Numbers 31: But all the women children keep alive for yourselves

Critics of the Bible sometimes try to attack the Bible by claiming it condones things that are morally objectionable.  I’ve always thought it was a strange tactic because atheism lacks the foundation to make any moral claim at all.  To say something is wrong means it ought not to be that way.  Christians believe God created the universe the way it ought to be and any time we disobey God’s will, it’s wrong.  However, without any god, who is to say how things ought to be?  Certainly, the universe doesn’t care what happens.  Apart from any transcendent Law Giver, the atheist can only say what he thinks people ought to do.  Without God, what is right or wrong changes on the subjective whim of opinion.  For an atheist to claim anything is wrong makes about as much sense as me saying people who like orange Starbursts are evil!  After all, my opinion would be just as valid as anyone else’s.

Alex O’Connor (also known as the Cosmic Skeptic) is one such atheist who claims the Bible condones things that are objectively wrong.  In a debate he had with Christian biologist, Jonathan McLatchie, (found on YouTube here) O’Connor made the following argument:

What about Numbers 31?...  I’ll just quote it.  Moses instructs the following to… they’re attacking the Midianites - essentially committing a genocide against the Medianites - and Moses instructs his combatants.  “Now kill all the boys and kill every woman who has slept with a man but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man” [Numbers 31:17-18 NIV]. Now, I’m not entirely sure what a bunch of aggressive males would want with a bunch of virgin girls.  I’ll leave that up to the imagination of the audience.  But to me this seems not just slavery in terms of, like, a voluntary service contract.  This seems like a grotesque form of sexual slavery being advocated here.  Even in the course of war, I don’t think that’s acceptable.

McLatchie struggled to try to answer and after some hemming and hawing, finally admitted, “I confess I do struggle with this text so I don’t… uh… I don’t know the answer to that question.”  

I’m sure it’s sometimes difficult, in the pressure of a debate and being faced with a question you’d never really considered, to articulate a response.  I don’t fault McLatchie for not being able to answer.  However, the Bible says we should always be ready to give an answer (1 Peter 3:15); that’s not just answers to the easy questions but to the difficult ones as well.  So, with the benefit of having time to think, time to review the passages, and time to write and edit a response, I’m going to attempt to answer O’Connor here.  

I admit that, according to modern societal norms, events like the ones described in Numbers are very foreign to our Western ideals.  I don’t want to pretend like I understand completely what was in the minds of the people who lived during those times.  I can say that God is good, He is just, and He is perfect in every way.  He has given us the Bible for our benefit so I can only trust that a correct understanding of the passages can be found within the pages of Scripture itself.  That is what I’m going to try to do here.  I pray that God will guide my thoughts.  Amen.

First we need to consider the history of Israel’s interactions with the Midianites.  In Numbers 25, we see that, when the fledgling nation of Israel was dwelling in the land of Shittim, the people of Israel were being seduced by the women of Moab.  They were sacrificing to other gods, eating the meat offered to these false gods, and bowing down to their idols.  The Lord became angry with the children of Israel and sent a plague among the people.  

Moses commanded the judges to kill all of the Israelites who worshipped Baalpeor.  The people began to repent and verse 6 describes how people were weeping before the door of the Tabernacle.  But even in their repentance, one of the children of Israel unashamedly brought a Midianite woman, the daughter of a Midian chief, past the front of the Temple in the view of Moses and all the people.  At that point, Phinehas, the grandson of Aaron the priest, followed the man and woman to his tent where he ran them both through with a spear.  Because of Phinehas’ actions, God’s wrath was turned away from the people and He relented from the plague He had sent on them.

The Bible says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  I’ve written about this before (here).  All have sinned and so all die (Romans 5:12).  Some die old and some die young.  Some die violently and some die peacefully.  God alone is the Author of life and it is His right to decide when we must die.  Because of their idolatry, 24,000 Israelites had died from the plague.  But God’s wrath was not against Israel alone.  He also would judge the nation of Midia:

Numbers 25:16-18, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Vex the Midianites, and smite them: For they vex you with their wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor, and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a prince of Midian, their sister, which was slain in the day of the plague for Peor's sake.

Having now read the back story, let us look to Numbers 31 and the verses in question.  After the battle, when Midia had been defeated, the Jewish army returned with their spoils of war - including the women and children that had been captured.  Moses was angry and went out to confront the captains of the host:

Numbers 31:15-18, And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

So we can see that God’s judgment on Midia wasn’t arbitrary.  The Midianites received the just recompense for their role in leading the people of Israel away from God into the worship of idols.  The men and boys who warred against Israel were killed.  The women who seduced the men of Israel were killed.  However, the young women - those who had not been with any man - were spared!  It was an act of mercy God had shown to the innocent girls who had not participated in the wicked acts of the older women.

O’Connor’s implication that God was allowing these young women to be kept as some type of “səx sl@ves” is unfounded.  I’ve talked before (here) about the use of the term “slavery” in the Bible and how being a slave in those times was essentially a type of job in most instances.  When the Bible talks about “slaves,” it is primarily talking about 2 groups of people: prisoners of war and the chronically poor. It is the first group that we are discussing here.  

War was a grim reality at the time of the Old Testament and conquered kingdoms meant defeated populations that needed to be dealt with. If you defeat an enemy, you can't simply pack up and go home or else you'll be fighting the same enemy again sometime later. Therefore, the Law gave instructions in dealing with enemy prisoners.  These were allowances God made for a fallen world and did not necessarily represent God’s perfect will - similar to how Jesus described the Laws surrounding divorce in Matthew 19:8.

Slavery in the Bible is nothing like the slavery we think of in the Antebellum South.  In the Bible, God commanded His people to treat their slaves/servants fairly and justly.  No where in the Bible are female servants allowed to be “səx sl@ves.”  Exodus 7 talks about how women maidservants must be treated as a wife if married to the master or treated like a daughter if married to the master’s son.

In spite of O’Connor’s innuendo, the young Midianite girls were not going to be abused.  They were going to be taken care of, treated fairly, and would probably go on to live productive lives.  I suspect that many of them would even come to love the Jewish families they served, to marry Jewish men, to learn about the God of Abraham, and to become believers themselves. What O'Connor attempts to portray as "unacceptable" and immoral, is actually a picture of God's wrath, judgment, and mercy.

The Bible is true because it says it’s true!! Right?

A poster in an atheist, Fakebook group recently made the following statement:

Ever heard this? “The Bible is true because it’s the Word of God… and we know it’s the Word of God because the Bible says so.”

That’s Circular Reasoning — a logical loop that never leaves the starting point.

Example:

> “All Scripture is God-breathed…” (2 Timothy 3:16)

This verse is often used to “prove” the Bible’s divine origin… by quoting the Bible itself. It’s like a used car salesman saying, “Trust me, this car is perfect — just look, it’s written right here on the bumper sticker.”

Real evidence doesn’t need to refer back to itself to be convincing — it can be tested, examined, and confirmed from outside sources. If your proof is just “because I said so,” it’s not proof — it’s just repetition.

In other words, this atheist is trying to say, “Christians claim the Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true!”  This is a criticism I’ve seen leveled toward Christians many times.  It’s more of a straw man than a legit criticism, though, because I don’t know any Christian who really says this.  The reality is the exact opposite.  The Bible says it’s true because it IS true!

Let me explain; my name is Bentley.  Really.  That’s my name.  If someone asked me my name, I wouldn’t say my name isn’t Bentley.  I wouldn’t say my name is John Smith.  I wouldn’t say Bentley could be my name.  I would say my name is Bentley!  I’m affirming something that is true.  If I’m being honest, and Bentley is really my name, then you would expect me to confirm that it is.  In that same way, the Bible confirms itself to be true because it is true.  Get it?

Now, if I tried to claim the Bible was true but the Bible itself said that truth cannot be known, then we would have a problem.  If truth cannot be known then anything the Bible says can be suspect.  How would I even know if the statement, “truth cannot be known,” is a true statement?  The existence of absolute truth seems to be an ontological necessity.  To even say, “Nothing can be known absolutely,” is itself an absolute statement.  To claim that truth is relative or that it’s subjective or that truth cannot be known are all self-defeating statements. Here's some irony for you: All arguments against absolute truth only serve to make obvious the reality of absolute truth!

The Bible is true and it confirms itself to be true.  It’s not circular reasoning.  I’m not claiming the Bible is true because it says it’s true.  No one is claiming that.  I’ve tried explaining this to atheists before but they can’t put aside their own, flawed, talking points long enough to understand it.  Please, let’s put that straw man to bed and get on to the real question: How do we know the Bible is true?  If anyone sincerely seeks to know what is true, that is the question he needs to be asking. 

Answering the question, How do we know the Bible is true, is far more challenging than picking apart the straw man argument built by atheists.  I could talk about the number of extant manuscripts and the science of textual criticism; I could talk about the historical certainty of Jesus, His miracles, and His resurrection; I could talk about all the archeological finds that confirm events discussed in the Bible; I could talk about the superior wisdom of the Bible in describing the human experience; or I could talk about my life experience in seeing of the moral correctness taught in the Bible.  All of these things might seem persuasive but we need to be careful about how we conclude the Bible is true.  After all, is the Bible true because some other thing says it’s true?  If that were the case, we may be putting the authority of the other things above the authority of the Bible! The skeptic above revealed that he believed the ultimate authority resides in these other things when he said, "Real evidence doesn’t need to refer back to itself to be convincing — it can be tested, examined, and confirmed from outside sources. "

If the Bible is true, then it is true regardless of anyone else’s opinion.  How can I say, I’ve studied the Bible and found that it's true?  Who am I to give my opinion on the revelation of the Omniscient One?  Let me be clear: I am not the judge of the Bible - the Bible is the judge of me.  I will not say the Bible is true because I judge it to be true!  I am not that proud!

So how do I answer the question?  I’ve struggled to come up with a good illustration so let me tell you how I see it.  This might seem a little far fetched but hear me out.  Don’t laugh until I'm finished.

Does anyone remember the scene from The Karate Kid where Miyagi agrees to teach Daniel karate?  You can watch the scene on YouTube (here) but I’ve transcribed the relevant part:

Miyagi: “First make sacred pact.  I promise teach karate - that my part.  You promise learn.  I say, you do.  No questions.  That your part. Deal?”

Daniel: “Deal.”

As Daniel holds his hand out to shake on the agreement, Miyagi puts a sponge in his hand and tells him to wash and wax the cars.  When Daniel starts to protest, Miyagi cuts him off and reminds him of the agreement.  If Miyagi says it, then Daniel should do it without question. 

If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ve missed a treasure that helped shape the teen experience in the 80s.  That's too bad. Anyway, there was a reason Miyagi had him wax the cars (“Wax on.  Wax off.”).  And it wasn’t just waxing the cars, it was also sanding the floor, painting the fence, and painting the house.  It wasn’t until after Daniel had done all these things that Miyagi’s karate training became apparent.  

But let's back up a little, why did Daniel agree to enter into this “sacred pact” with Miyagi.  Daniel had moved to a new city where he was being bullied by a group of teens from Cobra Kai, the local karate school.  Miyagi was the maintenance man from Daniel’s apartment complex.  One night, as the rowdy teens were violently beating Daniel, Miyagi rescued him and defeated the entire gang single-handedly.  It was after this, that Miyagi agreed to teach Daniel karate and made the sacred pact.  Daniel agreed to do whatever Miyagi said - not because he was the greater authority than Miyagi but because he realized Miyagi was a greater authority than him!

So, now, let’s land this plane.  I don’t know more than the Bible.  Rather, God has given me the ability to reason (Isaiah 1:18) and I have come to realize that the Bible has more wisdom than I have.  It is this realization that has led me to lay down my own authority and submit to the authority of the Scripture.  I didn’t judge the Bible as true by my own arrogance, haughtiness, or pride.  Instead, I yield myself to its commands out of obedience, humility, and meekness.

Consider these words of Jesus:

John 14:21, He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

So you see, when we trust Jesus, He makes Himself known to us.  Jesus said, “why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).  When I asked Jesus to be my Savior, I also made Him my Lord.  I don’t always understand His commands.  I don’t always know His plan.  I certainly don’t always obey Him like I should.  Yet the more I try to be obedient, the more I come to see the truth of His promises.  That is how I know the Bible is true.

Once we yield ourselves to God’s word, then the truth of them becomes more obvious.  Just as I was saying above, the truth affirms the truth.  Of course textual criticism affirms the integrity of the Bible, of course archaeology reveals the veracity of the Bible, and of course everything the Bible proscribes is morally correct.  The Bible is true and every light by which we might examine it will show that it is true.

Have scientists figured out the origin of life?

I just read on yahoo!news, Scientists Say They May Have Just Figured Out the Origin of Life.  Here’s a quote from the story:

How did the building blocks of life come together to spawn the first organisms? It's one of the most longstanding questions in biology — and scientists just got a major clue.

A couple of things jumped out at me as I read the article.  First, why do we have this continuous flip flop over the question of abiogenesis?  I mean, is it part of the theory or not?  One self described “theistic evolutionist,” Tyler Franke, has this to say about abiogenesis:

[You don't understand evolution if] you think it has anything to do with the origin of life, let alone the origins of the universe.... This is like the king of all straw men, and it’s extremely common. It involves something like the thoroughly debunked theory of spontaneous generation (the idea that life can come from non-life under normal circumstances) being used as evidence against the theory of evolution. Hear me on this, guys: Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life.

Creationists usually always hear a response similar to Franke’s whenever the subject of the origin of life is raised.  I’ve written about this before (here).  The reason they want to divorce the origin of life from the rest of their theory is because they have no plausible explanation about how life began.  They want to posit a theory that all life has descended from a common ancestor, but when asked the reasonable question, “where did this first ancestor come from?,” they suddenly want to change the subject.  Their objection is nothing more than a red herring - a distraction from the embarrassing fact that they don't have an answer.

But in the yahoo!news article, we see the truth.  Evolutionists are keenly interested in knowing how life began.  They just admitted, “It's one of the most longstanding questions in biology.”  Why else are they continuing to do research into this area?  Why else would they still include the failed Miller-Urey experiment in biology text books after 75 years?  Creationists have known all along this is an important question so evolutionists need to stop with the dodges and denials.

Which brings me to my next point: If evolutionists want to hide from this subject and only ponder it secretly, amongst themselves, then why do they publish headlines like this one?  The answer is simple: when they think they’ve made a break-through on the subject, they trumpet it in hopes of squelching the criticism.  They’re hoping they will finally have an answer they can give to the Christians who keep pestering them about it.

But have scientists really made a break-though this time?  The short answer is no.  The headline, as usual, overstates the claim.  Remember, the headline says scientists, “may have just figured out the origin of life.” When you read the article, though, that’s not what’s happened at all.  Using quotes from the article, what was discovered is that, using “very simple chemistry… that could have occurred on early earth,” amino acids can link together.  “The results… show how RNA might have first come to control protein synthesis.” 

Notice the words I’ve made bold.  This so-called probiotic soup “could” have existed.  Amino acids linking randomly “might” have led to the first proteins.  It doesn’t sound to me like they’ve figured out anything for sure.

Online sites, magazines, and newspapers are trying to earn clicks.  They use hype to draw views so they can sell ads.  They’re just trying to put a little sizzle on the steak as the saying goes.  But what is happening is they’re reporting fake news.  I’m fairly confident that most of the eager readers of the sensational headlines, never went on to read and “peer-reviewed” scientific papers about what was actually found.

I’ve written before about how pop-science articles work (here).   It seems like nearly every day, there’s another sensational headline written about some major discovery that “proves” something about evolution.  Fans of the theory hoot and holler and thump their chests, doubling down on their complaints that creationists are just science deniers who don’t even understand evolution.  It’s been my experience, though, that most of these headlines age like milk.  I’m pretty sure that, in about 5 years, no one will remember this article and the scientific community will have moved on to making some other guesses about how life began.  There have been many of these pop-science stories written  just like this one - all of them being  just as sensational but also just as forgettable.

In this case, the authors of this article seem to already be hedging their bets.  Near the end of the story you can read this:

The catch is that as far as we can tell, the pantetheine crucial to making this all happen wouldn't have been found in high enough concentrations in the Earth's primordial oceans, where many scientists believe life may have originated….  Nick Lane, an origin of life chemist at UCL who wasn't involved in the study, further cautioned to Science that the amino acid chains being produced are random and chaotic, unlike the orderly arrangements produced by ribosomes.  

So the very article that suggests scientists may have figured out the origin of life, cautions readers that what was found probably couldn’t lead to life!  Why then are we even talking about it?  Well, like I’ve said, evolutionists are desperate to answer the question they claim isn’t even part of their theory.  This find is just another piece of information they can hang their hopes on until something more plausible comes along.  I love the closing line of the article:

But give these chemicals billions of years to bounce around, and anything can happen.

Ah, yes, it’s the “billions of years” solution.  Time is the hero of the evolutionary fairy tale.  It doesn’t matter that what we can observe happening right now doesn’t amount to anything - just give it “billions of years” and the frog becomes a prince!  

Another shoe that doesn’t fit

In my last post, I wrote about the curious tactic of evolutionists assigning modern human footprints to supposed human ancestors.  The old saying is, "If the shoe fits, wear it!" Sometimes, though, human footprints are found in rocks that just don't quite fit with evolutionary understanding. In the cases I cited before, human footprints were forced to fit the shoes of Homo erectus and Australopithecus afarensis. I had another example that I could have used in that post but I had already written long enough and I felt it might be too long if I included another example.  Yet this example is so much more outrageous, I couldn’t just let it go without talking about it.  I'm going to do that now. Prepare to be amused.

Back in 2005, in a NBC News article, British scientists claimed to have discovered 40,000 year old human footprints in Mexico.  This was a problem with popular theories at the time that said humans arrived in the Americas only about 13,500 years ago.  Of course, since every evolutionist views evidence with the lens of “millions of years,” a 30,000 year error certainly isn’t enough to cause any of them to question the theory itself.

The footprints had been made by someone walking in volcanic ash.  When water levels rose, the ash hardened like concrete and preserved the trail.  There were some 269 footprints total, made by humans and animals.  But the real controversy started when someone had the bright idea to date the volcanic ash.  From a Live Science article, we read this:

Using palaeomagnetic analysis—a technique that looks at the Earth's magnetic field during past geologic time—and a radioactive dating technique called argon-argon, the team concludes the ash is actually 1.3 million years old. [italics in original]

Uh oh!  Evolutionists could deal with a 30,000 mistake in their deep-time story telling.  Now we’re talking about 1.3 million years!  Like Desi Arnaz used to say to Lucille Ball, “You got some ‘splainin to do.”  

In this post, I’ve included 2 photos from the two articles.  The Live Science article has a photo that resembles a footprint left in sand.  Visible are the heel, toes, and arch of the foot.  I’m not sure how long the stick is, that was placed next to the print for scale but I’m going to assume the print is the same size of a typical human’s foot.  It looks just like any footprint you might find on a sandy beach or a muddy field.

The NBC photo has someone with a bare foot standing next to one of the fossil prints.  You can see for yourself that the footprint is about the same size as the model, with the heel and toes clearly visible.  But you don’t have to believe me - look at the photos for yourself.  Am I lying?  Am I exaggerating the resemblance of the fossil prints to human feet?  I think not.

The problems this finding causes for evolution are myriad.  Nevermind the 40,000 years ago estimate anymore because you can’t have people who lived 40,000 ago leave footprints in rocks that are 1.3 million years old.  I see two ways to resolve this:

1. People were walking around in Central America 1.3 million years ago.  Now, this isn’t really an option because modern humans weren’t even supposed to exist that long ago.  It would have had to have been some human ancestor - but even these were still supposed to be in Africa.  There’s really no way to make human (or even hominid ancestor) prints in 1.3 million year old rock fit the evolutionary model.

2. The dating method is wrong and the rocks aren’t really 1.3 million years old.  This is the option I would go with, seeing that I’m a young earth creationist.  I believe the rocks can’t be more than ~6,000 years old.  But evolutionists can’t really agree to this option either.  They are vested in their dating methods and you can’t really disregard this finding without calling their other dates into question.

What a pickle for evolutionists.  What could they possibly do to resolve this?  Do you remember when I said you’d be amused?  Well get ready because here it comes.  I’m being serious.  You’re not going to believe it.  Are you ready?  OK, here goes:

These are really cow prints!!

I told you that you wouldn’t believe it.  Let me quote from the Live Science article:

After visiting the site, Renne believes the markings are not really human footprints at all, but rather impressions left by machines or animals that have passed through the quarry in recent times. ¶"You have to remember this is a public area," Renne said in a telephone interview. "Vehicles drive across it, you can see tire tracks on the surface. There are cows and other animals grazing nearby." [bold added]

I kid you not, folks, I cannot make this stuff up. This is what passes for “science” when it comes to building evolutionary theories.  Sometimes, evolutionists brag, claiming that their theory is supported by several different scientific disciplines. In this case, though, the dates they assign to the evolution of modern humans, the dates they assign to human ancestors, the “Out of Africa” dates, the dates assigned to the Ice Ages, the methods they use to assign dates to rocks, just don’t quite jibe, do they?  In fact, they don’t agree at all.  

Are evolutionists never embarrassed to have to resort to explanations like this? I thought it was funny when they claimed human footprints were left by Australopithicenes.  To say that human footprints were made by cows… well that’s downright hysterical!