PF states, "It's more logical that the views of people changed over time and and as a result, their conception of what God wanted changed accordingly." But, like some other commentators, PF fails to provide any evidence or argumentation for such a view. How does one weigh that it is *more logical* that people changed their concept of God over time because their views on polygamy changed (since PF brings up that issue) than what Bock is saying, that polygamy was never condoned in the first place? It seems to me that the first thing you would have to do is find an OT *prescription* that says polygamy is good.

Even if one could find a prescription regarding how polygamy is to be carried out (can you?) this does not logically lead to saying God endorses polygamy. As one Christian apologist has cited G. Wenham, “The law sets a minimum standard of behaviour, which if transgressed attracts sanction…What legislators and judges tolerate may not be what they approve. Laws generally set a floor for behaviour within society, they do not prescribe an ethical ceiling. Thus a study of the legal codes within the Bible is unlikely to disclose the ideals of the law-givers, but only the limits of their tolerance: if you do such and such, you will be punished. The laws thus tend to express the limits of socially acceptable behaviour: they do not describe ideal behavior,” (Story as Torah, 80).

Even if PF could prove that the Bible presents God as approving polygamy (rather than tolerating it) and then as disapproving it, it still wouldn't necessarily follow that *PF's explanation as to why this is the case* is more logical (probable) than some other explanation. For example, I think PF would agree that some "goods" are only relevant within a certain culture and yet just as morally binding, within that culture, as goods which transcend any particular culture. Thereofre, PF would have to show that the grounds of God's approval/disapproval is not tied to some temporary (like culture) circumstance. Because if my hypothetical "therefore" is the case, then it is not clear why PF's explanation is more logical than an explanation which may ground the command to something relevant only within that culture.

Of course, all of this will be extremely difficult (impossible) with PF's chosen issue of polygamy. I suggest PF try something more obvious like say, a cultic injunction, which Christians no longer follow. But then PF loses some of his rhetorical (emotional) force and then PF will have to deal with Bock's explanation above and show why it is less logical (probable) than PF's. In the end, my guess is that PF will have to push the entire question back as to whether it is more probable than not that the Christian God exists. In which case, we see that PF has really been begging the question to enter the discussion at this level.