholars

think this verse does not command the subjugation of women, but actually reveals a kind of longing in the heart of many women to desire to be the pants-wearer in the family. The curse is that she will constantly be bucking the established created order – that man and woman were to be colaborers together, equals – and also that not only will she long to rule over her husband, but that her husband will also buck the equality of the created order, and become domineering and rule over her. This is not a moral command of God, but is an indicative curse about the dire effects of living in sin in a fallen world. God’s Condemnation of Shrimp and Shellfish

Since this has to do with the objection to the Sabbath already presented above, and the relationship of Old Testament civil and ceremonial law to the life of the Christian under the New Covenant, I will simply defer to my previous answers on this topic.106 Let Your Women Keep Silence

Again, since I gave some thoughts about this in the objection concerning the subjugation of women, I will simply let that response stand and will here footnote several sources,107 and only add that McAfee again seems to be blindly unaware of his continual universalizing of commands given to a specific church at a specific time. While there may be applicable use for the passage, many scholars have pointed out the dangers of attempting to universalize or absolutize an imperative that you have read in other people’s mail. There is quite a bit of history about why this command was given to the Corinthian church – and why we never see it given to any other. There are even arguments that the command is an interpolation that was not present in the original letter penned by Paul. Yet what we see time and time again is the Apostle Paul commending the work of women, their ministry, and their teaching, such as Phoebe and Priscilla. So McAfee again just seems far off the beaten path of research and scholarship and content to merely parrot old, tired atheistic memes. Jealous and Furious Lord Causes Natural Disasters

While I hate to finish the last section of the last chapter of the book with another non-answer, I feel that I must since this is, yet again, just a reformulation of several of the arguments that have been asked and answered previously concerning the relationship of God and suffering and natural evils. 106 See footnote 2 above for more on this topic. Two other helpful books by O. Palmer Robertson are Christ of the Covenants (1981), and The Israel of God (2000).

107 Several sources are Wayne Grudem’s Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth (2004), and Evangelical Feminism (2006); John Piper’s Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (2006); Andreas J. Köstenberger’s God, Marriage, & Family, 2nd ed. (2010); and Discovering Biblical Equality edited by Pierce, Groothius, and Fee (2005).

CONCLUSION Henry David Thoreau famously said, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” While he meant it to be an inspirational message to those with high ambitions, it seems entirely relevant to McAfee and his attempt to disprove Christianity. The Christian religion, its orthodoxy and orthopraxy as well as its heresies and heretics, have for centuries been the subject of inspiration and scholarship nearly unparalleled in its range, complexity, and diversity. It has influenced history, culture, morality, government, economics, philosophy, art, science, business, music, psychology, sociology, and nearly every other aspect of human existence. Believers have ranged from monks, zealots, hypocrites, kings, slaves, businessmen, artisans, scientists, and children, sinners and saints. Christendom has gone through periods of extreme legalism to unparalleled licentiousness, from acts of unimaginable charity and grace to the utter depths of depravity and inconceivable evil. Belief has ranged from shallow ignorance to cold scholasticism, anti-intellectualism to robust reformation, obfuscation to revelation and clarification. Anyone willing to fearlessly march into such a densely populated and heavily footnoted forest is surely one aspiring to build castles in the clouds. The problem for McAfee’s book is not his aspiration but his apathy. While his conclusion finally

admits, in passing in the closing paragraph of the final chapter, that his book is a “pocket guide” (p.111), his conclusion shows a shocking lack of understanding that this section might as well be a description of a different book all together. He quite literally accomplished none of the ends that he says he has accomplished within the conclusion. This final salvo against Christianity is, sadly, more of the same. McAfee states, “As illustrated by the previous chapters, it is impossible to argue that The Holy Bible (which is presupposed by The Bible itself and the majority of Christian theologians, including the Roman Catholic [Papal] community, to be infallible)108 is without faults once you are well informed in regards to its contents,” (p109). For those who have now waded through the depths of this lengthy review, I am sure we can agree that addressing with a few flippant sentences topics and themes that scholars have seen fit to devote entire books to, or indeed often multivolume series, is far from illustrating that it is impossible to hold that very conclusion or that McAfee has presented anything even remotely “well informed.” It is simply bizarre to say that it is impossible once one becomes well informed after writing a book so lacking in understanding and research as to be catastrophically uninformed. 108 To be honest it is hard to explain why this comment is so strange to people not familiar with the various Christian traditions and ecumenical discussions. I wonder if this is the kind of “inside speak” that comes with spending decades studying a certain topic such that when one hears someone make a superficial comment about it, one can tell that the person is not well versed in the subject not just by what they say but even how they phrase it. With much study of any subject there comes an understanding and engagement with a kind of shared technical language and manner of discourse particular to experts in that field that McAfee just simply lacks. This is a prime example. To explicitly name the “Roman Catholic Papal community” (a strange term to begin with) as included along with Christian theologians, as if no one would have included them without reference to them, is just bizarre. Why not say, “including the Mainline Protestant Evangelical community,” or “including the Eastern Orthodox Antiochene community,” or even “Charismatic Oneness Pentecostal community”? Anyone reading this with an academic specialty will surely know what I mean when I say that even the manner that a person addresses an issue is an indication of their depth of understanding and interaction with the experts on that subject.

McAfee continues on by saying that through his studies he has met many Christians who are happy to believe “without extensive selfinvestigation into the holy texts or even some of the practiced beliefs of the tradition in modern context,” (p.109). The massive oversight of this comment is that many atheists, as evidence by this very book and its hordes of supporters, disbelieve without extensive selfinvestigation into the “holy texts” either.109 Of course it is the case that many Christian have not done the leg work to substantiate their beliefs or devotion to God (though if Plantinga is correct in his arguments about properly basic beliefs and justification they may not need to in order to be within their epistemic rights), but since when does a person’s lack of study about a subject make the subject false or more easily disproven? He later claims that it is “ignorance that allows a person to selfidentify as a Christian (or any other religion) without having first researched the Holy Scriptures themselves in order to properly evaluate the religion’s veracity or falsity,” (pp.110111). To this comment I would simply invert it and say that not only is it understanding of the Holy Scriptures that have caused billions of people to believe that it is true, but it is also equally true that lack of research seems to be a driving factor in McAfee’s own atheistic fundamentalism as well as for many of his fans. Not to be too much of an empiricist, but to bastardize an oft quoted Bertrand Russell statement about what he would say to God if he should meet him, “David, sir, why did you not give us better arguments?!” 109 For those who are tempted to believe that Atheism is some kind of wholly objective, scientific, unemotional, and entirely rationally held lack of belief, I cannot recommend any better book than Alom Shaha’s masterfully written The Young Atheists Handbook. Here Shaha, an ardent and unabashed atheist, argues honestly and powerfully against that very conception of atheism.

He then proclaims, “Even if a believer chooses to discount The Bible as a figurative or imaginative representation of a true God and Jesus Christ, which is of course contrary to the biblical evidence and evangelical/orthodox Christian teachings, the “Atrocities and Absurdities Committed or Condoned by the Lord” chapter of the book demonstrates that The Bible may have been useful as a literary

guide to morality at some point, but in a modern society in which rape, slavery, incest, and murder are no longer acceptable, it is an archaic book, based on very little historical evidence and teaching irrelevant and archaic principles to its adherents,” (p.110). Here there are several problems. Firstly does McAfee think that the only options available to the Christian who holds to the authority of the Bible are a kind of overly wooden literalism or to “discount the Bible as a figurative or imaginative representation of a true God and Jesus Christ”? This starkly obvious false dichotomy is again telling of McAfee’s overall lack of engagement with any serious Christian scholarship on the Bible or on Christianity in general. One can even think of N.T. Wright, a top Christian scholar by anyone’s standard, who has stated that a woodenly literal view of inspiration is “that damnable American doctrine.” In fact many Christian theologians have expressly stated that Christianity does not rise or fall with the doctrine of inspiration, such as Daniel Wallace, an expert in New Testament Textual Criticism, who quipped that inerrancy is not a person of the Trinity. Others like William Lane Craig, Michael Licona, Gary Habermas and many more have pointed out that even if the Bible is shown to have errors that it would not show anything like that God does not exist or that Jesus did not die and then resurrect from the dead. A further problem with this summation is that, as we have seen, that it is not just modern society that condemns rape, slavery, incest and murder. McAfee would have us believe that they were acceptable to the authors of the Bible and the cultures they inhabited, but that is manifestly not the case. To use this false assumption to base the claim that the historical evidence110 is lacking and its teachings irrelevant is tenuous at best, and even that is possibly being far too charitable. Those acts were never acceptable to the Biblical authors either. To put the final touch on his book, McAfee writes, “In order to believe in something, it is my assertion that first one must properly understand it; in the case of Christianity, this consists of a strong knowledge of Christian history, modern teachings, and biblical

lessons in context,” (p.111). Here, for once, we almost agree. McAfee is right. Besides possible justification of properly basic beliefs, in order to believe in something we must properly understand it, and in the case of Christianity we really should seek a strong understanding of Christian history and the doctrines of the faith and the Biblical text.111The major predicament facing McAfee is that nearly all of his objections to the Bible, Christianity as a theological system, and Christendom originate from a remarkably onedimensional and shallow improper understanding of the issues involved. If only McAfee had taken his own advice before subjecting us all to his extremely problematic book. 110 Strangely what is completely lacking from the book were any evaluations of the historical claims of the Bible. Skeptics have long attempted to show that the Bible is not only theologically problematic in its teachings, but also makes flat out false historical claims as well. McAfee never adopted this view and so to say that he has presented a case that the Bible is based on “very little historical evidence” is thoroughly unsubstantiated.

111However, as I have stated before, I am not sure why we must be fixated on modern church teachings. In fact one of the things that many Christians object to is precisely the kind of modernization of Western, specifically American consumeristic trends in Christendom. Surely Christianity is true or false based on the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus, or even the core historic orthodox doctrines and not some alteration or localized expression of it 2000 years later.

OTHER SECULAR ESSAYS There Are No Sacrifices For the Omnipotent: The Jesus Contradiction

This new section that was added for the second edition is not so much a collection of “essays” as it is a series of exceptionally brief reflections which often barely span one or two brusque pages. In this first reflection McAfee attempts to drive a wedge between the doctrine of the substitutionary and atoning death of Jesus and the doctrine of God’s, and indeed Jesus’, omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. He briefly states his objection as follows:

If we presuppose that Jesus and God are one—as many (but not all) Christians do—then we can also infer that Jesus Christ was omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent, and it is with this that the idea of sacrifice is lost. The martyrdom was premeditated on the part of the Creator, and Jesus was resurrected afterward—showing that the act of “death” was not an inconvenience for the immortal “man” who was said to have known that he would be resurrected, (pp.115-116).112 Anyone familiar with Christian theology will immediately see the problems inherent in a comment such as this one. Firstly, there is no logical contradiction between God being omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing) and omnibenevolent (all good) and Jesus knowing that he was both going to die and resurrect. How does this show that God or Jesus cannot be omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent? There is nothing about Jesus’ death or resurrection that shows that to be the case. While McAfee does not develop his own argument, let me attempt to be charitable and fill out what he is most likely driving at. It seems that the incongruity that McAfee thinks is present is that the sacrifice might not be meaningful. That it would be like me trying to say that you owe money to me but that I would pay myself back and then expecting you to marvel at my generosity to you by paying myself off, even though I knew I was going to get the money back anyway when I first lent it to you. There are, per usual, several systemic problems with this kind of objection. The first, as alluded to above, is that it literally has nothing to do with God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence and the only reason omniscience might play a part is only because it would mean Jesus knew in advance that he would not stay dead but would resurrect three days later. That however is not a problem for omniscience as an attribute of God or Jesus but only possibly for the meaningfulness of the atonement. 112 Here he says that not all Christians identify Jesus as God. This again just shows the lack of study on his part. While it might be the case that some people who deny that Jesus is God incarnate want to call themselves Christian, it is precisely the deity of Jesus that is,

and always has been, one of the core distinguishing factors in what a Christian is. It would be as if theists started calling themselves “atheists” and protested when atheists protested that that is not what “atheism” means. Or someone saying that they are a fiscal liberal while arguing passionately for the return of Reganomics and the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

The second and even more severe problem is that it so fundamentally misunderstands why Jesus died. According to the Bible there is gulf between humanity and God that humanity has no hope of crossing. It is not a matter of degrees – that one sin is more or less problematic for our relationship to God. It is that any sin necessarily changes the actual essence of our relationship with God. It does not mean that some sins are not worse than others113, for surely murdering one person is less wicked that genocide. Stealing $1000 from a millionaire is less wicked than stealing $1000 dollars from a single mother struggling to pay rent and feed her children. The problem is that in both cases the person is still a murderer or still a thief. In both cases the person is sinful and since God, a perfectly just and holy being, cannot allow evil, any evil, to stand unpunished, then regardless of the relative severity of my sin to anyone else we all stand under the rightful justice of a holy judge. As light dispels darkness, simply being in the presence of God would dispel us from existence if we remained in our sins. To make matters worse, because we are the sinners, the offenders, we cannot redeem ourselves; we cannot saunter nonchalantly from the gallows to the judge’s bench to hammer down the gavel and declare our own innocence. Our sins cannot go unpunished or God would not be just but God cannot execute justice on sin without all humanity perishing because all of humanity is sinful. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. We are between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Either God is not just (and thus not God) or we cannot be redeemed. 113 I disagree with those who argue unequivocally that no sin is worse than another. They may mean that no sin makes a person more of a sinner than any other, but the ambiguity in this kind of statement is often more harmful than helpful.

This is however where the Reformed Christian tradition to which I belong differs from much of late modern American Evangelicalism

and the fundamentalism that McAfee is trying to defeat. We do not need a personal relationship with God to solve the problem. In fact, our personal relationship with God is the problem. We all already have a relationship with God. The question is whether the God who is near is near in wrath or in grace. Is God near in judgment of our sins as our judge or near in grace because Christ became sin on our behalf so that we would not have to take the punishments we deserve; yes, deserve. We must therefore have an intercessor, a mediator, a redeemer – someone to stand in the gap on our behalf. The only way for God to be just and for us to be reconciled to God is if God himself pays the price. This principle is actually one that we are very aware of in our daily lives. If someone steals and totals my car, I have two options. First I could bring them to justice and the adequate penalties could be paid. This is the straight forward execution of justice. Or I could forgive them and refuse to press charges. We may believe that this ostensibly is what God should do – just forgive us. However, this position is not without its difficulties. To begin with, would we want God to always do this? Should God just forgive Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Pol Pot, and all kinds of brutal sociopaths, tyrannical dictators and rapists? What about those who have done us wrong? The ones who have swindled our loved ones out of life savings? What about those bosses who may have campaigned to get you fired because of a personal grudge leaving you in debt? We may want a kind of redemption universalism in the abstract but when we start thinking about our own lives and the real world we inherently understand that some sins should not be given a golden ticket. But surely, we are good enough? Clearly we aren’t like those people, are we? (What self righteous legalists we are.) Here I think Anslem of Canterbury’s quote is fitting here: “You have not yet considered how great your sin is.” Is not the very attitude that God should forgive us itself a kind of dishonest, judgmental and obviously self-serving attitude? What makes this problem even deeper is that even if we forgive the car thief, westill pay the penalty ourselves. We are still out the cost to

repair or replace the car, the insurance premiums, maybe the salary lost from missing work to settle the issue. Even if I know in advance that I can afford the price of the repairs or to replace the car I still pay the price and the thief, if they were even remotely morally self aware, would recognize the magnitude of the situation that they were facing jail time but was found not only innocent by the eyes of the state, but were also wholly forgiven by the person they sinned against. Even if we choose sheer grace, we still pay the price. So it is with Jesus. He came to stand in the gap – to both satisfy the demands of justice for every sin we have committed and to ensure that redemption would be possible for us. The fact that he knew he would be resurrected in the end does nothing to decrease to significance of the crucifixion or resurrection, let alone show any contradiction between the essential attributes of God’s omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence as McAfee seems to believe that it does. A Glitch in God’s System: The Paradox of Divine Intervention McAfee begins this next section with such a demonstrably false assertion that it is hard to take any of what follows seriously. He states that “The science and psychology of religion boils down to a few, main pillars: faith, uniformed beliefs, and fear of the unknown,” (p.117). Not only is there no such discipline of “the science of religion” but anyone even remotely aware with the psychology of religious belief and the scholarship on the philosophy of religious worldviews and theistic belief will know instantly that to say religious belief boils down to mere faith, uninformed beliefs, and fear of the unknown is such a load of propagandistic rhetoric that it would be surprising if even McAfee believed it (though at this point I would not put it past him). One must only think of the countless number of Christian scholars who have shaped nearly every academic discipline ranging from theology to cosmology, sociology to, yes, psychology. Nearly every Ivy League school was founded as an explicitly Christian institution; the system of public healthcare and hospitals began as a missionary effort, and the advent of even science itself dawned in the context of Christendom and its belief that the universe was intelligible, ordered, and governed such that it could be systematically studied was precisely because it was

designed and ordered by a rational Creator. Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Kepler, Bacon, and nearly every one of the early scientists, almost down to the man, were Christians of some sort and unequivocally attributed their love of science to their belief in God. The Big Bang was first proposed scientifically114by a Belgium priest named Georges Lemaître and the human genome was decoded by outspoken Christian Francis Collins. To try and say religion boils down to faith, uninformed beliefs and fear of the unknown is so manifestly absurd that it is nearly condemnable.

Yet as for the actual “paradox” that McAfee attempts to force into existence, per usual his terms are entirely imprecise and it is not really a paradox that he tries to present at all. The problem that he seeks to address is that, in response to a bitter comment he received from a theist who was angry about McAfee’s writing, he looks around his life and does not see the “this life” kind of consequences for his sin that his correspondent says that he would suffer. Besides a cheeky answer of “not yet you don’t,” it is also on this point that I would direct him back to the conclusion of the first part of his book where he said that in order to understand Christianity, we must have a proper understanding of Christianity and Biblical teaching. Here even a dash of either one of those would clear up the issue and bring into focus that his conflict is withthat specific objector and nothing inherent in Christianity or the Bible. While in one sense the Bible says that weall suffer the consequences of sin in this life (sickness, pain, suffering, loss of love, toil, and ultimately death), we showed previously that the Bible also shows that there is not usually a straight line between personal sin and the consequences that it brings about. In Psalm 73:1-14, written by Asaph, we find the following:

6 Therefore pride is their necklace;

violence covers them as a garment. 7 Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. 8 They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.

9 They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth. 10 Therefore his people turn back to them, and find

no fault in them.

11 And they say, “How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?” 12 Behold, these are the wicked;

always at ease, they increase in riches. 13 All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. 14 For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. (ESV) 114 I say “scientifically” here because that the universe had a definite beginning in the finite past has always been taught by Christianity. In fact the great irony of the Big Bang was that it was initially rejected because it seemed too theistic. Even the term “the big bang” was a pejorative term coined by astronomer Fred Hoyle to mock the idea that the universe would have started with a “bang” rather than existing for all of eternity – the “standard” model held by most scientists before the Big Bang became The Standard Model. 1 Truly

God is good to Israel,

to those who are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.

3 For I was envious of the arrogant

when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 For they have no pangs until death;

their bodies are fat and sleek.

5 They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind. Where in this passage does it say that our sins will be directly punished in this life? What Asaph actually notices is the opposite. Often it is the people who try to be pure and who keep their hearts clean that suffer in this life. How often have we seen people who are taken advantage of for their honesty, their generosity, or their willingness to forgive over and over while the oppressors and swindlers go free. In fact, to go even further Asaph continues by saying the following in vv16-17, 27: 16 But

when I thought how to understand this,

it seemed to me a wearisome task,

17 until

I went into the sanctuary of God;

then I discerned their end.

26 My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 27 For

behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. Asaph moves from a psalm of lament over the seeming futility of piety to the observation the piety is not futile after all. What happens in the “Sanctuary of God”, that is, the temple that is the turning point for Asaph in this psalm? It was where the sacrifices, the atonements for sin took place. What Asaph saw was the final outcome of sin. That even if the wicked seemed to prosper and live at ease in this life, it would not last. Unless their sins were atoned for (see the above comments concerning the atonement of Jesus) then they would suffer the same fate as the lambs. It is either us or the lamb in the end. In fact there is a passage in Luke that I have found most atheists and antitheists are entirely unaware of. Luke:13:1-5 reads: 1 There

were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Why is this passage relevant? Well we notice several interesting things in Jesus’ response to this natural disaster. Firstly is that Jesus is not concerned with salvation prospecting, that is, with trying to figure out who is in and who is out. He asks his disciples (who were mostly Galileans) if they think that just because they died during their

religious ceremony at the hands of Pilate (a moral evil) or that those who died when the tower in Siloam collapsed on them (a natural evil) were somehow worse sinners than others who did not die in such a way?115His answer was that they were not worse sinners and that the disciples should have been ensuring that they were right with God and stop worrying so much about if others were worse than they were. But secondly, and more to the point here, is that Jesus expressly denies the one to one correlation between personal sin and overt condemnations in this life. Again, while it may be the case that due to the corrosive nature of sin we all suffer general ills, or even suffer direct consequences of certain sins (excessive drinking then driving might lead naturally to the consequence of accidental manslaughter) it is simply not the case that we can say an unbeliever will live a life of obvious condemnation via suffering. That McAfee can reflect on his life and have a completely “happy, healthy, loving family and [he can] do what [he] love[s],”116 (p.118) should not be surprising to any Christian. We even see Jesus expressly teaching that God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust,” (Matthew 5:45b, ESV). 115 Here Jesus may be addressing the common ancient notion of a good/bad death. For ancients, how and when someone dies may be seen as evidence for how their life was turning out. So if someone died young, they had a “bad death” and often they tied it to either known or unknown sins. The inverse would be true of people who died in their old age after a long life. Here Jesus seems to be undermining those kinds of views on death.

116For an interesting article on this kind of pop psychologizing of atheism, I recommend Julian Baggini’s March 9, 2012 article in the Guardian, “Yes, Life Without God is Bleak. Atheism is About Facing Up to That” in which Baggini lambastes the brand of atheism that basically models itself after the worst kind of Christian consumerism. It is the “atheism will make you happier, healthier, smarter (better?)” kind of sales pitch that Baggini cannot stand. As an atheist he believes it because he thinks it is true. Often atheists will represent themselves as the few, the proud, the brave, the “Brights.” They say atheism is a crutch to help religious people through the storms of life but that it takes the courage of atheism to throw of those crutches and face the meaninglessness of life. Baggini ask why then do so many atheists conform to the mold of “believe

McAfee ends this section with a kind of Magna Carta of atheistic autonomy. He triumphantly proclaims, “I can live my life by my own, instinctual, human morals and not worry about what a “God” might think and what type of punishment that I may or may not receive,” (p.119). The question is however if he should live in such a way and if his view is true. I could life in such a way as to not worry about how the American government might punish me for certain things, or without regard to what my wife or family would think. I could do my job without caring about what my boss thinks of my performance. The problem is that just because I could live a life of such reckless abandon and disregard, it does not follow that I should. The government could imprison me whether I accepted their authority or not.117My boss could fire me even if I did not care to consider them worthy of my respect. Besides the problems we discussed earlier of McAfee’s inconsistency regarding “human morals” (whatever that would even mean), he simply asserts that he can live without considering himself obligated to seek the will of God. The last I checked however bald assertion and reasonable cogent argumentation were two different things. McAfee gives us no reason to believe that what he says is true. He simply names it and claims it. because of how much better your life will be!” instead of, “believe because it is true”?

117I’m here again reminded of the videos of Saddam Hussain pridefully rejecting the authority of the humans rights tribunal to rule over him. Just because he did not want them to be an authority over him does not make it so. The same can be said for atheists who proclaim no obligation to God. Just because they do not wish it to be, does not make it so.

A Letter to Christian Hypocrites-

This epistle of indignation is principally just a rehashing of what McAfee has already “argued” elsewhere in the book. In addition to again being oblivious to the inconsistency of his naturalistic worldview to his moral indignation that palpably oozes from the pages, he also charges Christians with not following the dietary laws of the Old Testament (lacking understanding of the threefold law mentioned before), that they have amassed wealth (assuming the Bible equivocally condemns the wealthy), that all people who are not Christian will go to hell, including those who have never heard

(missing the clear teaching of Romans 2 that this is not necessarily the case), that many “Christians” do not agree with these problems and only called themselves “Christian” for cultural reasons (which misses that there are other reasons for dismissing his “summations” of Biblical teaching andthat cultural Christianity is utterly distinct from Christianity as a religion), and that research will lead to disavowing their faith (missing that many believe because of research and that his book is so poorly researched and assertions so poorly argued that he is not one to talk). All in all, it is just an even more assumptive and assuming section than when these objections were previously declared. Why Atheists Should Understand the Bible

This section, like the one above, is primarily just a mulligan of the previous chapter of his book entitled “Cultural Christianity” which discussed “inherited” belief and the means by which many Christians gain their faith by their parent’s side. What is new is his somewhat admirable claim that atheists should come to understand the Bible. It is not, however, for the love of learning or the pursuit of truth (not that they believe that what the Bible affirms is true but that they have true beliefs about the Bible). What makes this passage so ironic is that he condemns the proselytization by Christians but here is basically writing a charter for evangelical atheism.118 He is just one small hop, skip, and a jump away from writing atheist tracts and going door to door to share the good news of disbelief - “Behold, the kingdom of naturalism is at hand! Repent of your faith and disbelieve!” He says that atheists should understand the Bible so that “science, society, and government are no longer impacted and restrained by the archaic pillars upon which supernatural religions, cults, and theism in general are built,” (p.128), all the while ignoring that he simply begs two questions. First that science, society and government are restrained by religion and that he has proven that it is false and archaic. As we have seen on both points he has failed miserably to demonstrate his conclusions. Religion and War: The Chicken and the Egg-

Here I am thankful to see that McAfee is willing to admit that religion

is not the cause ofall wars or even that all religious people are warmongers. The problem, or so he says, is that religion is often used to justify actions that we would otherwise recognize as wrong. You may be surprised to know that I actually agree. Religion has been used to justify all kinds of horrible actions. And while McAfee admits that other institutions have as well, such as nationalism, he does not seem to go far enough. In fact any ideology could be used as a tool to justify whatever someone wants to. Atheism was used in Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Hoxsa’s Albania, Castro’s Cuba and dozens of other tyrannical states. Evolution was used in German and American eugenics programs.119 Democracy was used to stir up anti-Chinese sentiment during the days of McCarthyism and freedom and patriotism to instigate anti-Iraqi sentiment leading up to the Iraq War. Nearly every ideology has been used at some point by someone or some group to justify some horrible atrocity. Robin Schumacher writes, 118 This would be something on par with the wildly propagandistic book by Peter Boghossian, A Manual for Creating Atheists (2013).

119For more on this I recommend The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics edited by Bashford and Levine.

“Philip and Axelrod’s three-volume "Encyclopedia of Wars" chronicles some 1,763 wars that have been waged over the course of human history. Of those wars, the authors categorize 123 as being religious in nature, which is an astonishingly low 6.98% of all wars. However, when one subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23% That means that all religious faiths combined – minus Islam – have caused less than 4% of all of humanity’s wars and violent conflicts. Further, they played no motivating role in the major wars that have resulted in the most loss of life.”120 It is then not even clear that this is a problem mostly for religion in some unique way.

Not only does McAfee miss that point, but he also seems to think that this is a problem of religion – that somehow it is inherent in

religion that it condones its own use as a justifying force. While I would not argue with this for some religious systems (such as Militant Islam) the fact that Jesus explicitly commanded an ethic of forgiveness, love, mercy, turning the other cheek, doing no harm to others, and that those who live by the sword will die by the sword, the fact that people try to use Christianity to justify war shows that they are being entirely unchristian – they are acting in direct contradiction to Christianity itself. So the only way a person could use Christianity to justify some unjust war121 is to fundamentally alter or flat out ignore the very ethic that makes Christianity Christian. 120 https://carm.org/religion-cause-war

Two Nations, Under God: The Canadian Charter From an American Perspective

I will only note the irony of McAfee calling himself an “American scholar of religious studies” who is accustomed to studying religion’s impact on society from an “objective point of view” (p.135) after spending an entire book showing how unscholarly, under researched, and overly and zealously biasedhe has been in his entire treatment of God, Jesus, theism in general and Christianity in specific, the Bible and Western Christendom.

In this final round of objections to any and all things religious, McAfee makes a somewhat patchy critique of the Canadian Charter (the Canadian equivalent of the US’ Bill of Rights). His main complaint, from what I gather, is that while America is more “Christian” (with only 11-14% of its citizens claiming “no religion”)122 than Canada (with about 14% of its citizens claiming “no religion”), the Preamble to Canada’s charter expressly states, “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” For some reason McAfee thinks that this means that “because of this Charter provision, Canada is not necessarily guaranteed any secular liberties,” (p.138), a very strange position indeed considering that immediately following the preamble is the guarantee of secular liberties.123In fact, the guarantee of those liberties is the sole purpose of the Charter. Not to mention that what McAfee seems to miss is that while the US Constitution and Bill or

Rights do not expressly state allegiance to God, it is not hard to understand what they mean considering that many of the drafters of those documents were also signatories on the Declaration of Independence. The reason that this is important is that when we consider what they believed the basis for laws and human/civil rights were, they quite clearly tell us: 121 For can we really say that all wars are bad? I am by no means an advocate of force but I am not a pacifist either. I think America was just in invading Germany to stop its European domination and the holocaust (even though to stop Germany it sadly allied itself with another brutal dictator in Stalin) but unjust in installing a Chilean dictator. Surely the Christian ethic of protecting the poor and the oppressed demands that we stand up to dictators like Hitler, Pol Pot and Jong Il. 122These kind of surveys are frequently touted by skeptics about the rise of secularism or atheism or unbelief in some particular country. What is so frequently missed is that “no religion” includes theists, deists, panthesits, panentheists, polytheists, henotheists and universalists and Unitarians who simply do not ascribe to any organized or centralized religious institution or denomination. In fact there was quite a while in my life where I was a devout believer in God and Jesus but would have marked “not religious” because I did

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. not attend church but had a solely “personal” belief. A good example of this is Sweden. For years atheists have pointed to Sweden as one of the most successfully atheistic nations in the world as well as being one of the most progressive. They point to monthly church attendance being below 10% as a marker of that. The problem is that church attendance is not the only statistic we should look at. How “secular” should we consider Sweden when it has a state church (something even the US doesn’t have) with nearly 70% of its population

carrying a membership in 2011? While they might have low polls on the importance of religion or trust in the church about 50% of weddings occur in the church and over 90% of Swedes have expressly Christian burials. For more see the wiki summation of the various polls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Sweden. 123Though here I am at a loss for why these must be considered “secular liberties” any more than they are religious liberties in line with Christianity. As we saw above, McAfee’s own worldview cannot account for his own desire for such rights in the first place.

This may be somewhat surprising but I am actually a secularist. When it comes to government I appreciate the separation of church and state. It allows for the free exercise of religion or lack of religion and it keeps the affairs or the church out of the state and the affairs of the state out of the church.124 The point is however that just because Canada expressly states that God is the basis for their legal system, it does not follow that Canada does not at the same time guarantee secular rights. In fact the great irony of this is that, it seems, Canada is more likely to guarantee them. If Canada, like the American Declaration of Independence, sees that these rights are inalienable and endowed by their Creator, then I see no reason to think that they will not see them as entirely immutable – that the state has absolutely no right or authority to override the rule and will of God in making these freedoms inalienable rights in the first place. That is the state is the protector of the rights given to humanity by God, but is not the inventor and guarantor for them. 124 If atheists really wanted to drive religion out of America they should, somewhat paradoxically, demand that religion take over. The history of theocracy has always resulted the near death of the church for a time. It is no surprise that religion has flourished in the US where religion was never allowed to be governmentally institutionalized.

On the other hand a government that expressly and intentionally denies that there are any inalienable rights or that the government has a real and objective duty to uphold the freedom of its citizens, but rather that rights are only and ever whatever is invented and granted by the state, may in fact revoke them. What is it besides the sheer will of the people that holds them back from running rough shod all over them? A parent can tell their children that they can

watch TV until 9pm but then change their mind and only allow them to watch TV until 8pm. “My house. My rules.” If we are citizens of the government’s house in which are freedoms just are what the government allows us to have, why ought they not revoke or limit those very freedoms we have come to enjoy? It is only when the government sees itself as a steward of another’s house that they are not free to do as they please. Now, as I stated I am a secularist – that is I believe in the separation of Church affairs from Governmental affairs. This does not mean that I do not think that a theistic basis is a better assurance of our fundamental freedoms than a purely or reductionistically naturalistic one; or that Christians as citizens of the state should not be active Christian citizens or Christian politicians who vote according to what they believe is right. It only means that I believe that the church as an institution should not control governmental action and that the state should not meddle in church affairs. The 1stAmendment guarantees separation of church and state not separation from church. It states that government shall make no law establishing a specific religion and it shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. It says nothing about the metaphysical ground for the very rights for which it is arguing. For that, we have the Declaration of Independence. And, indeed, the Bible. APPENDIX A Review of David G. McAfee’s “The Forgotten Gospels of the Bible: Did Jesus Condone Homosexuality?” by Nicholas J. Bruzzese and Tyler R. Vela Introduction If the following critique seems at all harsh or severe, we ask that you keep this in mind: David G. McAfee claims to be an “American scholar of Religious Studies,”125 though we have not been able to find his contribution to any scholarly or academic periodical or

literature. However, by making this claim McAfee obliges himself to all that comes with that title including critical 125David McAfee, Disproving Christianity and Other Secular Writings, 2nd Edition, (Dangerous Little Books, 2011), p. 135.

reviews of his published work such as this one.126One of the first difficulties that we notice then, is that while he desires to be considered a scholar his work exhibits a staggeringly inadequate level of engagement with the academic and scholarly literature. His piece featured on his website titled, “The Forgotten Gospels of the Bible: Did Jesus Condone Homosexuality?” is no exception.127 The factual errors and confidant overstatements in the aforementioned post, as we will see, are rudimentary and one cannot help but wonder if McAfee’s information is actually all coming from an under-researched webpage as opposed to peerreviewed journal articles or academic resources. Even a cursory glance at Wikipedia, though far from scholarly, would have cleared up much of McAfee’s confused statements in this piece. We may never know where McAfee gets his information since he neglects to cite a single source or provide an iota of evidence for his claims. In an attempt to inject some facts, even if somewhat forcefully, into McAfee’s work our case will show McAfee to be at best reckless when dealing with early Christianity and at worst best reckless when dealing with early Christianity and at worst odd word article makes errors that require explanations longer than the post. So please bear with us as we unravel the claims beginning with the date of some of the New Testament books. Section I: Dating the New Testament128 126 Publishing polemical and popular level work with sympathetic publishing companies is not the same thing as contributing to peer-reviewed academic periodicals. We, have not been able to turn up even one result in the three libraries we have access to in our respective institutions though perhaps none of these institutions subscribe to the journal he might be published in. 127David McAfee, “The Forgotten Gospels of the Bible: Did Jesus Condone Homosexuality?” July 11, 2010.

http://davidgmcafee.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/the-forgotten-gospels-ofthe-bible-did-jesuscondone-homosexuality (accessed 28 January, 2014).

Precisely dating any book of the New Testament is a precarious endeavor. Archaeologists have yet to discover a single autograph of any book in the New Testament (or none have survived). The earliest fragment uncovered so far is P52, usually dated to 125 CE (though it may be even earlier), and it contains five verses from The Gospel According to John.129 Since we have no access to the autographs, historians are forced to rely on indications in the texts themselves with the latest possible date of composition being the earliest extant copy or attestation to that work. Therefore, the latest John’s Gospel could have been written is 125 CE (though most scholars believe it was written within the 1stcentury CE).130 The fact is, for the most part, scholars do not know with any great deal of certainty what the dates of many of the New Testament books within half a century or so, and thus it is no surprise many argue for dates that differ by a few decades. Since McAfee appears to be making general claims about the Gospels and the wider books of the New Testament we can outline some examples of his errors by appealing to the scholarly debate surrounding the dates on many of these books. Perhaps a good place to start is at the end, in what is often considered the latest book in the New Testament to be composed, 2 Peter. 128 In this section McAfee is partially right when he claims that the Gospels have “unknown or pseudo-named authors” but he’s still unclear on what he means by “pseudo-named authors.” This critique might be considered a minor criticism and so it found its way into the footnotes simply because it practically goes without saying that in the context of New Testament authorships the Gospels are all anonymous. So none of them can be, as he seems to think, written under a false namei.e. pseudopygraphically (otherwise the conjunction “or” is being confused with what he really means, that the authorship is both anonymous and the titles are incorrect attributions). The term “pseudonym” is from the Greek “pseudonymon” (ψευδώνυμον) literally, a “false name.”But in the context of the New Testament it usually refers to an author who falsely represents a separate more revered author of the past see William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker and Walter Bauer. A GreekEnglish Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed.

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

129Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes, The Test of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis, (Wm. B. Eerdemans Publishing Co., 1995), p. 6; for dating the fragment to earlier than 125 CE see, Colin H. Roberts, An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library (Manchester University Press, 1935), pp. 12—16.

The most liberal dating of 2 Peter places its composition around 150 CE.131Richard Bauckham argues for a date between 80—90 CE, basing his argument on 2 Peter 3:3—4 that reflects a disappointed Christian expectation that Jesus would return by the death of the first generation of Christians.132 Michael Kruger, while a doctoral student at the University of Edinburgh wrote what has become an influential paper for evangelical scholars, dating 2 Peter as early as 60 CE.133What is certain is that 2 Peter had to be composed before the beginning of the 3rdcentury CE since Origen (c. 182—251) makes mention of it and our earliest manuscript containing 2 Peter is possibly as early as the 3rd century.134 In being as generous as possible to McAfee, if we grant that 2 Peter is the last book in the New Testament to be written c. 150 CE, the claim that some books that comprise the New Testament are hundreds of years older than the life of Jesus of Nazareth (c. 7–2 BCE—CE 30–33), is simply incorrect. Yet without engaging with any of the scholarly literature, or the primary sources including Origen and 2 Peter itself (though we presume he would have to deal with English translations and interpretations of these), or the manuscript tradition, this claim becomes nothing short of incredibly naïve. Perhaps it is best to quote McAfee here as he explains that: 130 Frederick F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Important Books, 2013); Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Fortress Press, 1998), pp. 35-37.

131 Schuyler Brown, The Origins of Christianity: A Historical Introduction to the New Testament, (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 27.

132Richard Bauckham, The HarperCollins Study Bible, Fully Revised and Updated Edition. ed. by Harold W. Attridge, (Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), p. 2067. 133Michael J.

Kruger, The Authenticity of 2 Peter, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 42:4 (1999), pp.645-671.

134 Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica, 6.25.11. “Peter… has left one acknowledged Epistle; possibly also a second, but this is disputed.” For the dating of the

“Many of the books that compose the New Testament are actually hundreds of years older than the time when Jesus was supposed to have lived, and most of the gospels have unknown or pseudo-named authors…” Again, with generosity in mind, if we grant the most common liberal dating of 2 Peter, we are left with a difference of 120 years from the time Jesus died to the composition of 2 Peter. We can be charitable further still: if we grant the most common liberal dating of 2 Peter, we are left with a difference of approximately 154 years from the time Jesus was born to the composition of 2 Peter. Even being this generous still does not achieve the plurality of “hundreds” of years that McAfee claims. And what evidence does McAfee produce to support his claim? None whatsoever. Likely because there is none to be had for such a position. He is demonstrably wrong and when we consider how rapidly his platform is expanding, these errors become all the more egregious and misleading to the so many who look to him as an “expert” (after all this is what it means to be a scholar) or at the very least, a reliable guide through these issues. earliest manuscript of 2 Peter, P75, see: Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism. Erroll F. Rhodes (trans.) Grand Rapids, 1995: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 100.

The problem is further compounded with every assertion McAfee makes. Even skipping over the rather bizarre statement which opens the article,135 we can attempt address the more fundamental question of whether or not Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts are late. This is where the problem becomes exacerbated for McAfee. While there is divergence in scholarly consensus on when the gospels were composed there is practically universal consensus that

they were all within the 1st century CE with John closing them out at around 95 CE. While many scholars would place the composition of all four gospels prior to 70 CE,136most place Mark around 65—75 CE, Matthew and Luke in the 80s CE and John around 93—95 CE.137 Since Jesus’ death occurred between 27 BCE—CE 33 that places even the latest gospel, John, around 68 years after Jesus’ death (assuming the earliest possible date for the crucifixion and the latest possible date for John). This is a far cry from McAfee’s assertion that they were composed “hundreds of years” later and causes one to wonder about McAfee’s credibility and objectivity in these matters if he cannot (or will not) get such rudimentary facts correct. McAfee then seems to want to throw salt on his own wound when he says: 135 He opens by stating, “The Bible exists today in hundreds of variations and languages, some with entirely different meanings,” as if the meanings are varied by the translation.

136John AT Robinson, Redating the New Testament, (SCM Press, 1976); John Wenham, Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke: A Fresh Assault on the Synoptic Problem, (Hodder and Stoughton, 1992); Jean Carmignac, The Birth of the Synoptics, (Franciscan Herald Press, 1987); C. J. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History, (Eisenbrauns, 1990); James Crossley, The Date of Mark's Gospel: Insights from the Law in Earliest Christianity, (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2004).

137R. F. Karris, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Richard Dillon and Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice-Hall International, London, 1968, Vol. 2, p. 165.

“You may not be aware of the contents of the forgotten texts, some of which were written much closer to Jesus’ lifetime and should therefore be considered more valid than those created afterward.” We agree. The texts written closer to the life of Jesus should be considered more valid than those created afterward. As shown above it is Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts that nearly every scholar states were written prior to the Gnostic Gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas. We write “nearly every scholar” because while scholars like Elaine Pagels agree with the dating of the gospels thus far presented, some also argue for a date of between 50—100 CE

for the Gospel of Thomas.138 It should also be stated at this point that The Gospel of Thomas is the only non-canonical writing to even be considered by any scholar to possibly predate any of the canonical documents or to be contemporaneous with them. However it should be noted that on the issue of the dating of Thomas, these scholars are part of a radically small fringe of New Testament Scholars as will be argued for shortly (Section III, pp. 225ff). So while McAfee seems to want to take a page of Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code play book and claim that there was a plethora of early documents that were suppressed by the early church during church councils, experts the world over disagree. And for good reason as we will see.139 138 Helmust Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development, (Trinity Press International, 1990), pp. 86-96; Helmut Koester (1968), One Gospel and Four Primitive Gospels, The Harvard Theological Review, 61(2), pp. 203-247; John D. Crossan, Four Other Gospels: Shadows on the Contours of Canon (Winston, 1985), pp. 35-62.

Section II: Councils and the Development of the New Testament Canon Pre-ecumenical ( i.e. councils held prior to the first council of Nicaea in 325 CE) and ecumenical councils were held for various reasons, though not one of them to decide, as McAfee suggests, “the validity of the sacred documents.” The earliest known church council, held in the 2ndcentury, was called to condemn Montanism.140Other councils held in 155 CE (the Council of Rome), 193 CE (the Second Council of Rome and the Council of Ephesus), 251 CE (the Council of Carthage) etc. were called to reach agreements on issues including the Quartodecimen controversy (essentially when to celebrate the Lord’s Passover), the status of Christians who lapsed during persecution, how to treat apostates and their subsequent excommunication and so on. By the time of the Third Council of Carthage in 397 CE a canon of the Bible is mentioned but the story is complicated. Text critics such as Bruce Metzger tell us that there is good reason, based on the manuscript tradition, to think that this canon recorded in the Codex Canonum Ecclesiæ Africanæ was

mentioned only to the extent that they were consulting and seeking confirmation from other churches on the canon, not as a confirmation of the books that were to be considered canonical.141 Besides, the development of the New Testament canon is relatively well understood. While we do not have space here to go into any great detail, we can elaborate enough to satisfy our case that the recognition of the canon was simply not the product of any church council.142 139 The First Council of Nicaea made no declaration about the canon whatsoever. It was exclusively called to respond to the Arian heresy raging in the church. They deliberated on Christological issues, not canonical ones. For McAfee to repeat this kind of position as if it is academicallyacceptable is either the height of ignorance or the depths of dishonesty.

140Acts 15 records an even earlier meeting (though the author of Acts never called it a council) usually dated to around 50 CE, most scholars call it the ‘Council of Jerusalem’, though this too had nothing to do with the authenticity of biblical canon—how could it since most of the New Testament had yet to be recorded—but instead determined the salvation of the Gentiles and that all who were saved were on equal grounds (see Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, Oxford University Press, 5th Edition 2011, p. 125).

Marcion of Sinope appears to have been the first to suggest a list of books, a two-part canon comprised of an edited version of Luke’s Gospel (Evangelion), and the ten epistles of Paul that were available to him (Apostolikon).143Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, in the same year as the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) published his Ecclesiastical Histories and named eighteen books that he believed were genuine.144 Six years after the Council of Nicaea in 331 CE Constantine ordered copies of the eighteen sacred scriptures Eusebius had mentioned.145However, the first surviving affirmation of our twenty-seven books being mentioned in relation to canonization (kanonizomena) comes from Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in his Easter letter of 367 CE.146 The impression McAfee leaves, that of “these pre-Nicene gospels… councils were granted permission to determine the[ir] validity,” is simply untrue. In fact, upon even the slightest investigation we find that quite the opposite is the case.

Early Christians dealt with these attempts to fill in the gaps of Jesus’ life by openly documenting and circulating their refutations of them. One of the most prolific writers, noted for his refutation of Gnosticism and Gnostic texts, is Irenaeus (c. 140 CE—CE c. 200), the 2ndcentury bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul.147In his major work, On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis, he sought to defend early Christian orthodoxy against many of these gospels.148Based on a reference to Eleutherus as the current bishop of Rome the work is dated to c. 180.149In attacking one of these “pre-Nicene” works, The Gospel of Truth, Irenaeus argues for its illegitimacy by appealing to apostolic succession as a criterion of authenticity, he writes: 141 Bruce M. Metzger,The Canon of the New Testament: It’s Origin, Development, and Significance, (Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 315.

142We are not arguing that our historical understanding is full or complete. It is not. But historians know much more about the development of the New Testament canon than McAfee seems to realize—information that McAfee ignores or is otherwise ignorant of.

143Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 90—94.

144 See Eusebius, Hist. eccl. Book 3 Chapters 3, 24 and 25.

“But those who are from Valentinus, being, on the other hand, altogether reckless, while they put forth their own compositions, boast that they possess more Gospels than there really are. Indeed, they have arrived at such a pitch of audacity, as to entitle their comparatively recent writing “the Gospel of Truth,” though it agrees in nothing with the Gospels of the Apostles, so that they have really no Gospel which is not full of blasphemy” (3.11.9).150 145 This is perhaps the little detail that is the cause of the common gross error we too often hear, namely that it was Constantine who decided what books were canonical.

146 Athanasius, Epistulae festales 39, in Joannou, Fonti, 2. 75 lines 3-6. 147Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament, p. 76; Gerald Bray, The Early Theologians: Early Christian World, Volume 1—2, edited by Philip Esler, Routledge, 2004, p. 553

148 Irenaeus, Against Heresies

149 Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons, (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 13.

Furthermore, Clement (c. 150 CE—CE c. 214), head of the catechetical school in Alexandria, taking a less prolific approach compared to Irenaeus, still does just as thorough a refutation when attacking these Gnostic Gospels.151Contained mostly in his third book titled Stromata (or “carpets” because it is a collection of disconnected themes woven together) Clement argues that opponents should be won over through their own ideas (5.3.18; this may explain why he is known to utilize “Gnostic-language” (6.9)).152As an example, the Gospel of Philip dedicates much of its time to describing marriage as a mystery, and likens marriage that is “open to the public… [as a] prostitution, and the bride plays the harlot….”153The passage then seeks to have the “bridegrooms and brides” confined to the bridal chamber only allowing visits from immediate family. It is clear that Gnostics had an odd view of the function of marriage where self-restraint should be shown towards those human desires and the sexual relations that come along with it. Clement begins his third book by charging the Valentinians and Basilidians, a Gnostic sect founded by Basilides of Alexandria, with being “false apostles, and deceitful workers” (3.1.3).154Clement points to hypocrisy among them when he argues that even though these Basilidians forced their disciples to practice continence, the elect few lived “lewder lives than the most uncontrolled heathen” (3.1.3)!155 Clement insists that the decision of whether to marry or to remain abstinent must be a free choice and that if someone chooses to remain abstinent from marriage they have been “granted by God” to do so. But at the same time “we admire monogamy and the high standing on single marriage...,” after all, even the apostle Paul says, “If you burn, marry” (3.1.4).156He explains that these ascetic Encratites who “know not marriage nor begetting of children” (1.15.8) because they want to practice self-control do not quite realize that even though the purpose of marriage is procreation, it still requires self-restraint and chastity (3.8.57–8, 66–79).157

150 Irenaeus, Against Heresies

151 Gerald Bray, The Early Theologians, p. 558

152 Gerald Bray, The Early Theologians, p. 558; Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, p. 67, Pagels explains that some suggest Clement was a gnostic initiate. Clement, Stromata 6.9 153Gospel of Philip, trans. Wesley W. Isenberg, The Gnostic Society Library, online, 5 June 2013.

What does this mean for our purposes here? According to these preNicene Church fathers—well and truly before any ecumenical council —only those works by contemporaries or immediate followers of Jesus have any claim to authority and truth; any later works were at best profitable but not inspired or were full of untruth and blasphemy and were damaging to true faith. Given this, McAfee cannot be correct in his statement that they were considered equal until they were silenced since their invalidity was argued against openly and well and truly before any person (let alone an official council) affirmed the canonical twenty-seven books of the New Testament. In any case, these non-canonical Gospels do not even start appearing until the 2nd century and were subsequently discredited precisely because they were so late, not written by apostles or eyewitnesses or by companions of them, nor did they have what the church called “catholicity,” that is, wide ranging church acceptance and usage around the Roman Empire. In addition, as we have seen, they were believed to not only be at discord with what was considered previous revelation but flat out contradicted it. For these reasons, and many others, the Gnostic writings were never considered reliable, let alone inspired, documents by the early church. Let us now turn our attention to some of the reasons that most scholars place The Gospel of Thomas after the canonical four. 154 Clement, Stromata, from Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2. Edited by Alexander Roberts, The Gnostic Society Library, online, 7 February 2014. < http://www.gnosis.org/library/polem.htm#CA>

155 Clement, Stromata; Clement defines continence for us as “an ignoring of the body in accordance with the confession of faith in God” (3.1.4)

156 Clement, Stromata; An obvious reference to 1 Corinthians 7:9 157 Clement, Stromata

Section III: The Gospel of Thomas McAfee claims that certain Gnostic texts, like The Gospel of Thomas, were composed before the canonical gospels and thus should be considered as more reliable sources when reconstructing the historical Jesus.158Here we will examine several features that scholars have pointed out when dealing with The Gospel of Thomas and why such an assertion is simply untenable. First, Thomas seems to be dependent on the earlier canonical gospels. We can see this in examples such as sayings 10 and 16 which appear to be redactions or harmonizations of Luke 12:49, 51 —52 and Matthew 10:34—35. This means that Thomas must either be aware of these two gospels as already in circulation or else is borrowing from an even later redaction of these two sources. In either case, a redaction of two texts cannot be composed prior to the composition of the very texts which it is redacting. 158 McAfee has elsewhere mused on the Christ Myth Theory so we wonder if he thinks reconstructing a picture of the historical Jesus is even possible in the first place. Yet that is outside of the scope of the present work.

Second, Thomas appears to reflect the versions of certain sayings as presented in Luke. This is telling because most scholars across the theological spectrum hold to Markan Priority159 and so for Thomas to quote from the sayings as presented in Luke means that not only is it later than Luke but that it is also later than Mark. One example out of many possible is saying 5 that matches the parallel as found in Luke 8:17 rather than the earlier Mark 4:22. New Testament Scholar Craig Evans writes: “Over half of the New Testament writings are quoted, paralleled, or alluded to in Thomas... I'm not aware of a Christian writing prior to AD 150 that references this much of the New Testament.”160 Third, at many points Thomas give the impression of being dependent upon even later Syriac translations of the canonical

gospels. Now this is where it really gets problematic for those who want to date Thomas anywhere in the 1st century. Not only does it appear that Thomas was based on the canonical gospels, but it seems to be more than a textual generation removed in that it also shows signs of borrowing from translations of those gospels into other languages for more widespread distribution. Evans points to an example of this in saying 54 which follows the Syriac of Matthew 5:3 rather than the same passage in the original Greek or the Greek of the parallel in Luke 6:20. Klyne Snodgrass shows another example in saying 65—66 which contains the Parable of the Wicked Tenants but in the harmonized form of Mark and Luke found the early Syriac translations. Snodgrass writes, 159 Markan Priority is the position that Mark was the first gospel written and that Luke and Matthew used Mark as a source for their gospels. This means that we can see development of the sayings and grammar of Mark within Luke and Matthew.

160 Evans, Craig A. Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2008

“ Thomas, rather than representing the earliest form, has been shaped by this harmonizing tendency in Syria. If the Gospel of Thomas were the earliest, we would have to imagine that each of the evangelists or the traditions behind them expanded the parable in different directions and then that in the process of transmission the text was trimmed back to the form it has in the Syriac Gospels. It is much more likely that Thomas, which has a Syrian provenance, is dependent on the tradition of the canonical Gospels that has been abbreviated and harmonized by oral transmission.”161 With all these points in mind, it is simply incongruous with the data to assert that The Gospel of Thomas is earlier than the canonical gospels or that it is somehow more reliable. Here McAfee is simply speaking out the side of his neck and has squandered his best chance at an iota of academic integrity. Section IV: Jesus and Homosexuality

161 Klyne R. Snodgrass, “The Gospel of Thomas: A Secondary Gospel” in The Historical Jesus: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies. Volume 4: Lives of Jesus and Jesus outside the Bible. p298

At this point we can no longer expect McAfee to show any nuance in his evaluations of the historical data—so we will do it for him. Understanding homosexuality in the Ancient Near East during and prior to Jesus’ time cannot be done without essential gradations and very important distinctions. To keep this as brief as possible we will simply point out that “homosexuality” is a term that has only been in use since the late 19thcentury, and as some scholars have argued, it is not a useful term when attempting to construct same-sex interaction in antiquity because it carries with it very modern connotations of same-sex relationships.162 That is to say that in the modern western world we have sexualized identities which simply were not conceptualized in such a manner in the pre-modern or Ancient Near East. So now we arrive at what appears to be the point of the article. We must remember that the title is, “The Forgotten Gospels of the Bible: Did Jesus Condone Homosexuality?” Again leaving beside the nonsense about the Gnostic Gospels being “forgotten” when in fact they have simply been rejected as unreliable from the early church right up through modern scholarship as shown above, McAfee seems to want us to believe that because of some obscure reference in The Secret Gospel of Mark that Jesus did not only condone homosexuality but was himself possibly engaged in homosexual activity. Before we look at the provenance of this so-called Secret Gospel of Mark (SGM), let us look briefly at McAfee’s peculiar evaluation of it. He writes, “The Gospel of Mark is the first canonical Gospel in the New Testament and, in 1958, a letter was found containing what scholars believe to be a secret ending to the Mark Gospel, meant only to be witnessed by spiritual elite in the Christian community. You won’t find this passage in any modern bible, but scientists believe that this ancient scripture was indeed part of the original Holy Bible;”

162 Martti Nissinen, “Reflections on the ‘Historical-Critical’ Method: Historical Criticism and Critical Historicism,” Method Matters: Essays on the Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, ed. Joel M. LeMon and Kent Harold Richards, (Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), pp. 489— 490.

This is unusual for numerous reasons. First, what was discovered in 1958 was not SGM. It was in fact a copy of a letter purported to be from the church father Clement of Alexandria writing to an unknown Christian named Theodore about the dangerous use of this document by the heretical group known as the Carpocrations. In this letter, Clement references two quotes and mentions several editions of Mark known to be in circulation. So what was found was not the SGM but a possible reference to it by the church father Clement. Second, for McAfee to state thatit contained “what scholars believe to be a secret ending to the Mark Gospel,” needs to be heavily qualified. Again, he gives no footnotes, no references, nor any quotations from a single scholar or academic source to support this claim. In fact he would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of scholars who even hold that the letter is anything but a 20thcentury forgery (something we will address shortly) let alone an early and reliable primary source document. For McAfee to make such an assertion as if it has broad sweeping scholarly or academic support is either a product of complete and inexcusable ignorance for one who claims the title of “religious scholar” or else intentionally deceptive to substantiate his thesis. We are not sure which one is worse. Third, it is not clear what he means when he says that “scientists believe that this ancient scripture was indeed part of the original Holy Bible.” The reason this makes no sense is because it is not at all clear what “scientists” have to do with it unless by “scientists” he means something like New Testament Scholars, Textual Critics, Graphologists or Paleographers.163 Furthermore, it is bizarre because there is no such thing as an “original Holy Bible.” The Bible is not a single book. It is an anthology collected over time under certain guidelines—none of which the Gnostic gospels meet. While

fringe scholars like Pagels want to say that certain Gnostic gospels like Thomas and Judas represent relevant strands of early Christendom, not even she would make such a fantastic claim that they are part of the “original Holy Bible,” whatever that would even mean. Now that we have seen that McAfee is out of his depth in his description of what the SGM even is and how it was discovered, let us turn our attention to what it really is. The letter that was discovered at the Mar Saba Monastery by Morton Smith, a history professor at Columbia, is a copy of a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria and copied onto the end pages of a Dutch book by Isaac Voss entitled Writings of Ireneaus published in 1646. This means that the only reference we have to SGM cannot possibly be earlier than the late 17thcentury. Yet it gets worse. New Testament scholar Scott Brown writes that “most scholars consider [SGM] to be an expansion of the canonical Gospel, as Clement himself believed,”164 and not its own gospel. In fact most scholars argue that if SGM is authentic in the first place then there are massive problems with it. First, the story of Fragment 1 is actually a melting pot of Markan and Johannine elements such as allusions, and phrases that are taken directly from those canonical gospels. F.F. Bruce goes into detail and lists a whole series of identical phrases that the author of SGM has taken from Mark and John and thus concludes that SGM is more of a patchwork than anything else. He writes, “The fact that the expansion is such a pastiche…with its internal contradiction and confusion, indicates that it is a thoroughly artificial composition, quite out of keeping with Mark’s quality as a story-teller.”165 While this kind of mélange does not cohere with what we know of Mark, it is entirely consistent and quite common in ordinary Gnostic texts of the 2nd and 3rdcentury and beyond, such as the Egerton 2 Papyrus. 163 This smacks of the classic marketing device to sell a product by simply saying “Scientists have shown that…”

164 Brown, Scott, “On the Composition History of the Longer (‘Secret’) Gospel of Mark,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 122[1]: 2003, p. 89

Another problem with SGM is that it is too Markan. This might sound like a strange criticism to make but this quality is not uncommon in psuedopygraphal forgeries. In order to try and look like it was penned by the author it is attributed to, the composer will overdo it, cramming in too much of the style of the person in whose name they are writing. Schneemelcher writes, “[E]ven the Marcan character of the fragment is not without its problems. ‘The style is certainly Mark’s, but it is too Marcan to be Mark’; such was already C.C. Richardson’s verdict in 1974, and E. Best in 1979 confirmed this judgment in detail. In Mark itself the Marcan peculiarities of style are nowhere so piled up as in the ‘secret Gospel’!”166 Brown also rejects SGM based on redaction criticism because if we place it back into Mark it would disrupt the entire literary structure that is so obviously and painstakingly present without it. In Mark there is a pattern of three passion predictions (Mark 8:31—9:1; 9:31 —37; 10:33—45) framed by two accounts of Jesus healing blind men (Mark 8:22—26; 10:46—52). In each of the predictions Jesus predicts his death and resurrection (8:31; 9:31; 10:33—34), followed by the disciples failing to understand what Jesus means (8:32; 9:32 —34; 10:35—41), culminating in Jesus teaching a lesson on being a true disciple (8:34—9:1; 9:35—37; 10:42—45). Yet when we add SGM where it claims to go, between 8:34 and 8:35, it breaks down the entire structure of the narrative. Brown writes, “What is essential to note about this tight, logical, and highly structured pattern is that the inclusion of [Fragment] 1 disrupts the logic and the parallelism.”167 In fact this is the same kind of criticism that McAfee would no doubt latch on to in order to malign the gospels when it comes to known interpolations such as John 7:53—8:11 which clearly breaks up the narrative flow of John’s Gospel simply because it was not present in the original. 165 Bruce, F.F., The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity) , 1988, p. 308

166Schneemelcher, Wilhelm, New Testament Apocrypha, trans. R.M. Wilson (Louisville,

KY: Westminster/John Knox Press)1991, 1:107

Another major problem is with who the surrounding letter is attributed to. Even if it is authentic to Clement, that does not tell us very much because not only do we know of SGM from no other source, but also because Clement is notorious for acknowledging or engaging with known unauthentic documents. New Testament historian R.T. France writes, “Keen as Clement was on opposing what he regarded as heretical, he seems to have been uncritical almost to the point of gullibility in accepting material which chimed in with his own predilections.”168 Clement often quoted from non-canonical sources such as the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Apocalypse of Peter and even the Gospel of Thomas. This means that even if the letter is authentic to Clement, the very most that it would show was that there was a document in circulation around 175 CE in Alexandria that Clement was aware of. In fact because of its heavy Gnostic influence it would likely be no earlier than 125—150 CE since Gnosticism did not infiltrate the early church until around the mid-2ndcentury. So even if the letter is authentic, it is still far later than the canonical gospels and would have been written a continent away. 167 Brown, p. 103

168 France, R.T., The Evidence for Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity), 1986, p. 83

So the question then becomes, is SGM authentic or is it a forgery? McAfee may be surprised to learn that the overwhelming majority of scholarship (with only a handful on detractors) is that SGM is a 20th century forgery. After Smith “discovered” the manuscript in Mar Saba he claims he was only permitted to photograph the texts and was unable to remove them from the monastery. Unsurprisingly, further investigations at the Mar Saba Monastery have been unsuccessful in discovering Voss’ book in which SGM was said to be found. Almost immediately after publishing his findings, first in 1960 at the 96th meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis and then in two later books, people began to raise concerns about the genuineness of document. Even several of Smith’s closest colleagues and friends stated that the document was a forgery.

Arthur Darby Nock (Smith’s own professor) and Jacob Neusner (by his own admission his most proficient student) both publically went on record calling it a forgery. Other scholars have expressly come to the same conclusion (Brown, Skehan, Quesnell, France, Bruce, et al.) while still more have implied that it was a forgery without laying out the explicit charge against Smith himself (Metzger, Osburn, Criddle and Ehrman, et al .). Let us now look at some of the reasons for this. First, as stated above, no copy of the original document exists. Smith claims that he was not permitted to remove the book from the monastery and was only allowed to take photographs of the text and yet Ehrman calls into question why Smith, who spent 13 years of his life examining the photographs and publishing on them, never actually went back to the monastery to further examine the text. This is bizarre for anyone to so neglect their life’s work. Due to the fact that we have no originals we cannot take ink samples to verify the composition. How fortuitous for Smith. In addition to this, the letter is never mentioned by any sources contemporary to Clement. We have no mention of Clement’s correspondence with anyone named Theodore and Clement never mentions him elsewhere. Nowhere does Clement ever even mention another version of Mark used by the “spiritual elites” which is odd if he really did prize it as so vital to true spirituality. We do know that Clement did often speak of a spiritually mature sort of Christian but their spiritual advancement was always attributed to them living deeply in line with the canonical scriptures and not due to some secret esoteric knowledge or higher order private scriptures. In fact Clement is often quite strong in his condemnation of those very kind of Gnostic heresies and secret sects. Next, in the SGM letter, Clement does something quite bizarre for anyone familiar with his other writings. He encourages Theodore to deny SGM with an oath even though Clement universally declares that Christians should never swear an oath for any reason. This command would be morally and spiritually repugnant to Clement

based on the teaching ofall of his other known writings. This is one of many incongruities with Clement between his known writings and what we find in SGM.169 169For more see, Ehrman, Bart (2003), Lost Christianities (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 84-86

It is also telling that the SGM found at Mar Saba cannot be any earlier that the late 17th century because it was written on the back pages of a book published in 1646. This means that it would have had to have gone through nearly 1500 years of manuscript transmission and yet possess none of the usual copyist errors that are always found in transmissions of that length of time such as spelling errors or word order inconsistencies. Its total purity of transmission, unparalleled by any other text that survived that length of time, has caused many scholars to raise an eyebrow or two. Furthermore, like the language of the SGM that are too Markan, the vocabulary of the letter surrounding it are far too Clementine. The person who wrote the letter seems to be writing it with Stählin’s Concordance to Clement in their hand.170 That kind of over compensating conspicuousness is found not only in SGM proper but in the letter attributed to Clement in which it is contained and seems to indicate that both were intentionally crafted with the same intent of the passing of a hoax. They appear to be written by the same person with the same objectives. Even more telling is the fact that the manuscript appears to end right where the climax would be. It ends with, “But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be and are falsifications. Now the true explanation and that which accords with the true philosophy….” In fact many scholars have found Smith’s later publications to be just as revealing as the text itself. He often appears to be snickering at the fact that he has gotten away with a kind of scholastic prank. In his technical book on the manuscript, Smith dedicated it to his professor Arthur Darby Nock, the man who went to his grave publically denouncing SGM as a forgery. In Smith’s

more popular level book, Secret Mark, Smith’s dedication is to “The one who knows” to which Quesnell skeptically asks, “Who is ‘the one who knows’? What does he know?”171Ehrman also points out that in Voss’ book in which the letter was discovered, in the photograph of the page before where SGM starts, Voss ends his own book with an exhortation against scholars who forge and falsify texts with the intention of pulling the wool over people’s eyes in order to pass off counterfeit documents as authentic. The irony that Ehrman finds to strain credulity is that on the very next page is where Smith claims to have found a possibly inauthentic letter of Clement. It is hard to imagine a more coincidental location to start a textual prank. 170Quesnell, Quentin (1975), “The Mar Saba Clementine: A Question of Evidence,” Catholic Bible Quarterly, 37[1]: p.64

The case is worse for Smith when the photographs are examined by text critics, graphologists and paleographers. Stephen Carlson was the first to examine them with such methods when he published his 2005 book The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark.When Carlson examined the photographs he noticed a tell-tale sign of forgery, the “forger’s tremor.” This is a feature of writing where a forger tries to move slowly to get the handwriting correct causing noticeable shaky pen lines or breaks when the pen is lifted in the middle of strokes. Carlson also saw some striking similarities between the θ and the λ in the SGM letter and in Smith’s own work in Greek where Smith’s formation of those letters is very peculiar to him. In 2010 the pictures were submitted at the request of The Biblical Archaeology Review to two Greek graphologists. Venetia Anastasopoulou was the first but her findings were inconclusive. The second of the two, Agamemnon Tselikas, concluded that the text was a 20thcentury forgery and that it revealed only a knowledge of 18thcentury Greek text type. He felt confident enough to say that it was either forged by Smith or someone who worked for him. 171 Quesnell p. 66

Even hyper-critical author and Christ Myth advocate Robert M. Price is not convinced. He tells of a story where he went into a book store and happened upon a little novel entitled, The Mystery of Mar Saba. Thinking that it was a novel written after the Smith discovery (as others had popularly done) he picked it up and began to read. The problem arose when he discovered that the book was written in 1940, 33 years prior to Smith’s discovery. Price writes, “ The Mystery of Mar Saba by J. H. Hunter was issued in 1940 by Evangelical Publishers in New York and Canada and reprinted each of the next six years. Guess what happens in it? A delver in none other than the monastery of Mar Saba announces the discovery of an ancient document, the Shred of Nicodemus. It reads: “I, Nicodemus, in company with Joseph of Arimathea in the early morn of the first day of the week removed the body of Jesus. Coming forth we found the tomb opened and the stone rolled away after the earthquake. We left the linen clothes in the tomb, and carried Him forth lest profane hands desecrate His body. We buried Him in the sepulcher near the garden over the Kedron where standeth the pillar Absalom reared for himself in the King's Dale.” As might be imagined, the announcement shocks the world, undermining faith in the resurrection. But it turns out that the Shred of Nicodemus is a hoax engineered by its “discoverer,” a hater of the Christian religion. Does any of this sound familiar?”172 Price concludes with this thought, “Morton Smith might easily have become familiar with this popular novel, and I cannot help wondering if it gave him the idea for a hoax of his own, meant to undermine the Christian faith which he found to be oppressive.” Price’s final comment brings us to our last critique. It should be noted that Smith himself was a homosexual who was quite outspoken and was known to force homosexual affirmations onto other texts as well. In addition to this, he was also open about his distaste for what he thought was Christendom’s historic bigotry against the homosexual community. Historian Donald Akenson wrote that Smith’s forgery was “a nice ironic gay joke at the expense of all the self-important

scholars who not only miss the irony, but believe that this alleged piece of gospel comes to us in the first-known letter of the great Clement of Alexandria.”173 This is not to say that because Smith was a homosexual that therefore he cannot be trusted but rather that he had a track record of strong distaste for Christendom and for seeing unrelated texts as affirming homosexuality. It is not hard to see the extreme coincidence that such a man would be the one to discover a highly questionable text that just so happens to have Jesus affirming or even possibly engaging in homosexual activity. Take that Christendom. In any case, even if we were able to overcome all of those objections and believe that SGM and the Clement letter were authentic, then it would still not support McAfee’s claim that it was earlier than the canonical gospels and thus more reliable. As Stephen C. Carlson writes, 172 http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/secret.htm 173 as quoted in Ehrman, p. 267, n. 19

“As many other scholars have concluded, it is inadvisable to rest too much on Secret Mark. The alleged letter of Clement that quotes it might be a forgery from more recent centuries. If the letter is genuine, the Secret Mark to which it refers may be, at most, an ancient but secondary edition of Mark produced in the second century by some group seeking to promote its own esoteric interests.”174 Even eminent New Testament scholar N. T. Wright notes that those few scholars who do accept the document as authentic, do not themselves think that it is authentic to Mark, but that it is a later 2ndcentury Gnostic adaptation of Mark.175 This then annihilates McAfee’s claim that it is earlier than the canonical gospels and thus more reliable a text that we can use it to build a case that Jesus was himself engaged in homosexual activity. Such a declaration is the height of ignorance, or academic negligence, or both.

Conclusion As McAfee has only completed an undergraduate degree, we do not expect that he should be able to engage and deal with the primary sources literature. As far as we know he cannot understand Ancient or Koine Greek, Ancient Hebrew, or Aramaic (let alone Syriac) and so it would be impossible for him to do so (barring English translations) and cruel of us to expect so much of him. Nevertheless, he can apparently read, speak, and write in English and so there is no excuse for his ignorance and failure to engage with secondary sources on 1) the dating of the New Testament documents, 2) the canonization of the New Testament, 3) the dating of the Gospel of Thomas (or any “pre-Nicene Gospel for that matter), 4) the nuances of the culture and historical climate of antiquity, and 5) the furor surrounding the Secret Gospel of Mark and its highly likely counterfeit origins—all of which have been professionally researched, investigated, and expounded on in great detail in English. The truth is, anyone could have written this review just by doing what McAfee neglected to do—read the scholarly and academic literature that is readily available to those simply willing to invest a modicum of time and energy into looking them up. 174 Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 314–15

175 Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 1996, p. 49.

A common thread between much of McAfee’s work is that it is replete with historical and factual errors, starved to death of any evidence, and therefore undertakings such as this review are important. For one, we needed to provide the information and sources McAfee, derelict in his duties as a so-called scholar, neglected to give to his readers. But also because many people, perhaps fooled by his self-mischaracterization as a “scholar” look to his work and information to learn about the Bible and the history of early Christianity.176We suspect that many of his readers are looking for easy and simplistic “refutations” of Christianity because they already think it is nonsense and so any criticism will suffice for their

cause. Yet it is still his duty to ensure those people are presented with at least an accurate account of history. After all, can one really call himself a “Skeptic” or a “Free Thinker,” let alone a “scholar” if they are content to wallow in such a shallow marsh of ignorance in order to justify their beliefs? ABOUT THE AUTHOR 176On last count his website had accumulated over 196,000 visits and his Facebook page has over 106,000 Likes (as of 1/2/2016).

Tyler Vela studied Philosophy and English at Sonoma State University, graduated with a Pre-seminary B.A. (Biblical and Theological Studies) from Moody Bible Institute (Chicago), and is currently studying toward his Masters of Biblical Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He is the host of The Freed Thinker Podcast and blog and is a frequent guest to many Christian and skeptical podcasts.