WASHINGTON (KGOV) Dec 20, 2019 — BREAKING: U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee floats possible charges against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for Obstruction of Congress and Abuse of Power for withholding impeachment articles from the Senate. Source: kgov.com/swenekafhcaepmi
Continuing to enjoy the slow news month, Bob Enyart agrees though that he would have to begin covering the Russia/Ukraine blah blah blah if and when criminal charges are leveled against the former heads of the FBI, CIA, or any of their hand-picked agents investigating Trump. In the meantime Bob mentions in passing that the lied-to federal FISA judges are not blasting the FBI over being defrauded because they themselves are part of the deep state Washington swamp shadow government. And speaking of which, who is it anyway who owns the domain ShadowGov.com? Oh yeah, it's us! So Bob recounts the good use that we've made of the Shadow Government over the years!
* Note the ShadowGov Shirt:
Today's Resource: Monthly BEL TV Classics
Bob Enyart, America's most popular, self proclaimed, rightwing religious fanatic, homophobic, anti-choice talk show host is the Pastor if Denver Bible Church. Nielsen ratings have shown BEL drawing a larger audience than NBC's Conan O'Brien on a couple nights each week, for example, in South Bend, IN, a top 100 American market with 300,000 households!
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* Presenting Open Theism to an Atheist: This past Friday, Dec. 13, 2019, Will Duffy of opentheism.org presented the theology to popular "agnostic atheist" Doug of PineCreek. Also, just below, Bob Enyart answer's PineCreek Doug's Challenge to Christians.
* PineCreek Doug's Challenge for Christians in 8 Questions: Bob Enyart takes Doug's challenge regarding theodicy and the so-called embarrasing Bible verses.
When an atheist cherry picks verses he thinks are among the most embarassing or worst statements in the Bible, what he should consider is that Jesus is the rope that men use to hang themselves. As the Bible says, He is the rock of offense, used, as Jesus Himself says, to grind into powder those who will not obey Him (see rsr.org/nice.) God didn't hide the Tree of Good and Evil somewhere, but put it in the middle of the Garden of Eden. If people want to hate Him instead of look at what's amazingly good and loving and right, though with great sadness, He is ready to show them the door. For a man who loves a woman and puts her in a house with no exits is not a dream husband but a nightmare.
So you can point to where God kills an individual, or a whole city, or the population of the entire world in the global flood (see rsr.org/evidence) and say, look how evil God is. But in reality, those killed, in the flood or however, who are not wicked will end up in paradise forever, and those killed who end up in Hell only end up there because they hate God and like atheists want nothing to do with Him. If they could, they would kill God in order to vindicate themselves. Crucify Him, is their cry.
So here's what Doug thinks are among the worst or most embarrasing things in the Bible.
1. TALKING SNAKE: Yes, I believe that a serpent talked. On the other hand, like you Doug, atheists believe that millions of animals talk. People. And you believe this even though Charles Darwin's predictions have been disproved even by the world's leading atheist linguists like Chomsky and Sapir and that like virtually all origin theories, like with the origin of life itself, the origin of language has hit a dead end.
EVEN ATHEIST LINGUISTS: MIT and Yale linguists Noam Chomsky and Edward Sapir have pointed out that Darwin was wrong about animal grunts being a step toward language (they're not), and he was wrong that such a thing as primitive languages exist (they don't) or that we would find evidence that they have existed (we haven't). Famed linguist Stuart Chase: 'stories about tribes with only grunts and squeals are biological fakes." Another scientist, P.A. Gaeng concluded "Any hope, therefore, of discovering the specific origin of language from the languages of primitive groups must also be abandoned." Without God, agnostics have an explanation for the origin of nothing. And language isn't just noise but sounds imbued with symbolism, so such a system requires the use of symbolic logic. Yet the classical laws of chemistry and physics have no symbolic logic function. So just as they could not produce any kind of symbolic code including the genetic code, neither can an exclusively materialist domain explain the origin of a symbolic system.
MATERIALISTS LACK A THEORY: Materialists Don't Even Have a Theory on Origins: They start with the very thing that they're supposed to explain how it originated.
- the origin of species for Darwin begins with species already in existence!
- the origin of life on earth is increasingly seen as seeded from already existing alien life!
- the origin of the universe is increasingly explained by a pre-existing multiverse!
- and see more of this pattern at rsr.org/atheism.
2 FISH: I believe that a man lived in the belly of a fish for three days. On the other hand, you Doug, like virtually all atheists, believe that human beings evolved from fish, fish that learned to live on land. But every major hurdle for evolution is an extinction level event, so this is believing by blind faith. (For example, how do you evolve a rsr.org/vital-organ?) Thousands of degreed scientists and scholars have rejected Darwinian evolution. We list 3,000 of them by name at rsr.org/doubting. Surveys indicate thousands more. Medical doctors aren't scientists but they are far more educated in biology than the average atheist. And as experts in applied science, in the U.S. alone, 570,000 MDs say that God brought about or directly created humans, as reported by the pro-Darwin Louis Finkelstein Institute.
3 STONING CHILDREN: Regarding Deuteronomy 21:18-21, yes, I believe that Jesus affirmed the death penalty including for severe rebellion (Mark 7:9-13). And I note that just like atheists everywhere, you too Doug misrepresent this passage by implying that God is talking about executing minor children.
DRUNKARD: All of you leave out that the rebellious person is a drunkard (verse 20). There aren't many alcoholic nine-year olds. You remain a "son" throughout your life. This refers to adult rebels. Rebellion leads to death. Man's cruelty to man fills history books, from one war to the next, one rebellion to the next, one slaughter to the next. The democide of the 20th-century's atheistic social Darwinist governments killed far more than a hundred million of their own citizens, and while those deaths can be condemned based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, not a single murder can be objectively condemned from the worldview that claims that we are just animals and while there are individual and group preferences there are no moral absolutes. In comparison to the materialist mass slaughter of the last 100 years, consider the glory that would come from a world where children grew up to honor God and honor their parents. We will experience that kind of world, for a thousand years, after Jesus returns in His Second Coming.
4 MARRYING MIDIANITE WOMEN SPARED DEATH IN WAR: Regarding Numbers 31:31-40 yes, I believe that God authorized the Israelites to kill the Midianites except to spare some of the women who could be married. I also see that you misrepresent this text Doug implying human sacrifice and rape.
TRIBUTE: The 32 women of the "Lord's tribute" did not become human sacrifices. They were among the women spared to be married, with these 32 married into the priestly tribe of Levi. (The "tribute" of the donkeys Num. 31:39, for example, were not sacrificed; unclean donkey blood couldn't be sprinkled on the altar and its unclean meat couldn't be eaten. Rather, these were given to the priestly tribe.)
THOUSANDS? The unit translated "thousands" sometimes means thousands and sometimes refers to a much smaller unit. Injustice against even one woman, of course, is unacceptable. But it will become relevant in a moment that the text refers to a much smaller number of women than assumed.
HUMAN SACRIFICE: The Bible repeatedly condemns human sacrifice. So if you take Scripture in the worst possible light instead of on its own terms, then you will satisfy yourself with misrepresentations. Here's an analogy. Much of the ancient world was worshipping the heavenly bodies yet the Bible said they are not gods but lights (Gen 1:14), so don't worship them, the sun, moon, and stars (Deut 4:19). Likewise, while much of the ancient world was committing human sacrifice, the Bible commands against it (Deut 18:9-10, etc.) and God even says "It never entered My mind that you would do such a thing" (Jer. 32:35) nor to "command such a thing" (Jer. 19:5). So Doug your bias against God leads you to misrepresent the text, claiming these 32 women were offered up as human sacrifices.
COMMON CULTURE: Atheists also don't know why virtually the entire ancient world was sacrificing animals? It's because God commanded it of Adam and Noah. Anthropologists document a worldwide common culture that supports the Bible's history and not that we evolved over the last few million years. Worldwide commonalities include matters as diverse as marriage, the seven day week, animal sacrifice, measuring with a cubit, and even accounts of dragons (i.e., dinosaurs; rsr.org/dragons) and belief in a flood with man and animals saved in a vessel rsr.org/flood-accounts.
GENOCIDE: Some Midianite women were spared death. When God kills, or orders killed, in judgment, a whole city (Jericho), a nation (Midian), or the whole world (Noah, see rsr.org/evidence), the innocent children or forgiven adults go to paradise with Him, even though they happened to be killed in the corporate judgment. (Today we call this collateral damage.) Atheists even hate God for bringing such innocent victims to heaven. They presume unreasonably that even though He is the Creator, He would have no authority to bring his creatures from this life to the afterlife. But for those who hate God, they get to live in the afterlife without Him, just as they want to.
RAPE: The text doesn't say that the women were raped, which you imply. Those spared death were available to be married. There were not tens of thousands of them. For the entire tribe of Levi there were 32 women. These women survived as female slaves, concubines, or wives, of Israelites, and many of them raised children of their own whom they undoubtedly loved, whereas their pagan husbands may have taken their children and burned them alive as human sacrifices. (Archaeologist continue to find evidence around the world that pagans committed child sacrifice. Likewise today, virtually all atheists aggressively support the decriminalized dismemberment of children who are not yet born and further, many leading atheists and other "pro-choicers" support killing babies after they are born including MIT's Stephen Pinker, Princeton's Peter Singer, Oxford's Richard Dawkins, etc.) There is no rape in the text.
5 EXECUTING AN UNFAITHFUL WIFE: Adultery leads to death, one way or the other, in tiny numbers, or in epidemic numbers. Regarding Numbers 5:19-21 yes, Jesus affirmed the death penalty including for an unfaithful wife and for the man who committed adultery with her. Yet Doug, along with many atheists, misrepresent the text claiming that it requires killing an unborn child. First, let's consider death for adultery.
ATHEISM KILLS FAR MORE UNFAITHFUL WIVES: Atheists are responsible in part for far, far more violent deaths of women killed because of their materialist norms, which have attempted to remove the stigma from adultery. (They try to sterilize it by calling it consenting adults.) Like all violations of God's law, adultery too leads to death. The death penalty for adultery would reinforce the stigma. And far far fewer women would die, probably fewer would die than the number who get killed by a jealous spouse, and even, fewer than those women who kill themselves by suicide after troubled intimate relationships. Suicide is 10th leading cause of death in U.S., a quarter are women. And a third of women murdered in the U.S. are murdered by a sex partner.
A PREGNANT CONDEMNED WOMAN: The text doesn't mention killing an unborn child and because you put your opponents in the worst-possible light, rather than the best possible light, you misrepresent the text. First, with this penalty there would be virtually no women committing adultery. Then remember that a woman can only get pregnant a few days out of the month (unfertilized ovum survives half a day; sperm a few days). With the death penalty, wives would not cheat because men are just not that irresistible, to risk being stoning over. In the U.S. alone, that means tens of thousands of murders committed in your lifetime, and mine, would not have happened! Those marriages would have been spared, and all those children in those marriages, would have been spared having their hearts ripped open. (The FBI tracks drug-related crime but not adultery-related crime, as it should.) So with virtually no women committing adultery, and pregnancy unlikely, you are focusing on a miniscule possibility. But let's say that the woman is pregnant.
PLEA OF PREGNANCY: Throughout America's history our courts have upheld the "plea of pregnancy" (see AmericanRTL.org/constitution) to postpone a pregnant woman's execution. Even in ancient Persian, abortion, even for rape, was viewed as murder (see link). So like today's Americans, ancient Israelites obeying God would not knowingly kill a pregnant woman.
WITH ALL THAT, IF A BABY WAS KILLED UNINTENTIONALLY: If God's law were obeyed and in an extremely rare case a baby was killed, as with all babies who die, that child would be taken to heaven and grow up there with God and those who love Him. Hopefully that child, as he or she grows, will not choose the same rebellion that Adam and Eve did, that you have Doug, and that Lucifer and the fallen angels did.
REGARDING GOD'S FORENSIC SCIENCE TEST OF UNFAITHFULNESS: God gave to the priests a forensic science method of determining unfaithfulness, using the microbial ecology in the tabernacle. The interactomes of the biological world are bewildering in their reliability, complexity, and functionality and the ecosystem within the tabernacle had the right components for this test to yield certain results.
6 MANY RAISED AFTER CRUCIFIXION: Yes, as in Matthew 27, I believe that many of those who had trusted in Christ (the saints) who had just recently died, like Lazarus, were physically resurrected. A tiny percentage of the Jews and Gentiles in Israel had trusted in Christ, especially prior to His Resurrection and Pentecost. So of that tiny percentage, "many" of those "saints" were raised, meaning perhaps up to a dozen.
7 WITNESSES PARTICIPATE AS EXECUTIONERS: Yes, as in Deut. 13:6-10, I believe that Jesus not only supported the death penalty, but that He commanded witnesses to take part in the execution. Of course this would greatly reduce the likelihood of false accusations. The text you mention does not reference adultery, but your goal is to maximize the emotional impact of your arguments. Yet you are correct in that this would also apply to adultery, however, as we have discussed, with stoning to death as the penalty for a married woman and her adulterous partner, there would be virtually no adultery. This alone would prevents tens of thousands of people in our lifetimes from becoming murderers and would save even more from being murdered. There is no way to disassociate death from violating God's law. So the real bloodshed and epidemic dead body count belongs not to God's law, but to the liberal, progressive, materialist, decriminalization of adultery.
8 JEPHTHAH SACRIFICED OR DEDICATED TO GOD: I presume Doug that you are aware of a widespread understanding of this text as described for example by popular creationist Dr. Henry Morris. Regarding Judges 11:30-39 and the atheist tendency to present their opponents in the worst possible light, Jephthah's daughter did not become a human sacrifice (which the Bible prohibits), but dedicated her life to live in service to the families of the Levitical tribe. The Hebrew conjunction waw (translated “and” in verse 31) is very flexible depending on context and here should be “or”. So whatever comes out of my doors "shall surely be the Lord’s [like Samuel, etc., dedicated to Him], and/or I will offer it up as a burnt offering [if it is an animal]." This is why in the account, rather depicting her grieving the loss of her life, emphasizes the lament that she will never have a child (and so leaving her father without descendants). But now though in heaven with her dad their family is almost without number.
On Doug's channel description he writes, "doubt is a virtue, that can lead to humility and compassion whereas certainty can lead to arrogance and violence". Is he certain about that? Of course, his statement presents an agnostic word game. If someone says that the Earth is round, and you doubt it, like 10% of people in modern secularized France do, their doubt is a kind of arrogance, and such arrogance certainly leads to passive-aggressive behavior. Yet of course, Doug didn't say that doubt and certainty "DO" lead to particular outcomes but that they MAY lead to those outcomes, or the reverse. And widespread doubt of countless things that are certain, such as that it is wrong to rape women, it is wrong to violently rape women, it is wrong to violently rape women for entertainment, etc., is hubris, inherently destructive, and IS arrogance and leads with certainty to violence.