Mar
27
Albert Mohler on Is Belief in God Just a Natural Phenomenon?
Barry Carey on Jesus Without the New Testament
Rather technical but helpful for those who do this kind of thing: State of the Debate: Rowe, Wykstra, and Plantinga on the Evidential Argument From Evil (Hat Tip to Johnny-Dee)
Tom,
Mohler says:
What does the kind of world we want to live in have to do with the kind of world we actually live in? This would be like me saying that God cannot exist because I don’t want to live in his world.
And are we really to believe that Mohler can’t think of any reason to lock up criminals unless their badness is magical?
Christians have this irrational fear that if God vanishes from our culture, morality will vanish with it.
I think Christians generally have a blind spot about materialism that comes from their inability to be atheist for a day. (A lot of Christians say they used to be atheists, but what they mean is that they used to not think or care about philosophy at all.)
I think many Christians believe that God is a person they talk to every day, and that suspending their belief in God (to see the alternatives) would insult God. But I think this is wrong, theologically speaking. Truth has to be bigger than God, and God can’t reasonably get upset with us for merely imagining he doesn’t exist. I think that if God existed, he could can handle human doubt. After all, he’s the one responsible for that doubt in the first place.
If you imagine God does not exist, you’ll find that moral and legal systems will end up looking much as they do today, perhaps somewhat better. Sure, we will lock up criminals to keep them off the streets, but we might try to reform them instead of just punish them. And just because an act is not objectively evil does not mean you cannot punish someone for the act. However, others will have the same mindset, so you’ll develop a social contract that will benefit you both.