Tonight on Capturing Christianity I'm debating Justin Schieber on divine hiddenness. I'm presenting my holiness defense against Schellenberg's argument. Please join us!

The co-founder of Wikipedia converted to Christianity. I can relate to many parts of his journey to Christ. He was an atheist and agnostic for 35 years. He has a PhD in philosophy, and his turning point to faith was when he closely started reading the Bible. As he explains: "When I really sought to understand it, I found the Bible far more interesting and—to my shock and consternation—coherent than I was expecting. I looked up answers to all my critical questions, thinking that perhaps others had not thought of issues I saw. I was wrong. Not only had they thought of all the issues, and more that I had not thought of, they had well-worked-out positions about them. I did not believe their answers, which sometimes struck me as contrived or unlikely. But often, they were shockingly plausible. The Bible could sustain interrogation; who knew? It slowly dawned on me that I was acquainting myself with the two-thousand-year-old tradition of theology. I found myself positively ashamed to realize that, despite having a Ph.D. in philosophy, I had never really understood what theology even is. Theology is, I found, an attempt to systematize, harmonize, explicate, and to a certain extent justify the many, many ideas contained in the Bible. It is what rational people do when they try to come to grips with the Bible in all its richness. The notion that the Bible might actually be able to interestingly and plausibly sustain such treatment is a proposition that had never entered my head."

I FINALLY Cracked Alex O'Connor's HIdden Dilemma!

This is hard but worth it.

I'm working on a Christocentric take on OT violence. But the take doesn't do violence to the text by revising the portrait of the character of God in the OT. It doesn't hold an image of Jesus up and force the OT to conform. Instead, it shows the progression of divine revelation in the covenants leading to the new covenant in Jesus Christ. Here's a quote from a book that is consistent with the approach I'm taking. "The answer to divine violence is found on the cross where Yahweh, the Warrior God of the Old Testament, died. Cowles, Seibert, and Boyd say that the true character of God was revealed on the cross, but I contend that the true character of God was revealed in what Yahweh said about himself when he revealed his character and nature to Moses on Mount Sinai. Although the cross is the supreme revelation of God, the Warrior God who died on the cross is the same God who revealed himself to be the gracious and merciful God to the people of Israel." Mariottini, Claude. 2022. Divine Violence and the Character of God. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock.

@ektromati @CosmicSkeptic Excellent! I make some of these points in an upcoming video. However, I respond using a 3-part moral framework.

RT @lizjackson111: Latest interview on decision theory, infinites, and Pascal's wager!

@ektromati @CosmicSkeptic Yeah, but that wouldn't capture the natural language version of the argument very closely.

That would shorten the derivation, but I'm not sure it captures the nuances of Alex's reasoning as well. Your (2) If God commanded these actions, then God is not perfectly good, would benefit from having a connection to harm, such as if God commanded actions that harm innocent people, then God is not perfectly good. It would also help to add A (The biblical account is presented as accurate) because Alex emphasizes the importance of taking the biblical text seriously and not dismissing it as just hyperbole. There's more as well, but I'd encourage you to watch and let me know how you would best capture the natural language presentation of the argument.

@ektromati @CosmicSkeptic I'd be curious to hear what you think after watching it. I set the video to start at the relevant point:

@ektromati @CosmicSkeptic It's a distillation of his argument put forward on the Jubilee show.

RT @johnny_redeemed: This is an extremely helpful discussion on the ontological argument with @gavinortlund.

This might be a good option: Introducing Christian Ethics: A Short Guide to Making Moral Choices by Scott Rae:

I think approaching a solution to the ethics of Old Testament violence requires widening the moral aperture. The view I'm developing involves: - A virtue-based foundation (excellence) - Deontological elements (duties) - Consequentialist aspects (transformation) - Historical development - Accommodationist framework

@justinschiebs @AdamSte65008565 @InspiringPhilos @ExploringReali2 @CapturingChrist @RuslanKD Here's the video.

Thanks for sharing this video, Justin. A few points in reply. 1. You say resistance is "knowingly and culpably engaging in epistemic negligence." This isn't quite right. Schellenberg cites "mental drift" as an example of such resistance. This is a passive phenomenon that doesn't involve "knowingly and culpably" being negligent. It is an act of omission involving, "over time mentally drifting ... away from any place where [a person] could convincingly be met by evidence of God" (Schellenberg 2015: 55). 2. Resistance doesn't center around "culpability" in the latest formulation of the argument, as Schellenberg says, "I now see this focus on culpability and inculpability as a mistake" (Ibid. p. 54). 3. In my video I acknowledge O'Connor doesn't count as a resistant nonbeliever in Schellenberg's limited sense. However, I go onto argue Schellenberg misses a crucial way one can generate resistance and Alex is a prime case of this. 4. On @RuslanKD's podcast Alex calls himself a "combative nonresistant nonbeliever." How can you fail to resist a position yet be combative to it? Alex is pretty clearly self-deceived about his resistance, but this isn't due to obvious culpability or negligence on his part. Instead, I locate his resistance in his constant arguing against theism as generating higher-order evidence of systematic reasoning bias. By persistently attacking theism, Alex produces meta-level information suggesting his cognitive approach is unreliable, creating a self-deceptive resistance to the very position he's arguing against. Paradoxically, the argumentative process itself becomes evidence of epistemically flawed reasoning. 5. In this form of self-deception the resistance is so deeply integrated that the Alex experiences it as rational inquiry, when it's actually a protective psychological strategy. The higher-order evidence of his own unreliability is precisely what he's most blind to. The result is that Alex's very effort to disprove theism becomes evidence of his inability to approach the topic with genuine intellectual openness. 6. This form of self-deception is compatible with thinking that one is genuinely open to a relationship with God in light of the first-order evidence. That's why I think there's no insincerity on Alex's part when he says he's open to belief in God. He simply isn't aware of the way being a professional critic of religion can generate such higher-order evidence. 7. This is a form of self-deception Schellenberg's notion should account for.