Monday 21 November 2011

Stormin' Norman Geisler

Objection Four: God Isn't Worthy Of Worship If He Kills Innocent Children, Norman L Geisler, PhD
CS Lewis Quotes:1 (Welcome back, Jack!)
Mentions Of Former Atheists: 3 (Lee Strobel (twice), Ed Boyd (co-author of a book of Christian apologetics) and 'prominent historian Sir William Ramsay (a distinctly dubious claim)
How Do I Know Norman L Geisler Is Like Me?  'It was a soft-spoken and grandfatherly Geisler who invited me into his modest yet comfortable office [...] Casually dressed in a multicolored sweater over a blue button-down shirt, he had an easy smile and a down-to-earth sense of humor.'  Yes, soft-spoken just like Bradley
How Forceful Is Strobel In Presenting The Questions? Very.  'I came armed with some of the most difficult issues of all [...] I looked up at Geisler to see if he was wincing from the sting of Paine's words [...] I raised my hand to protest [...] "Touche", I thought to myself.  Quickly regrouping, I pressed on [...] the time had come to get to the crux of the issue.  I looked into Geisler's eyes.  My voice leaked sarcasm as I posed the most pointed objection [...] that got me started on a roll [...] I continued, picking up speed as I went.'   

This section is rather interesting in that there's really very little for me to say on the subject.  Geisler's own words will show the bizarre depths that the book has now reached.  Geisler claims that God is entitled to kill whoever he wants, and then spends the rest of the interview refuting a random selection of claims of Biblical cruelty.  I will simply quote him, with minimal commentary, to give the reader a flavour of what to expect.  I can only assume that Strobel thinks that anyone who has bought his arguments so far cannot back away from the awful truth about his version of Christianity at this stage.
 
Amalekites: Why They Should Be Grateful We Killed Them

It's hard to know whether ones mouth should be slack-jawed with the flagrant hypocrisy of Geisler's arguments, or clamped shut to grind one's teeth at his utter contempt for humanity.  Strobel latches onto the slaughter of the Amalekites as a fairly typical episode in the dark, depraved depths of the Old Testament.  And why does Geisler tell us that the Amalekites deserved to be wiped out, slaughtered in their homes or defending their cities?  Well, the reason is, Geisler tells us, that the Amalekites deserved it because they were so Evil.  In fact, you know those Amalekites?  They had to be wiped out because they were genocidal

Erm... Norm? 

Fresh from convicting the Amalekites of being immoral on the basis of documents written by their sworn enemies (neither Geisler nor Strobel ever think to question the Biblical description of the Amalekites), Geisler now unleashes a spew of venom against the whole of humanity.  He starts mildly (by his standards): God can kill anyone he wants because he created life so he can therefore take it away.  (Let's hope we never clone anyone, eh Norm?)  From this he builds steadily to a crescendo of bloodthirstiness that would have most Bond villains eyeing him and edging towards the doors:
technically nobody is truly innocent.  The Bible says in Psalm 51 that we're all born in sin; that is, with the propensity to rebel and commit wrongdoing.  Also, we need to keep in mind God's sovereignty over life [...] he has the right to take it if he wishes [...] the fate of children throughout history has always been with their parents, whether that's for good or ill [...] In that thoroughly evil and violent and depraved culture, there was no hope for those children.  This nation was so polluted that it was like gangrene that was taking over a person's leg, and God had to amputate the leg [...] In a sense, God's action was an act of mercy [...] According to the Bible, every child who dies before the age of accountability goes to heaven [...] if they had continued to live in that horrible society, past the age of accountability, they undoubtedly would have become corrupted and thereby lost forever.' 
(My emphasis.) 

Oh dear, Norm, I don't think you and I are going to be friends.  If Strobel was shuffling uncomfortably in his seat at this point, he doesn't tell us so.  The only hint that we get that he might be just the teensiest bit wary of what he has just heard is that for the first time I can recall in the book, he asks a follow-up question rather than just unthinkingly swallowing whatever his interviewee says:

'If ultimately it was best for those children to die before the age of accountability because they would go to heaven, why can't the same be said about unborn children who are aborted today?' 

It' a good question.  It's not the one I would have asked - I would have asked if there are any more ways of getting to Heaven without accepting Jesus, and why Jesus' sacrifice was necessary at all in that case, thus rendering much of Christian theology redundant.  But I digress, with my heathen common sense. 

Geisler responds in two ways, the first of which is simply false:

'First, God doesn't command anyone today to have an abortion; in fact, it's contrary to the teachings of the Bible.  Second, today we don't have a culture that's as thoroughly corrupt as the Amalekite society.  In that culture, there was no hope; today, there's hope.'

I have discussed abortion and the Bible elsewhere. 

Geisler continues to try to find reasons to justify genocide:
they had four hundred years to repent.  That's a very long time. 
Surely the ones who wanted to be saved from destruction fled and were spared. 

'God's primary desire was to drive these evil people out of the land that they already knew had been promised for a long time to Israel.  [...] He wanted to create an environment where the Messiah could come for the benefit of millions of people through history.' 

Got that?  So the Amalekites were so depraved they deserved to die (according to the testimony of the people who massacred them).  Killing their children was an act of mercy.  And anyway they wanted to die or they would have fled.  Besides, God didn't want to kill them, he just wanted ethnic cleansing, and they should have known this by studying the religious texts of all the other nations around them. 

My word, psychopaths and rapists are supposed to be the ones who blame their victims like this. 

We get the same calumnies repeated against the (other) Canaanites at Jericho.  And then Geisler offers us a ray of hope.  Nineveh was also 'corrupt' but the residents repented and God saved them. 

Erm, Norm... when exactly did Nineveh become Jewish, Norm? 

So Geisler has claimed that genocide was restricted to peoples trying to wipe out the Hebrews, who were living in the 'promised land', and that women and children would have fled anyway.  Let's take a quick look at a Biblical verse to see how he's doing, shall we? 
When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 
When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it.  As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves.
And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. 
This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you.
Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God.
- Deut 20

Got that?  There are specific injunctions pertaining to attacking cities not within Israelite territory, and not home to the nations the Bible names in the quoted section.  The Hebrews clearly were expecting to find women and children inside.  They were permitted to surrender, but only to become slaves.  Geisler's knowledge of the Bible doesn't seem too hot here, or his defence too accurate. 

Next we get the story of Elisha and the bears.  Geisler again uses a dubious translation to claim that the forty-two people slaughtered were soldiers rather than small children; this too I have dealt with elsewhere, and it is simply untrue - the Bible specifies 'small children' in unequivocal language. 

Errant Inerrantism

Having come as close as he will to addressing the issue at point head on, Strobel now completely changes the subject and (after a brief and uninformative interlude on the ethics of animal sacrifice) begins a discussion on the accuracy of the Bible, claiming 'There's more evidence that the Bible is a reliable source than there is for any other book from the ancient world' (really?  Caesar's Gallic Wars not as trustworthy as the Book of Genesis then?).  This subject is clearly only of mild interest to him, as he describes his reactions to it in fairly middling terms, by his slightly hysterical standards: 'sitting back down on the edge of my seat in anticipation', etc. 
Geisler chooses to deliver a string of unsupported and false claims:
'Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob [...] are increasingly corroborated'

(In fact there is not a shred of archaeological evidence for any of them.) 

He claims Sodom and Gomorrah have been located (they haven't), and that the Biblical Hittites have been discovered (they haven't, although an unrelated culture from a different time and location have been given the same name due to some early confusion). 
In among all this, he does throw in a few real examples such as the Exile; it's notable that this occurred at around the time the Bible was actually being written, whereas the others are far earlier.  Somewhere between the two, he mentions in passing King David; that there is now a small amount of evidence suggesting he was a real person is one of the few nuggets of truth in Geisler's otherwise unbroken parade of wishful thinking, and consequently this is about the only claim Geisler makes that rises to the heights of being controversial. 
Oh, and for good measure, Luke is 'an impeccable historian [...] never proven wrong.'  (Three hour eclipse, anyone?  The beach resort of Gadara?

I Saw This Coming...

Having utterly muffed his archaeology, Geisler now moves on to 'evidence of divine origin' (by which he means fulfilled prophecies). 

Virtually everything he mentions is either a prophecy 'fulfilled' before the prophecy itself was written down, or a dubious claim clearly made by the NT in order to show Jesus fulfilling an OT prophecy.  Apparently, he sees no problem with either of these scenarios. 
Nostrodamus, we are told is 'so confusing that the entire prophecy is meaningless', yet Daniel apparently gives an exact date for Jesus (not unless Jesus was born 62 weeks after Jerusalem was rebuilt, it doesn't).  He claims there is no false Biblical prophecy (apparently unaware that Jesus is quoted as predicting the end of the world within the lifetime of those present). 

He starts to argue that modern psychics have no real powers (something with which I can actually agree) before suddenly blurting out that 'besides, you'll find that [...] psychics commonly deal with occult practices - [Jeane Dixon] used a crystal ball, for example - and that could account for some of what they predicted.'  (Again, my emphasis)  So crystal balls really work, but they are the wrong kind of prophecy.  Perhaps Geisler has one himself, so that he could research Dixon in advance of Strobel's question? 
Geisler continues his descent into his own fantasy version of rationality. 

Some truth in [Biblical passages] can appropriately be applied to Christ even though it was not specifically predictive of him.
Got that?  So it's perfectly legitimate to hunt through the OT for passages that can be applied to Jesus retro-actively and then use them as evidence that Jesus was predicted.  I'm not parodying this, that's actually Geisler's point: if it sounds like Jesus, it's evidence for Jesus even if it's just a coincidence. 

Geisler chooses to close with the usual epic fail on probability:
Mathematics has shown that there's absolutely no way [Biblical prophecies] could have been fulfilled by mere chance.
And to conclude, he argues that the Bible is either reliable about everything or nothing, so evidence supporting the historicity of the NT setting is also evidence for OT miracles.  He thinks Moses was a real person.  He claims that Nicodemus and John the Baptist believed Jesus was the Messiah based on the fact the Bible says they did.  He notes in passing that this is a circular argument, but discounts this because 'the Bible proves to be the word of God.'  (His emphasis this time)

The interview ends shortly afterwards.  There is a short and rather pointless lunch interlude afterwards where Strobel asks another question that has nothing whatsoever to do with God killing children, but which apparently he forgot to ask in the main interview.  I am personally of the opinion that this whole coda is fictional and that Geisler actually disappeared into a singularity of perfect contradiction when he defended the validity of a circular argument.  And good riddance - we could do with fewer religious maniacs justifying genocide.

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