Silencing Atheists on Twitter

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Well it has been an interesting couple of days. I have been finding myself discussing the veracity of the Bible on Twitter. Some of the more vocal....disagreement has come from one going by the moniker "Golmer". He tried to carpet bomb me with a bunch of questions designed to show the Bible does not make sense. I promised to respond to each of them. Many of them are raised in Dan Barker's Bible Quiz which is answered and refuted on the Tekton website at Answer Key: Dan Barker's "Bible Quiz"

Golmer:

@mmcelhaney No, I'm denying the veracity of the bible because it is full of archaic, obviously ignorant crap.

Let us see if he has anything to back up his conclusion,

Golmer:

@mmcelhaney You mean you have a GOOD answer for why Genesis (even in summary) gets the order of "creation" wrong?

Of course. Genesis chapter one is a narration of the events as they happened from the vantage of a person who was in the earth's atmosphere.

 Golmer:

@mmcelhaney Do you have a GOOD answer for why the inspired word allows for slavery and debasing of women?

I am a black man -  a descendant of slaves in the United States. Having studied the history of Slavery in this country and comparing it with ancient Israel there is no comparison. Slavery in ancient Israel was important economically and no one was enslaved because of their skin color and were not looked at as less than human. Every 70 years slaves were supposed to be freed unless they wanted to stay. And neither in the New Testament nor in the Old was it okay for  slave holders to mistreat their slaves. I wrote more about this at Dwindling In Unbelief: Collision: Are Douglas Wilson's beliefs good for the world? Part 1


As for hatred towards' women, I wrote a very lengthy response quite a few weeks ago.
An "Evil" of Christianity

Golmer:

 @mmcelhaney Why, after creation, does God need to rest?

Where does the Bible say that God needed to rest?. It only says that he did. 

² By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested  from all his work. Geneis 2:2

 Golmer:

@mmcelhaney Why, according to Genesis, were the sun and moon even "placed" in the sky?

  ¹⁴ And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. ¹⁶ God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.Genesis 1: 14-19

 Golmer:

@mmcelhaney What kind of food did God eat? Especially if he didn't have a "man like" physical body?

I'll save this one for the inevitable sequel I have to write because I don't get the question

Golmer:

@mmcelhaney Just how much incest is there in the bible anyway? Why is it seemingly okay, or at the very least "normal" in context?

 When is incest okay? When u are trying to repopulate the earth! Why is it a bad idea now? The gene pool is now large enough that close genetic pairings are not only no longer needed but its dangerous!  Even if you reject the Bible you have to agree that species grow and adapted characteristics are passed on because close relatives get together and those traits are passed to the next generation. IF evolution were true, I'd gather that this would be important.

 Golmer:

@mmcelhaney Why is the bible replete with ancient PAGAN numerology (7, 40, 40,000, 9, etc.?) Astrology part of God's plan?

So he wants to know why numbers like 7, 40, 40 thousand, 9 and others like 3 show up all the time. 2 shows up a lot too. I'm not sure if I'd call it pagan. But I think it is because God is a god of numbers. Mathematics is important. It is His language. Why do factors of pi, 2, 3, and i show up in almost every mathematical equation used to describe reality? It's proof of design and how if the constants in those equations were any different we would not be here to discuss it.Answer that.one and I think you will be able to answer why there are all kinds of the same numbers everywhere in the Bible.

Golmer:

@mmcelhaney Just how many different contradictory orders of events to creation are there in Genesis?

Genesis 1 gives the overview over the entire 6 days of creation. Chapter 2 gives further details of what happened on day 6. They do not conflict. It's up to Golmer or anyone else who agrees with his assertion that the order of events in Genesis conflicts. Burden of proof is on him to show that they do conflict.

Golmer:
@mmcelhaney Just how many gods are there, according to the bible?

For this is what the LORD says— he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited— he says: "I am the LORD, and there is no other. Isaiah 45:18

Golmer:
@mmcelhaney What is God's deal with not being able to deal with the element Iron?

Judges 1:19

"And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." Skeptics say: "Some omnipotent God! He couldn't even drive out people with iron chariots!" What's the problem here? This was the same God that the Bible says parted the Red Sea, brought Ten Plagues on Egypt, and created everything. Is it really plausible to suggest that some later Biblical writer is now going to say that this same God was limited because a couple of pagans had some iron chariots? Of course not! Obviously, something else is meant here - that the "he" in question is Judah, not God, and "the Lord was with Judah" - i.e., Judah had good tidings - inasmuch as He gave them success in the mountains, but NOT enough to take on iron chariots. The Judges writer is assuring the reader that in spite of Judah's failure in the valley, the Lord was with them. (For a comparison to Joshua 17:18, see here; for why Judah did not succeed, in accord with provisos laid out in the contract of Deuteronomy, see here.) source

Golmer:

@mmcelhaney Whom, besides Adam and Eve, was brought wholesale into existence by God without parents?

 Well, he could not be talking about  Jesus because He had Mary for a mother. Therefore he must be referring to Melchizedek.For look at Hebrew 7:1-4

 ¹This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, ²and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First, his name means "king of righteousness"; then also, "king of Salem" means "king of peace." ³Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever.

The passage is not saying that he had no parents it is pointing out that the man was a priest of God and like Jesus was not from the tribe priests were supposed to come through. Jesus is in the Melchizedek order of priests not the levitical priesthood.

 Golmer:

@mmcelhaney What does Dear ol' God think of HUMAN sacrifice?

God hates human sacrifice and never commanded anyone to go through with it. I know you may be referring to Isaac and Abraham but God stopped that. Or you may be referring to Jephthah in Judges 13. If  you look it up you will see that God never told Jephthah to make that stupid vow, but Jephthah still had to follow through because he made a promise and the whole society was looking at him.  That's why it pays to keep your mouth shut. Also recall that for human sacrifice was why all those Canaanite nations were destroyed.

 Golmer:

@mmcelhaney Which are the REAL 12 tribes of Israel? Which are the REAL "10" Commandments? Are there Ten?

According to Genesis,  Jacob had 12 sons and each son founded a tribe. Joseph counts twice because he had 2 sons and each one founded a tribe. Therefore 13. There are 613 commandments in the Torah. And if you break one of them you have broken all of them.

Golmer:

@mmcelhaney Using just a bit of deductive reasoning, and the biblical description, what ACTUALLY destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah? (not God) 

Are there natuaral explantions for the destruction? I think it was a meteor storm from the way it was described. There is no way to explain something that large happening at that paticular time under those circumstances. How do you explain it without realizing that God intervened in history.

So did Golmer really offer proof the Bible is in error. Nope. And none of his ideas or questions are original. Pray for him, he can't help it,.