Why Don’t Atheists Show More Curiosity About Their Own Beliefs?

Hmmm. I have wondered myself as I work closely with a self professed atheist and have asked him many questions, trying to understand how he believes as he does. He has not asked any questions regarding my belief so I had concluded that he must understand it perfectly and still rejects it. So, I am left to wonder because I believe it would not be humanly possible to understand God deeply and reject him.

Tom Gilson,
You ask how an atheist such as me could be so apparently incurious as to imply that Christians who don’t seem like bigoted theocrats or clueless about their religion–since they often attempt to follow Jesus and do good in the world–nevertheless worship the {hateful critical adjective deleted — see comment 5} deity portrayed in the Bible. You suggest this line of criticism of the biblical God raises a paradox.

Actually, the paradox is pretty easily explained away, and there’s an interesting third option. Mind you, some Christians, especially many white evangelical American Trump-supporters aren’t easily described as Christ-like. But these are also low-information folks who don’t know much about the Bible. (Remember the 2010 Pew survey that found that on average, atheists and agnostics know more about religion than do Christians in the United States. So the presumption about who should be asking whom about the nature of the biblical god goes the other way around.)

Again, there’s the Dunning-Kruger effect, so these loudest voices in the room, that is, many of the “evangelical” Christians might indeed consent to worshipping the {hateful critical adjective deleted} deity–they idolize Trump, after all–if only they cracked open the Bible once in a blue moon. Thus, some American Christians do indeed plainly fall into one or the other or both of those categories: their character isn’t much better than the {hateful critical adjective deleted} biblical god’s and/or they don’t know much about the Bible.

But that’s not the most interesting explanation. First, though, let’s dispense with your minimization of the criticism that the biblical god is a thoroughly unpleasant character. After all, you say, I’m “not alone” in making this criticism, since “Richard Dawkins led the way in it in The God Delusion, and I’m sure others beat him to it, though not so famously.” None as famously as Richard Dawkins did, eh?

How about Second Isaiah, in which the Old Testament emphasizes for the first time that God works in mysterious ways and that, by implication at least, God needn’t conform to human notions of morality? (See, for example, Isa.6:9-10; 40:10-31.)

Or how about the Book of Job? In Job God is shown to be more powerful than just and even to have been corrupted by his omnipotence. Far from following any code of morality, Yahweh is caught gambling with an innocent man’s life: he has Job tortured after a petty wager with Satan, and Job’s conscience remains pure to the end even after God tries to terrify the man into submission, forcing God to atone by doubling Job’s fortune.

Then there’s fatalistic Ecclesiastes, according to which God is incomprehensible rather than just or righteous, since God is author of “all things under the sun,” including human suffering. “In my vain life I have seen everything; there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil-doing” (7:15). Backing up Job, the author of Ecclesiastes advocates a philosophical, Stoic approach to life rather than any headlong love for God.

Let’s not forget Jesus who I suspect is more famous than Dawkins. Jesus criticized the Pharisees and by extension Judaism and the Tanakh for being too legalistic in their morality, for caring more about obedience to the law than about the need to soften their mindset regarding their fellow humans and especially foreigners and the downtrodden. (We’ll see in a moment why many Jews were driven to such legalism.)

Paul also implicitly condemns the narrowness and tribalism of Judaism, by calling for a new religion to replace it. Faith in Christ sufficed for salvation, he said, and the Jewish Law was no longer needed even for Jews. This condemnation of Judaism culminated in the ugliness of the blood curse (Matt.27:24-25), of Jesus calling the Pharisees children of the devil (John 8:44), and of the Fourth Gospel’s going out of its way to blame Jews rather than Pilate for Jesus’s death.

Then there was the Gnostic Christian condemnation of Judaism, such as Marcion’s identification of Yahweh with the tyrannical demiurge and his formation of the first Christian canon–without the blasphemous Old Testament. As we know from history, a different version of Christianity won the day, although the heretical Gnostic criticism of Yahweh endured for centuries.

The Catholic, universal, or orthodox version of Christianity that prevailed maintained that the gods [God, actually — see the comment policy. Tom] of Judaism and of Christianity are one and the same, and so the Christian and Jewish scriptures were combined to form a single religious text. The trick of the Trinity doctrine was to both contrast the character of Jesus with that of his Father, with the Israelites’ creator God Yahweh, since otherwise there would have been no need for a New Testament or a new religion, and to affirm that these divine persons are nonetheless essentially the same being.

Here, then, is the more interesting explanation for how decent people can worship the {hateful critical adjective deleted} deity portrayed in the Bible. It’s a bait and switch operation. Hook them with meek and mild, selfless Jesus, then hit them with the dark reality of monotheism: a transcendent, sexless God would be inscrutable (Isaiah), absolute power inevitably corrupts (Job, Marcion), and the believer should be skeptical and stoic rather than a blind lover of God (Ecclesiastes). After all, God’s {hateful critical adjectival noun deleted} persists in the New Testament, with the hell doctrine (infinite punishment for finite sins) which Christianity added to Judaism, so the Christian can’t avoid the switch by ignoring the Old Testament.

We need only turn to the historical formation of Jewish monotheism to see why we shouldn’t be surprised by the biblical god’s [God’s] {hateful critical adjective deleted}character. Yahweh became the highest god [God] of the state religion by syncretism, by absorbing the qualities of the other gods of the ancient Near East. Thus, whereas the polytheistic religions depicted their versions of the storm god as defeating the chaos dragon, the Bible downplays or obscures that myth, by having God internalize the forces of chaos. So God only hovered over the face of the waters when he created the universe, instead of explicitly creating it from the carcass of the defeated chaos monster. And implicitly, God made the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve, which began the mystery of God’s justice. Also, evil or dangerous rival deities are demoted so that they play the role of an obedient angel, Satan, who rebels against the one true God.

Different kingdoms elevated different gods in their pantheons to the highest position, and so there was conflict and competition between the various religions. When the Israelites became monotheists, Yahweh had to absorb the pettiness, hostility, and combativeness that were responsible for those conflicts. This is why Yahweh is a “jealous God” (Exodus 34:14) even though he’s supposed to be the only god that exists, because on the way to Jewish monotheism he absorbed the personalities of rival deities from the surrounding tribes and kingdoms.

Moreover, the Old Testament was formed as part of the imposition of monotheism on the Israelites in the post-exilic period, after the Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered Israel and after the Babylonian captivity, when the Assyrian ideal of a world empire and the grandeur of Zoroastrianism evidently rubbed off on the captives. The priestly editors of the canonical Jewish scriptures promulgated monotheism by retroactively having Yahweh punish the Canaanites for their polytheism. Thus Yahweh is {hateful critical adjective deleted} with obedience and purity, to the point of being plainly {hateful critical adjective deleted}, because the editors molded the scriptures into object lessons.

Their task wasn’t just to insist that there’s only one god [God]; the challenge, rather, was to demand monotheism in the context of predominant polytheism, and so the story of the Old Testament is almost entirely about punishment. Yahweh, therefore, is the {hateful critical adjective deleted} taskmaster, the jealous deity who scolds and punishes his followers for their lack of faith even though there aren’t supposed to be any other gods and an all-powerful god [God] should have nothing to fear and would be responsible for everything he’s made.

That is, Yahweh (and thus the one God behind the Trinity that has his incarnation in Jesus preach hellfire) comes off as {hateful critical adjective deleted} in the full sense. The biblical God isn’t just vengeful; he’s also {hateful critical adjective deleted} and {hateful critical adjective deleted} (which were the grounds for the Gnostic criticism), and that’s because the priestly editors had to graft their monotheistic message into the older, polytheistic Hebrew texts. So in the Tanakh as it’s come down to us, there’s only one God but there are also lots of other gods, and the character Yahweh has to live out the madness of such conflicts with foreign deities that are supposed to be fictitious.

Hence also the legalism of Pharisaic Judaism, since by the first century CE, Jews had been afflicted by the strictness of their monotheistic religion, by its obsession with purity and punishment for waywardness, and by the need to distinguish themselves from foreigners to avoid any appearance of backsliding into idolatry. They had to follow every letter of the law because, for the reasons I’ve laid out, their scriptures depicted the one true god as an all-seeing {hateful critical adjectival noun deleted} and taskmaster.

Let’s turn now to the psychological question of how a decent Christian can accept such a religion. Again, there’s the bait and switch element of indoctrination, which should lead to some discomfort or cognitive dissonance in the believer. Plenty of Christians do ask too many questions and lose their faith, while most are baited (with the tales of saintly Jesus) at a young age, so they can’t abandon Christianity without effectively condemning their childhood and their parents. Hardly anyone would want to do that. In addition, there’s Stockholm syndrome, the condition in which victims make excuses for or even grow to admire their tormenter. If a battered wife can maintain that her vicious husband is really a good guy and can refuse to leave his side, Christians can summon the imagination to put the best face on their religion, especially when the Bible is full of poetry and ambiguous myths that can be endlessly reinterpreted.

The harsh historical reality is as I’ve just laid it out, but if you’re looking to be a Christian, because you’ve been raised as one or you live in a Christian nation, you can always find excuses and apologies in the Bible’s poetic language. You can say the Bible is all about a progressive understanding of God’s nature, so that the Jews mistook God to be vengeful, but it turns out this same deity was loving and merciful like Jesus all along. This is how official Christianity made sense of the transition from Judaism to Christianity, by positing the Holy Spirit and an evolution of our knowledge of God.

The problem with this theodicy, though, is that it refutes biblical literalism and inerrancy, and leaves the door open to Islam to continue that evolution. If we had to spend centuries learning what God’s like, because for some reason God couldn’t just reveal his nature to everyone once and for all, maybe we’re never done learning and so Christianity should be replaced with Islam, or Islam with some new religion. By contrast, if you want to take the Bible seriously as a basis for religious faith, you’re stuck with the monstrous god depicted on its pages.

If only Jesus were a fresh, independent deity, as Marcion said, the Christian wouldn’t be saddled with the crude inculcation of Jewish monotheism in the Bible or with the Trinity. But as I said, the {hateful critical adjective/noun phrase deleted} speaks through Jesus too, especially in the doctrine of eternal punishment for nonbelievers. Jesus was merciful when he came the first time, but because he was scorned he’s expected to come again, whereupon he’ll be wrathful. Bait and switch. And one way or another, the Christian has to live with the disquieting discrepancies.

Incidentally, if you’re confused about how Christians can live with their religion, I wonder how you explain how millions of Muslims live with theirs, given that in a Stream article you wrote that Islam “was founded in blood, conquest and rape, and continues to mandate death to gays.” I suppose you’d blame it on inadvertent devil worship? There are no literal demons or devils, though, so I’d naturalize the human weaknesses that are actually to blame for the grotesqueness of monotheism. As for how Jews stomach their religion, most do so by replacing theology with ethics, because of what they learned from the likes of Job and Ecclesiastes–not to mention all the injustices they suffered over the centuries. Tom Gilson,
You ask how an atheist such as me could be so apparently incurious as to imply that Christians who don’t seem like bigoted theocrats or clueless about their religion–since they often attempt to follow Jesus and do good in the world–nevertheless worship the {hateful critical adjective deleted} deity portrayed in the Bible. You suggest this line of criticism of the biblical God raises a paradox.

Actually, the paradox is pretty easily explained away, and there’s an interesting third option. Mind you, some Christians, especially many white evangelical American Trump-supporters aren’t easily described as Christ-like. But these are also low-information folks who don’t know much about the Bible. (Remember the 2010 Pew survey that found that on average, atheists and agnostics know more about religion than do Christians in the United States. So the presumption about who should be asking whom about the nature of the biblical god goes the other way around.)

Again, there’s the Dunning-Kruger effect, so these loudest voices in the room, that is, many of the “evangelical” Christians might indeed consent to worshipping the {hateful critical adjective deleted} deity–they idolize Trump, after all–if only they cracked open the Bible once in a blue moon. Thus, some American Christians do indeed plainly fall into one or the other or both of those categories: their character isn’t much better than the {hateful critical adjective deleted} biblical god’s and/or they don’t know much about the Bible.

But that’s not the most interesting explanation. First, though, let’s dispense with your minimization of the criticism that the biblical god is a thoroughly unpleasant character. After all, you say, I’m “not alone” in making this criticism, since “Richard Dawkins led the way in it in The God Delusion, and I’m sure others beat him to it, though not so famously.” None as famously as Richard Dawkins did, eh?

How about Second Isaiah, in which the Old Testament emphasizes for the first time that God works in mysterious ways and that, by implication at least, God needn’t conform to human notions of morality? (See, for example, Isa.6:9-10; 40:10-31.)

Or how about the Book of Job? In Job God is shown to be more powerful than just and even to have been corrupted by his omnipotence. Far from following any code of morality, Yahweh is caught gambling with an innocent man’s life: he has Job tortured after a petty wager with Satan, and Job’s conscience remains pure to the end even after God tries to terrify the man into submission, forcing God to atone by doubling Job’s fortune.

Then there’s fatalistic Ecclesiastes, according to which God is incomprehensible rather than just or righteous, since God is author of “all things under the sun,” including human suffering. “In my vain life I have seen everything; there is a righteous man who perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man who prolongs his life in his evil-doing” (7:15). Backing up Job, the author of Ecclesiastes advocates a philosophical, Stoic approach to life rather than any headlong love for God.

Let’s not forget Jesus who I suspect is more famous than Dawkins. Jesus criticized the Pharisees and by extension Judaism and the Tanakh for being too legalistic in their morality, for caring more about obedience to the law than about the need to soften their mindset regarding their fellow humans and especially foreigners and the downtrodden. (We’ll see in a moment why many Jews were driven to such legalism.)

Paul also implicitly condemns the narrowness and tribalism of Judaism, by calling for a new religion to replace it. Faith in Christ sufficed for salvation, he said, and the Jewish Law was no longer needed even for Jews. This condemnation of Judaism culminated in the ugliness of the blood curse (Matt.27:24-25), of Jesus calling the Pharisees children of the devil (John 8:44), and of the Fourth Gospel’s going out of its way to blame Jews rather than Pilate for Jesus’s death.

Then there was the Gnostic Christian condemnation of Judaism, such as Marcion’s identification of Yahweh with the tyrannical demiurge and his formation of the first Christian canon–without the blasphemous Old Testament. As we know from history, a different version of Christianity won the day, although the heretical Gnostic criticism of Yahweh endured for centuries.

The Catholic, universal, or orthodox version of Christianity that prevailed maintained that the gods [God, actually — see the comment policy. Tom] of Judaism and of Christianity are one and the same, and so the Christian and Jewish scriptures were combined to form a single religious text. The trick of the Trinity doctrine was to both contrast the character of Jesus with that of his Father, with the Israelites’ creator God Yahweh, since otherwise there would have been no need for a New Testament or a new religion, and to affirm that these divine persons are nonetheless essentially the same being.

Here, then, is the more interesting explanation for how decent people can worship the {hateful critical adjective deleted} deity portrayed in the Bible. It’s a bait and switch operation. Hook them with meek and mild, selfless Jesus, then hit them with the dark reality of monotheism: a transcendent, sexless God would be inscrutable (Isaiah), absolute power inevitably corrupts (Job, Marcion), and the believer should be skeptical and stoic rather than a blind lover of God (Ecclesiastes). After all, God’s {hateful critical adjectival noun deleted} persists in the New Testament, with the hell doctrine (infinite punishment for finite sins) which Christianity added to Judaism, so the Christian can’t avoid the switch by ignoring the Old Testament.

We need only turn to the historical formation of Jewish monotheism to see why we shouldn’t be surprised by the biblical god’s [God’s] {hateful critical adjective deleted}character. Yahweh became the highest god [God] of the state religion by syncretism, by absorbing the qualities of the other gods of the ancient Near East. Thus, whereas the polytheistic religions depicted their versions of the storm god as defeating the chaos dragon, the Bible downplays or obscures that myth, by having God internalize the forces of chaos. So God only hovered over the face of the waters when he created the universe, instead of explicitly creating it from the carcass of the defeated chaos monster. And implicitly, God made the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve, which began the mystery of God’s justice. Also, evil or dangerous rival deities are demoted so that they play the role of an obedient angel, Satan, who rebels against the one true God.

Different kingdoms elevated different gods in their pantheons to the highest position, and so there was conflict and competition between the various religions. When the Israelites became monotheists, Yahweh had to absorb the pettiness, hostility, and combativeness that were responsible for those conflicts. This is why Yahweh is a “jealous God” (Exodus 34:14) even though he’s supposed to be the only god that exists, because on the way to Jewish monotheism he absorbed the personalities of rival deities from the surrounding tribes and kingdoms.

Moreover, the Old Testament was formed as part of the imposition of monotheism on the Israelites in the post-exilic period, after the Neo-Assyrian Empire conquered Israel and after the Babylonian captivity, when the Assyrian ideal of a world empire and the grandeur of Zoroastrianism evidently rubbed off on the captives. The priestly editors of the canonical Jewish scriptures promulgated monotheism by retroactively having Yahweh punish the Canaanites for their polytheism. Thus Yahweh is {hateful critical adjective deleted} with obedience and purity, to the point of being plainly {hateful critical adjective deleted}, because the editors molded the scriptures into object lessons.

Their task wasn’t just to insist that there’s only one god [God]; the challenge, rather, was to demand monotheism in the context of predominant polytheism, and so the story of the Old Testament is almost entirely about punishment. Yahweh, therefore, is the {hateful critical adjective deleted} taskmaster, the jealous deity who scolds and punishes his followers for their lack of faith even though there aren’t supposed to be any other gods and an all-powerful god [God] should have nothing to fear and would be responsible for everything he’s made.

That is, Yahweh (and thus the one God behind the Trinity that has his incarnation in Jesus preach hellfire) comes off as {hateful critical adjective deleted} in the full sense. The biblical God isn’t just vengeful; he’s also {hateful critical adjective deleted} and {hateful critical adjective deleted} (which were the grounds for the Gnostic criticism), and that’s because the priestly editors had to graft their monotheistic message into the older, polytheistic Hebrew texts. So in the Tanakh as it’s come down to us, there’s only one God but there are also lots of other gods, and the character Yahweh has to live out the madness of such conflicts with foreign deities that are supposed to be fictitious.

Hence also the legalism of Pharisaic Judaism, since by the first century CE, Jews had been afflicted by the strictness of their monotheistic religion, by its obsession with purity and punishment for waywardness, and by the need to distinguish themselves from foreigners to avoid any appearance of backsliding into idolatry. They had to follow every letter of the law because, for the reasons I’ve laid out, their scriptures depicted the one true god as an all-seeing {hateful critical adjectival noun deleted} and taskmaster.

Let’s turn now to the psychological question of how a decent Christian can accept such a religion. Again, there’s the bait and switch element of indoctrination, which should lead to some discomfort or cognitive dissonance in the believer. Plenty of Christians do ask too many questions and lose their faith, while most are baited (with the tales of saintly Jesus) at a young age, so they can’t abandon Christianity without effectively condemning their childhood and their parents. Hardly anyone would want to do that. In addition, there’s Stockholm syndrome, the condition in which victims make excuses for or even grow to admire their tormenter. If a battered wife can maintain that her vicious husband is really a good guy and can refuse to leave his side, Christians can summon the imagination to put the best face on their religion, especially when the Bible is full of poetry and ambiguous myths that can be endlessly reinterpreted.

The harsh historical reality is as I’ve just laid it out, but if you’re looking to be a Christian, because you’ve been raised as one or you live in a Christian nation, you can always find excuses and apologies in the Bible’s poetic language. You can say the Bible is all about a progressive understanding of God’s nature, so that the Jews mistook God to be vengeful, but it turns out this same deity was loving and merciful like Jesus all along. This is how official Christianity made sense of the transition from Judaism to Christianity, by positing the Holy Spirit and an evolution of our knowledge of God.

The problem with this theodicy, though, is that it refutes biblical literalism and inerrancy, and leaves the door open to Islam to continue that evolution. If we had to spend centuries learning what God’s like, because for some reason God couldn’t just reveal his nature to everyone once and for all, maybe we’re never done learning and so Christianity should be replaced with Islam, or Islam with some new religion. By contrast, if you want to take the Bible seriously as a basis for religious faith, you’re stuck with the monstrous god depicted on its pages.

If only Jesus were a fresh, independent deity, as Marcion said, the Christian wouldn’t be saddled with the crude inculcation of Jewish monotheism in the Bible or with the Trinity. But as I said, the {hateful critical adjective/noun phrase deleted} speaks through Jesus too, especially in the doctrine of eternal punishment for nonbelievers. Jesus was merciful when he came the first time, but because he was scorned he’s expected to come again, whereupon he’ll be wrathful. Bait and switch. And one way or another, the Christian has to live with the disquieting discrepancies.

Incidentally, if you’re confused about how Christians can live with their religion, I wonder how you explain how millions of Muslims live with theirs, given that in a Stream article you wrote that Islam “was founded in blood, conquest and rape, and continues to mandate death to gays.” I suppose you’d blame it on inadvertent devil worship? There are no literal demons or devils, though, so I’d naturalize the human weaknesses that are actually to blame for the grotesqueness of monotheism. As for how Jews stomach their religion, most do so by replacing theology with ethics, because of what they learned from the likes of Job and Ecclesiastes–not to mention all the injustices they suffered over the centuries.

I have no problem with you censoring my post. Indeed, by doing so, you inadvertently remind us of an important reason why Christians in particular could have avoided dealing with the sort of harsh criticism I made, which is that for centuries, people who voiced doubts about God were persecuted, tortured, or killed as heretics or unbelievers. Now you have the power only to remove some words on the internet, but it’s not hard to see how average Christians could have remained comfortable in their faith if critics were forcibly silenced. So that’s one way some of the brightest Christian minds down through the ages “could have failed to notice” that harsh criticism of the Bible: for centuries, anti-Christian thoughts and writings were forbidden in Christian lands.

But the reason I wrote at length as I did is to show that your question isn’t nearly as interesting as you seem to think it is. To pretend that you’re asking a pertinent question, you have to maintain that it’s only the likes of Dawkins and me who make that criticism of the Bible. Thus again you wonder how it’s possible that I could assume that Christians down through the ages “could have failed to notice all the things that you and Dawkins treat as if they were obvious.” And you ask, “Do you honestly think there’s only one answer, and that you and Richard are the suppliers of that answer?”

But what if the criticism goes back to ancient Judaism itself, as I demonstrated? What if the criticism is implicit in Christianity’s departure from Judaism? All by itself, Gnosticism, the early Christian movement that was eventually deemed heretical, in part, for equating Yahweh with the demiurge, proves it’s not just the likes of Dawkins and me. So if that’s the case, it’s not a question of some random atheists’ “incuriosity.” Instead, you’re asking merely how it could be that one large group of people retains its beliefs even though that group is opposed by another group that’s harshly critical of those beliefs. You’re asking, in other words, merely how social conflict is possible. So if millions of Christians condemn Islam as a barbaric death cult, and millions of Muslims aren’t deaf or blind but are aware of that criticism, how could those Muslims persist in worshiping Allah and reading the Koran? Or if capitalist Americans condemned the Soviet Union on various grounds, calling it an evil empire, how was it possible for Russians to go on being communists? And you could ask the same question about any of the other billions of deep historical conflicts between groups or individuals.

The question is like asking why the sky is blue. Plainly, two sides won’t agree if they don’t see the issues the same way. I interpret the Bible from my critical, historical, naturalistic viewpoint. Most Jews came to share similar doubts about the implications of monotheism, as is apparent from Job and Ecclesiastes and from the anti-theological attitude that’s been so prevalent in Judaism. Jews came to excel in professional fields because they set aside theological speculations and focused on this-worldly concerns. So the evolution of Judaism towards its current grounding in secularism shows how many “bright, intelligent, caring, empathic people have searched for those answers.” They saw that monotheism leads to mysticism and they chose not to waste their life wondering about the unknowable.

Christians went in a different direction…

Anyway, instead of asking a deep question, you seem to be using this line of questioning—which is actually a red herring and a diversion from the Nietzsche thread—as an excuse for me to confess my ignorance about Christianity, to give you an opportunity to witness for Christ. As you said, “And if any atheist actually wanted to know what Christians have thought on these matters, he or she would be most welcome to ask.”

Instead of asking, I’ll be the Christian and you can be the nonbeliever:

“Your rage against Christianity shows the hollowness of your naturalistic worldview. You’ve no spiritual bedrock to support your values, so your values are arbitrary, leaving you anxious about your ultimate fate and liable to lash out at any proven way of being happy. For two thousand years, Christians have spread the good news that God sent a light into the world to testify that all isn’t as dark as it might seem. We have a special purpose and that’s to live by principles that are older than nature, by the principles of God’s society. If Christ seems the opposite of Yahweh in certain respects, those differences show only that our knowledge of God is limited in this life, that the ancients needed metaphors to grasp a transcendent truth. That’s precisely why God chose to reveal himself in a new way, not just by inspiring the message of certain prophets, but by incarnating as a man. Jesus could have conquered the planet with God’s power to see into the heart of everyone he met, but what would that have accomplished? God isn’t a tyrant, contrary to how he may appear in the Old Testament to skeptics who don’t understand God’s plan. God protected the Jews by force and by commanding them to adhere to a stringent moral code, to nurture and spread the precious word of monotheism. There’s only one God and thus all people should be united in gratitude towards that maker. Instead of Christ superseding the Creator, the divine persons work together to redeem Creation.

“Why should we be grateful rather than merely fearful of God’s power? Because of whom God revealed himself to be in the person of Jesus. Jesus showed that God loves us in spite of all our faults. He loves the sick, the weak, and the poor–and that’s all of us compared to God Almighty! Jesus’s life and death reassure us that God isn’t concerned only with justice. God is merciful and loving, and that’s the primary reason to be joyful in this world that’s fallen from sight of God. Our creator could have left us to our devices, to conduct our absurd, godless ventures in our vain attempt to be gods or in servitude to some idol. God could have left us to realize the truth all too late, which is that although we’re special creatures, our godlike freedom and creativity only testify to an awe-inspiring source without which we wither and die. Instead of abandoning us, the source of nature manifested as a healer and as a uniter. Christ’s message conquered the Roman Empire and much of the rest of the world, not primarily by force but because God saw what we all hunger for: the comfort of knowing that we don’t suffer for no reason, that our cries for help are heard, and that God has prepared an astonishing inheritance for us.

“All we have to do to receive it is to show God that we want to be on his side, that we’re thankful he didn’t leave us to rot with the animals or to languish in a permanent state of godlessness when our consciousness reforms after our physical death. God needs us to prepare ourselves, in turn, to be fit for his gifts. He needs to know we can give up our delusory pride in our ability to go it alone out of spite or sadness that God’s not always there to hold our hand. God came part of the way towards us by showing with his incarnation as Jesus that he isn’t nearly as interested in our material success as he is in our spiritual orientation. Are we attracted to our supernatural source or merely to his passing handiwork? Do we confess that Jesus is our lord and saviour or do we stubbornly resist his message, because we think we find fault in some abstract theological argument? The nuts and bolts of the perennial debate between theists and atheists are irrelevant. What matters is the choice that remains to pick a side. Are you for God or for nature? Life everlasting or certain destruction?

“I know you’re an atheist who thinks all this is claptrap. But there’s no scientist or philosopher living or dead who can reckon with the miracle of how intelligent life could have sprouted from the void. Either mindless nature somehow creates and sustains itself and life emerges from nature, or life is primary, and consciousness, reason, and love give birth to a universe of artifacts, to natural stars and planets as so many backdrops on which the drama of life can play out. Perhaps God seeded nature with the conditions for life to emerge and evolve because he wants to share the wonder of being alive with creatures, which is why we should be grateful. But whatever the divine reason, the naturalistic alternative is spiritually bankrupt and metaphysically incomplete. You can cite whatever logical arguments and scientific studies you like. The incompleteness and amorality of naturalism will still leave you with the choice to pick a side, to put your faith in some final answer to the question of what it means to be alive in this world. You’re responsible for that choice, so you should ensure it’s one you’d be willing to die for, because your life depends on it.”

Your turn, Tom. Explain to me from a naturalistic standpoint why Christianity is garbage.

Your vague references to mistakes in my earlier post mix up two things. There’s the claim that the criticism of Yahweh’s character goes back to Judaism, which I support by talking about Isaiah, Job, Ecclesiastes, and so on. Then there’s the historical explanation I offer of why we shouldn’t be surprised to find Yahweh’s character to be unpleasant and quite different from Jesus’s. You say my account of the “history” doesn’t demonstrate anything (even though you don’t specify where it goes wrong), and you conclude, “So the criticism doesn’t stand, as you say it does, going all the way back to Judaism.” That shows you didn’t understand the argument, which isn’t surprising since as the time stamps show on the posts, you took at most exactly 24 minutes to read the 2,100 words, think up your response, write it, and post it.

So I don’t know what you’re asking me to defend. The account of monotheism’s origins in Judaism (how Yahweh absorbed the characteristics of other gods such as Baal and El and how those gods were demoted in the OT; the influence of Assyrian imperialism, the Babylonian captivity, and Zoroastrianism) is standard among critical scholars of the Bible. You can find the details in Mark Smith’s Origins of Biblical Monotheism, Baruch Levine’s “Assyrian Ideology and Israelite Monotheism,” James Anderson’s Monotheism and Yahweh’s Appropriation of Baal, and so on. As for the claim that monotheism was imposed on polytheists or that the Israelites and Judeans practiced polytheism while the Torah was being assembled in the post-exilic period, this is also the standard critical view after the collapse of the documentary hypothesis in the 1970s. As for the claim that this common critical (non-traditional or theological) account of the origins of Jewish monotheism explains the unpleasantness of God’s character as found in the OT, that’s my inference.

In any case, that historical explanation is logically independent of the claim that the criticism of God’s character goes back to Judaism. The Book of Job is especially relevant there, since God’s amorality is only implicit in Isaiah’s saying that almighty God transcends our comprehension, whereas Yahweh’s unpleasantness is on full display in Job. (See Jack Miles’ God: A Biography for a good discussion of Job.) But as I made clear, I don’t have to go nearly as far back as Judaism to refute your preposterous minimization of the criticism. As I said, the Gnostic identification of Yahweh with the demiurge carries the full force of the criticism of Yahweh’s character. All by itself, the existence of Gnosticism shows this is no arbitrary projection of an atheist’s bad feelings or “hatred” of God. The Christian Gnostics literally regarded the God of the OT as evil and demonic. But Gnosticism was forcibly eliminated by the prevailing Church, which is why the Nag Hammadi library was buried for safekeeping.

You wonder how “atheists such as yourself can keep telling your own preferred versions with such hubris, acting as if they are the only conceivably true renditions, and as if Christians have never even considered the problems you raise.”

How is it hubristic to voice your opinion? When did I declare or imply that Christians have no answer to the claim that Yahweh is an unpleasant character? This red herring of yours was in response to an offhand comment I made in the Nietzsche thread, regarding the dignity of our species, where I said, “We’re supposed to have dominion over the planet because of our godlike attributes, but how should we expect godlike creatures to act in the world, given the Bible’s depiction of our maker? If the biblical God is a [insert some naughty allegations here], wouldn’t the specially-created children of such a deity be expected to make a mess of the planet, to squabble over territory, enslaving and exterminating billions of people, not to mention more recently, with factory farming, torturing and killing domesticated animals on the scale of an ongoing holocaust?”

The point is: Where did I imply anywhere in that thread or this one that there’s no Christian response to my comments? It’s up to you or your readers to supply that response, though. Instead, you went off on this tangent about my alleged hubris and incuriosity. Once again, I don’t regard this line of questioning as serious, relevant, or particularly interesting.

You say, my ‘representation of a Christian’s questioning is so wide of the mark in the first paragraph, it deserves no answer. No Christian with any knowledge would speak of Christ seeming the “opposite of Yahweh.” That you could think so is one more sign of how much less you know than you think you do.’

Obviously, I was writing from a Christian viewpoint in opposition to an atheist (like me) who’s making the criticism of Yahweh’s character that I’d put forward. Remember that that was the exercise, to ask a Christian for the Christian’s viewpoint on whether Yahweh’s character is objectionable. You wanted me to ask you about it. Instead I asked myself. Do try to keep up, Tom. It seems you’ve got an itchy trigger finger, but I don’t think you appreciate how restrained I’m being in these comments on your blog.

I know you were offended by my remarks about the OT God’s character. I’m afraid that amuses me greatly since I’m Jewish whereas you’re Christian. Can you not see the chutzpah involved in a Christian’s taking ownership of the Jewish scriptures and charging a Jewish critic of Judaism with hubris for daring to voice his concerns about Yahweh’s character? I mean, wow.

If you’re going to take me up on the challenge to speak from an opposing viewpoint, I hope you’ll take this as it’s intended, as a real test of your ability to think without presuppositions. I’m not interested in reading any cut-and-paste selection of other people’s arguments. The question is how well you know both your opponent and the weaknesses of your worldview. As I’ve written on my blog, I think the existentialist’s argument for God’s existence is the best one, so I emphasized the need to take a leap of faith. I wonder how you’d argue against Christianity if you were a naturalistic philosopher.

WHY DON’T ATHEISTS SHOW MORE CURIOSITY ABOUT THEIR OWN BELIEFS?

THEY HAVE REASON TO WONDER ABOUT THEIR VIEW OF OUR GOD. BUT DO THEY?

Hi, I’m Len. Just found your blog via another site. Hope you don’t mind some comments 🙂

Judging by your post, I’d say you have a somewhat distorted view of atheists. I’ve followed some of the discussion you’ve had with Benjamin Cain (in these comments) and that only reinforces my view.

Atheists don’t believe in gods. Any gods. Whether or not you want your god to be capitalised doesn’t matter – either way, atheists don’t believe in him.

That’s as far as it goes for atheists. Anything else (humanist, capitalist, anyother-ist), is something I else. Atheist means not believing in any gods.

You may know people who say they are or used to be atheists because they wanted to rebel against God and enjoy sinning. But they aren’t /weren’t actually atheists because they still believed in your god, they just wanted to enjoy themselves. But they still believe.

As for having a reason to wonder about our view of your god, no we don’t. Most of the atheists I know came to their conclusion through reading the bible. Not just the bits that you hear in church but all of it (as I did). Generally, our view of your god is that he’s a character in a not-very-well written story book. Yes, the KJV has some beautiful prose and some great poetry, but it’s inconsistent and contradictory. Not what you’d expect from the creator of the universe (all the apologetics handwaving aside). I’d be surprised that Christians actually remain with their church were it not (as Benjamin Cain points out) that they’ve been caught early – before their critical-thinking skills were sufficiently developed to be able to assess the stories they hear and see them as just that – stories.

So why didn’t people question God in the past? Maybe the fact that dissent meant death in many times and places had something to do with it. That’s an over-simplification of course, but it paints the general picture. Also, people today have access to bibles in their own language – not only in Latin or as presented by their priests or other clergy. Now people can read the bible for themselves and see how it stands up to the real world.

I’ll stop now – have to go feed my pets (cats & dogs) and prepare for New Year’s eve. Hope you have a great one and a happy & healthy 2019.

Thanks for the reply. It’s strange – I was responding to the OP, not your discussion with Benjamin. Granted, I mentioned a few of the topics you discussed but I also specifically covered several points in the OP (eg, As for having a reason to wonder about our view of your god…).

Maybe later 🙂

If you want to resolve the OP’s question, it’s very simple. In speaking ill of the personality of the OT God, I assumed you were aware of that criticism since it goes back at least to Gnosticism and isn’t just what new atheists like Dawkins say. What I didn’t assume, obviously, is that you agree with that criticism or that there’s no Christian response to it. So I assumed only that you were aware I was speaking from my atheistic perspective, not that that’s the only perspective that exists. There’s nothing whatsoever in my remarks that implies otherwise. You’re mistaking the bluntness of my language with hubris.

If you disagreed with my characterization of Yahweh, all you had to do is say something like, “Your insults are biased, baseless, and refuted by the following, more reasonable characterization of Yahweh’s personality…” Instead you started an ad hominem thread about my alleged incuriosity and hubris, on the preposterous presumption that I’m unaware there’s such a thing as a Christian interpretation of everything.

You said I’m “acting as if” mine is the only perspective. But you’re not aware of my actions; you’re dealing only with my written comments, so that’s an unfalsifiable, subjective standard for hubris which allows you to imagine what’s behind the language I used. I have a regular feature on my blog in which I write non-satirical dialogues from multiple perspectives, including from that of a conservative Christian (the feature’s called “Clash of Worldviews” and one of the Christian characters is named Lindsey Rowe). I read Plato as an undergraduate and so learned early on the importance of caring more about knowledge than opinion. By writing at length from a Christian perspective in the above comment #7, I’ve demonstrated I have more than a working knowledge of Christianity and thus don’t need to ask you for a theological explanation of how Yahweh relates to Jesus. It’s up to you what you want to say from your Christian perspective, just as it’s up to me what I say from my point of view. I don’t have to ask you what Christians would say about the matter. I know there’s a Christian take on it since I know that Christians exist! Moreover, I myself could supply various Christian answers to the question, whereas you have yet to show you can see matters from the opposing viewpoint.

You move the goalposts when you say, “You can voice all the concerns you want about Yahweh’s character from your secular Jewish standpoint, but when you treat it as the one answer…that’s still hubris.”

So now you’re opposed to anyone’s speaking as if he’s assuming his beliefs were true? There may be multiple answers but if there’s such a thing as truth, one answer will be distinguished by its being true, and that becomes “the one answer.” That, then, is a good way of silencing everyone, isn’t it? “Just make sure before you write anything that you’re not so arrogant as to assume that your beliefs are true (and thus that all opposing beliefs are false).” Has postmodern relativism rubbed off on you?

Then you say that what you found baffling is that I was writing on a Christian blog but neglected to qualify my remarks with deferential or lily-livered hedges like “In my opinion” or “I’m sure you’ll disagree with this, but…” I didn’t add such hedges because I learned in university how to write well. An effective writer doesn’t stutter like a teenager who has to say “like” every five words. He takes it for granted that he’s offering only his take on the matter, as in his belief that X rather than not-X is true. What else would he be offering?

You say, ‘But the key point remains: You treated your version of “the Bible’s depiction of our maker” as if it were settled fact.’

Yeah, you got me: in writing that Yahweh’s a tyrant, I assumed that’s a settled fact for Christians who obviously look instead to gentle Jesus as revealing God’s character. Actually, it’s language like your reference to my “hateful” rhetoric against God (in your censoring of my comment #3) that implies that theism is a settled matter for atheists, since many Christians believe atheists are fools who presuppose God’s existence and only hate the God they secretly know exists. Thus, you wrote, “Your adjectives describing God are critical in the extreme, and filled with hatred toward him.” So that’s some more chutzpah from your side of the table.

Yeah, I know, you walked it back by saying the comments were at least being hateful towards Christians. I suppose I didn’t expect the Christian faith around here would be as brittle as the self-esteem of the liberal snowflakes who need their safe spaces and who are mocked on The Stream. As Alan Eason there writes, ‘We live in crazy times. People are yearning for places of safety. We are so desperate for them that we invent them. We put signs up. We throw campus speakers out. We pad the playgrounds and we gag the writers. We hover over the children and we compensate the adults — you know — the ones someone accidentally “offended.” ’ Or as Heather Wilhelm writes about “leftist snowflakes”: “Cowardice might not be fun, but for some, self-pity — cowardice’s common companion — certainly is.” It’s almost as if Christians were susceptible to having a persecution complex…

Plus, as I said, I was talking mainly about Judaism, and most Jews would be fine with that line of criticism. For example, I am, because Jewish monotheism taught me not to take seriously any personification of the transcendent source of nature. No graven images.

You offer a few explanations of my egregious lack of etiquette: “That either takes a lack of curiosity, or hubris, or perhaps mere undisguised contempt toward Christianity and its view of God. Is there a fourth option?”

Yeah, the fourth option is that I write well. I’m capable of saying what I mean and I respect the search for the truth and the listener’s capacity to argue in good faith. Your red herrings, personal attacks, and whining about “hateful language” are certainly beneath the dignity of any “thinking Christian.”

Another way to approach this is to explore how our Non-Theist friends unpack the “metaphysical baggage” of Metaphysical Naturalism. Physics just isn’t convertible with ontology, just as timeless indifference v. the explanatory terminus of the 4D Block isn’t convertible with Timeless Self-Giving v. the Trinitarian Life. It’s all too often a bit muddied given that lack of self-accountability by our Non-Theist friends. That baggage has overlapping content with a few items:

a. “…Science flourished in the Christianized mindset… but why…?” as per http://disq.us/p/1wfsvpm (…it’s a specific comment in the comment section…).

b. Aristotle’s Revenge as per https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/12/coming-soon-aristotles-revenge.html

Both a and b there outreach much of the baggage entailed by the unavoidable deflationary truth values which Metaphysical Naturalism finally, eventually, forces us to embrace in every arena. It’s not clear that there is not even one single vector which does NOT end in the pains of circularity, brute fact, or else the pains of the retorsion as per http://disq.us/p/1w3dmo7

Other examples:

a. “…The most egregious of naturalism’s deficiencies…” at http://disq.us/p/1upadt1

b. “Reason Itself: The Parasite Upon Irrational Physical Events & The Colony of Memes In the Ecology of Cerebral Cortices” at http://disq.us/p/1mj0j0k

c. “Quantum Foam Is So Nearly Nothing” at http://disq.us/p/1ubrjk9

d. “Intentionality, Mental States, Searle, Networks, and Causal Backgrounds” at http://disq.us/p/1mj0his (…also at http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/03/conjuring-teleology.html?showComment=1530728283473&m=1#c6793128858268607057 …).

e. “Conjuring Teleology” is at http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/03/conjuring-teleology.htmlis and the following excerpt:

….Hence to write many paragraphs about the scientific banishment of teleology from everywhere else in nature while insisting that teleology is real in the case of human beings, and then casually to insinuate that the history of that banishment gives hope that someday a scientific explanation of the teleology of human consciousness will also be possible…. to do that is something of a conjuring trick, a bit of sleight of hand. To appeal to an analogy I’ve used many times before, it’s like someone who has gotten rid of all the dirt in every room in the house by sweeping it under a particular rug, when asked how he’s now going to get rid of the dirt under the rug, responding: “Why, I’ll get rid of it the same way I got rid of the dirt in all the rooms, of course! That method worked in all those other cases — why wouldn’t it work in the one case of the dirt under the rug?” This only sounds plausible if you don’t think very carefully about what has just been said. The minute you do think about it, you see that in fact it’s absurd. Naturally, the past success of the sweep-it-under-the-rug method gives no reason whatsoever to think that that method offers hope of getting rid of the dirt under the rug itself. And by the same token, the past success of the treat-teleology-as-a-mere-projection-of-consciousness method gives no reason whatsoever to think that people using essentially the same method will succeed in explaining the teleology of consciousness itself…

f. Atemporal, Temorpal, Eternalism, Presentism – at http://disq.us/p/1w4283r

g. Eternalism, Presentism, Being, & Intermediates Between – T1 & T2 – at http://disq.us/p/1wtd2v3

h. Eternalism/Presentism: My Past-Self & My Present-Self & My Future-Self – at http://disq.us/p/1w40gqv

i. Infinite Time Sums To The Infinite Contingency – at http://disq.us/p/1xkc3tp

j. The necessity of freedom: http://disq.us/p/1w4ue31

k. A bit esoteric but…. https://www.metachristianity.com/atheism-world-flat-none-non-non-theist/

Off Topic:

Polytheism preceding Monotheism? So what? What preceded Polytheism? What preceded that? One’s lens is far too narrow. Besides, pinpointing epistemological timelines v. Who Said What First isn’t pinpointing ontology:
a. http://disq.us/p/1yewf7v
b. http://disq.us/p/1yh7bgt
c. http://disq.us/p/1yewete

~

Perhaps our Non-Theist friends also need to explore their own beliefs about the Christian Metaphysic. The common errors which Benjamin Cain is guilty of in this thread wrt Sinai are evidence that such self-exploration is demonstrably missing.

“…if I believed about God what the atheist believes about God, I wouldn’t believe in God either. So to be induced to somehow change my mind about belief in God…. I would have to accept the atheist’s misunderstanding of what God is…” (J. Black)

It’s not hard. Inventing Non-Christian premises and arguing against them “as-if” they are actual premises within the actual Christian Metaphysic is an easy correction to get oneself to do.

Most of it seems to (pretty much always) begin and end in the pains of privation v. Sinai. Our Non-Theist friends too often cannot navigate the distinction between Regulating and Condoning as their entire analytic seems immune to both Eden and to the Far-Better between which the OT (…and the NT…) sandwiches Sinai. Such a simple thing but….. still.

Conflating subnarrative for metanarrative is probably a thing-y which can be self-explored in such homework.

Man’s knowledge of and interaction with the True, the Beautiful, the Good is constantly changing, but the Immutable Good never does change:

a. http://disq.us/p/1wq6j96
b. http://disq.us/p/1xr6yav

It’s odd. Ranting against Sinai and the pains of privation v. the necessary means to moral excellence (which are not housed in Sinai according to the OT and the NT) really only sums to hating all of the things God hates. But then agreeing with Scripture’s metanarrative never can gain traction against that metanarrative…. very odd behavior indeed.

a. https://twitter.com/M_Christianity/status/1076682330545311744
b. https://twitter.com/M_Christianity/status/1076684153154949120

Tom Gilson,
I said my “Christian” comments “demonstrated I have more than a working knowledge of Christianity,” meaning that I have more than general knowledge of the religion. I’m not saying I know everything there is to know about Christianity since no one does, least of all a non-Christian. There’s no one Christian answer to any question of Christian theology. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” comes from a Charles Wesley hymnal.

You say, ‘I’m opposed to you speaking as if we should accept it as the same, with no argument, with only a story and with “given that…” ’

But I did argue for it when questioned about it—at great length, remember? If you’re looking for stories, with plainly fictional characters and fantastic deeds, read the Bible. You see how easy it is to argue by assertion, like you do? I demonstrated that the criticism of Yahweh’s personality isn’t an arbitrary whim of new atheists, but ironically goes back to Job, Gnosticism, and so on. Then I gave you a logically independent explanation of why we should expect Yahweh’s character to be rigidly tyrannical (it’s due to the nature of syncretism in that part of the ancient world, etc), and I based that explanation on the standard critical historical account of the rise of Jewish monotheism. And I distinguished between assuming awareness of a criticism and assuming general agreement with it.

It’s just baffling that you say I haven’t argued for my position, when I’ve done so at great length and you’ve argued here only by assertion. You’ve even conceded you “didnt specify where your account went wrong because that was never my purpose here,” and that “I suspect you must think me unreasonable for not answering more of your questions.” You say “Bare assertions, stories, and pronouncements are not arguments.” The thing is: you have to know what an argument is to be able to identify one. As I showed in comment #13, you mixed up those two, logically separate arguments and took at most only 24 minutes to digest that long post. Pearls before swine, I suppose.

By the way, I just noticed that in your censored posting of my comment #3, you posted it twice.

“White Evangelical Protestants scored more highly than Atheists (a point conveniently ignored by Cain).”

Clarification – I meant to say they scored more highly on Christianity.

John EP,
Yes, there’s a difference between knowing more about the Bible and knowing more about religions in general. The 2010 Pew survey indicated that atheists and agnostics know more about the Bible and Christianity than do Christians in general (6.7 vs 6.2 scores), and about world religions (7.5 vs 4.5). But white evangelical Christians got a higher score than atheists and agnostics regarding the Bible and Christianity (7.3 vs 6.7).

I don’t think that sort of survey proves much of anything, though, which is why, if you look carefully at the conclusion I drew, the survey supports only the opposite sort of presumption than the one Tom Gilson was making, regarding whether the Christian should be seeking to learn from the nontheist or whether it should be the other way around. It’s also why I put the whole thing in brackets.

Ben,

If Hell is Bad (and you say it is), then you count Cosmic Fairness as Good — Yes?

If “No” then you’re disingenuous on your own terms and irrelevant wrt Scripture’s terms. If “Yes” then why are you a Non-Theist given what’s required for Universals such as Moral Facts?

I don’t expect you to be coherent in your analytic there, but perhaps you’ll surprise us.

RobertNotBob,
You’ve mixed up infinitude with the potential for long-lasting consequences. I agree that a crime can have bad consequences that extend well after the act of the crime. As long as those consequences eventually become negligible, though, say tens or hundreds of years in the future, the crime as a whole, including all of its effects, will be finite. Long-lasting effects are finite as long as they’re not everlasting.

Also, the more we focus on the effects of a bad action, the more diffuse the responsibility since that action will only be a partial cause of what happens in the future, especially if we’re talking about effects in the distant future. So to punish a rapist for all the problems suffered by the victim’s grandchildren might be unjust, since those problems will have various causes, including some the rapist has nothing to do with.

The point is that even if we include all the bad consequences of a sin, the sinner is only ever partially responsible, which means his or her guilt is finite, not absolute or infinite. We shouldn’t confuse our freewill with omnipotence. You twist the badness of a sinner’s “nature” into a reason for infinite punishment, saying the sinner will continue to sin forever in hell. But that detracts from the biblical significance of Judgment Day. The New Testament clearly says hell is a punishment for sin judged on one momentous day, after Jesus returns to Earth.

Also, Luke 16:19-31 makes it hard to see how sinning is possible in hell. The rich man’s great sin was living in luxury while beggars starved and suffered. Presumably, there would be no life of luxuries in the lake of fire. The rich man in hell looks up at Abraham and says he’s in torment and is reduced to begging for a drop of water. So if the rich man still sins while begging for mercy in hell, that would mean the beggar, Lazarus, sins in this life, in which case Lazarus wouldn’t deserve to go to heaven. Otherwise, the point of the parable is that sinners who are dominators in this life become the downtrodden victims in the next. The strong become weak, the aggressors become tormented, the joyful become the miserable, and so on. But you’re saying the sinning would remain constant, which would conflict with the asymmetries that are crucial to the NT’s statements on hell and divine judgment.

Moreover, as soon as we blame our nature for our deeds, we’re no longer talking about freewill, since much of our nature was formed when we were children and our brain wasn’t fully developed. So once again, we’re only ever partly responsible for our nature. Indeed, God would have to be at least partly responsible for our nature, for creating the conditions for the environment in which our nature (or set of psychological tendencies) is formed. So to punish us for original sin or for God’s choice of creating this particular world would be unjust. Again, it’s the contrast between our fallibility and finitude and partial responsibility, on the one hand, with the absoluteness and irreversibility of divine judgment, on the other, that seems bizarre and unjust.

Finally, you say, ‘all sin is against God and is against Him always and forever. It is not “finite and forgotten”.’

If you’re saying sinners are punished for injuring God, and so the punishment must be everlasting because the injury is everlasting, God being eternal and infinite, there’s still the above problem that we’d only ever be partly to blame for that injury. Our freewill is greatly limited, unlike God’s which would be absolute. But you’ve also raised a problem for God’s omnipotence, since you’re implying that God’s creatures could injure God, and that even the slightest injury to God is all-important. This would make God’s omniscience into quite the vulnerability, since God would be like one of those tormented geniuses with an inability to forget anything. The slightest unpleasant memory becomes a scar for life. Would omniscience be more a curse than a blessing, in that case? Indeed, I think omnipotence would certainly be a curse, since as far as human experience shows, power inevitably corrupts, which is why in comparing God to a king, the OT often depicts God as tyrannical. The question, then, would be why we should expect perfect justice from a tormented tyrant?

at #46. It’s not their nature as in “they were created that way”. But it has become the way “they are”. I do not blame my nature for the sin I freely choose to do. The devil did not make me do it (to coin a phrase). I am fallen and sin against a perfect and holy God (but I have recognized this in me and I have repented and asked for forgiveness and I soldier on). They too have chosen to rebel against God but they continue to raise their fist against Him and will for eternity. As for the rich man and Lazarus, you stop reading too soon; finish the chapter. The rich man is still in rebellion. He gives no indication he is willing to repent. He just wants a sip of water to give him a break from his anguish. Notice Abraham tells him his brothers too have all the info they need to repent.
As for the rapist and the victim, I am not talking of consequences to following generations. In the “relationship” between the R and V, the offense always exists. In my relationship with God my sin is always an offense to Him. To use terms like “unpleasant memory”, “scar for life”, or “tormented tyrant” in referring to God just shows you really don’t know a thing about Him.

Benjamin,

To start with, my response to you is not a strawman argument as Tom mentioned. You made the point that God is unjust for sending people to “infinite punishment for finite sins.” I addressed that issue. I answered that God gives everyone a choice to believe in him and accept his forgiveness and that those who chose not to believe in him and not accept his forgiveness are allowed to live their eternity without him. That addresses the issue of whether God is just.

Also, I do not “assume that atheism is impossible”. I take you at your word that you “don’t believe the universe has a personal creator.” Further, I grant that you could be correct. That’s the point. We all are making choices about the existence of God. Some of us will be correct and some of us will not be. The fact is that there are ramifications for those choices. If there is no God, we who do believe in God will have wasted our lives, as you said, believing in a fiction. If there is a God, you who don’t believe will be allowed to live their eternity without him.

As to your reference to the parable of the sheep and the goats. “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” is written from a Christian perspective and I addressed this in my prior post. Of course, we think that eternity outside of the presence if God is punishment. We believe we worship a loving, gracious, forgiving God and an eternity spent outside his presence would certainly be a punishment from our perspective. It’s a fair and just warning from believers to those who are not. If you chose not to believe that warning that’s fine but you were fairly warned.

Here’s a bigger problem with your perspective. You don’t understand what the problem is or what the Bible says about it. You say that people are sent to “infinite punishment for finite sins.” However, you are ignoring central message of what the Bible says. People aren’t being punished for their sins. We are all sinners. Me as much or more as anyone. (And Tom is especially bad!) Why don’t I fear punishment. Because I am forgiven. The problem for people who reject God isn’t that they are sinners and that they’ll be punished for their sins. The problem is they are unforgiven sinners who rejected God’s gracious gift of forgiveness.

You say “God’s only giving sinners what they crave and the notion of hell as torment or punishment is only subjective. In short, God creates two heavens, one for Christians, the other for nonbelievers, so the unrepentant sinners will love their eternity away from God. Hell will be their “personal paradise,” as you say.” I never said hell was subjective or that God creates two heavens. I said those who reject him are going just where they chose to go. There is nothing unjust about God allowing that. If it turns out not to be such a nice place, as I said above, they were fairly warned.

You say “Has the atheist “chosen to live out eternity without God”? Only in the same way you’ve “chosen” to live without any of the billions of gods you don’t believe in or in the same way you disregard the prospect of living with a fictional character such as Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter.” Ok. Fair enough. However, the deciding factor here isn’t what I believe or what you believe. My beliefs don’t change reality and neither do yours. The deciding factor is which of us chose to believe what is true. I’m perfectly comfortable not believing in any of the billions of other gods or in disregarding the prospect of living with a fictional character such as Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter. Are you as confident with your choice? If so, what’s the problem.

Tom Gilson (#47),
Regarding hell and the burden of proof, I think your first two points are fair. Indeed, your first point that Christians ultimately concede that God works in mysterious ways is precisely why monotheism doesn’t have explanatory power. That’s not to say monotheism has no power at all, since clearly religions have social, psychological, and political power, as I explained in my previous comment.

As for your third point, about the nature of justice, there’s obviously been a lot of thought on that in the West, going back at least to Plato. One necessary condition of justice is fairness or balance, the giving back of the equivalent of what’s been received. No matter what anyone does on Earth, no matter how far the terrestrial consequences go, we’re dealing here with finitude. This world will end one way or another, even if it’s billions of years in the future. Billions of years still add up to a finite amount. (So you err in saying my statement that “Long-lasting effects are finite as long as they’re not everlasting” is only a matter of “opinion.” Rather, the statement is analytic. I was just defining the difference between the finite and the infinite, and applying the definition to the matter at hand.)

But the NT explicitly says the punishment of sin is eternal and everlasting. To me, that’s a trace of the older Jewish way of thinking: the Christian idea of hell puts the Yahweh in Jesus, as it were.

You can say the effects of sin don’t “dissipate, become diffuse, etc., in the mind of God,” but then you’re faced with the awkward theological implications I outlined. Are you saying God’s not powerful enough to forget about sin? Are you implying that our sins injure God, that the memory of sin is a permanent offense in God’s mind? Does God suffer as a result of our sin and is he doomed to suffer forever, which is why he must punish sinners forever?

More importantly, if God doesn’t and can’t suffer at all from our sin, what’s the significance of his taking offense at sin? Granted, a compassionate God would be offended on behalf of the human people who suffer because of sin, but that would call only for finite punishments to match the finite harms done to finite creatures in a finite world. Also, why would God be so appalled by human sin when he’s the one who would have made us imperfect? He’d have made us fallible creatures (animals with certain godlike capacities), so isn’t it irrational and unjust to expect the impossible?

The example of saintly Jesus is no help, since he was supposed to have been the only begotten Son of God. If we all had God rather than any human as one of our parents, presumably we could be perfectly moral (assuming for the sake of argument Jesus was perfect in that respect). Why, then, should Jesus be the model for human behaviour? Isn’t that like asking an ant to fly to the moon? Jesus was a man, but he was also supposed to have been God himself. No other human can say as much, according to Christianity, so it’s apples and oranges, Jesus and the rest of us.

You can say that’s precisely God’s plan, to determine who’s fit to be adopted as his children in the heavenly kingdom, but that would amount to conceding the point that prior to the transformation from our animal nature to our new spiritual bodies, we’re not demigods so it’s plainly unjust to judge us as though we could be as perfect as God Almighty. If he’s judging us for the harms we do to ourselves and to each other, hell would have to be finite or rehabilitative to fit the magnitude of the crimes (even conceding that our sins can have very long-lasting harms). Just because God’s displeasure might be infinite (on behalf of the people who have suffered because of finite sins), that wouldn’t by itself justify infinite punishment of sin, unless God’s displeasure were an infinite injury to God. If God can’t suffer, because he’s omnipotent, his memory of sin or his attitude toward human immorality wouldn’t be one of the damages done by sin. No harm, no foul. No foul, no just punishment. If the harms are finite, so must be the punishment, so sin’s being against God would be a red herring if God can’t suffer.

Regarding your claim that “Your previous attempts to show that you understand something about Christianity are pretty much all wiped out by your suggestion that we might even possibly teach that God could suffer injury,” I was merely trying to understand what Robert’s #43 post was saying, since he was comparing God to a raped woman. He asked rhetorically, “Shouldn’t she just get over it, forget it and move on?” even though the consequences of the crime might be long-lasting (but still finite, contrary to what he inferred), and then he used the same language with respect to God: ‘all sin is against God and is against Him always and forever. It is not “finite and forgotten”. And #2, no one will be punished in Hell for a sin in their past that God “should just get over.” ’

What does it mean to go “against” God if can’t feel the slightest injury? And what does it mean to say God “can’t get over” sin if God can’t suffer in any way? In the rape victim’s case, she’s unable to get over the trauma, the harm done to her. If God can’t be traumatized, what can’t he get over? Where’s the analogy if God can’t suffer? Indeed, how can God be compassionate if he can’t empathize or feel bad on behalf of other people when they suffer, which would entail that God can suffer even if it’s only suffering from unpleasant emotions.

By the way, your continual claim that I “don’t know what Christianity teaches” presupposes that there’s only one such set of teachings or one Christian religion, whereas there are a multitude of Christian sects and interpretations on every conceivable issue. So my talk of whether God can be injured was an attempt to understand Robert’s Christianity.

You ask whether I can “prove” hell is unjust. Dude, get over yourself. This is a comment section on a blog, not a Ph.D. thesis.

Atheists do not believe in gods – period.

I think we all understand that. The issue is whether that belief is well informed. In your post you criticize Christians for being uninformed and having little understanding of their beliefs. What? We shouldn’t be able to level the same criticisms towards atheists?

Then you say that deconverts from Christianity are those who actually come to know the Bible. So, would it also hold true that deconverts from atheism would be those who became informed about their beliefs.

The lack of belief is all based upon evidence. or lack thereof.

But you’ve made this claim without a shred of evidence.

Most Christians I have encountered have been uninformed.

And we should take this evidence free, anecdotal claim as proof of what exactly.

I have not personally encountered any atheists who converted to Christianity or any other religion so it would be unfair for me to say.

How convenient.

If you know of any, let’s look at their reasons.

Shall we start with Africa where over the last century the continent has gone from almost no Christians to being 50/60+% Christian. That’s over half a billion Christians currently. Or maybe we should discuss China where there are at least 150 million people who have converted to Christianity. Or maybe we can talk about the at least 15 million people in South Korea who have converted to Christianity. Here in America Evangelical Christianity has been growing steadily.

I know you don’t live in all of those countries but that’s a lot of people converting. Certainly says a lot more about Christianity than your “I don’t know of any”. As for their reasons, the reason people convert to Christianize is pretty consistent historically. They believe it to be true.

First of all you have stated that you have a belief about the existence of God. Yet, you haven’t given any reason why you so believe. Is that what we should infer, that you have no reasons for your beliefs. It’s what I suspect is true but you could dispel that. You did claim “The lack of belief is all based upon evidence. or lack thereof” yet when I suggested you provide some you accused me of being facetious. I don’t see why a request that you back up your statement is facetious in any way.

And as far as someone else, besides the billion or so I already mentioned, who converted to Christianity from a secular belief system I could point to myself. Or my wife or any of a dozen people I can think of off the top of my head.

Your question for me to provide some verifiable evidence is about an order of magnitude to large a question for a com box. There are enough books that answer this question to fill a library. Perhaps something a bit more specific that I could realistically address. For instance you said “For instance, the bible(sic) is absolutely riddled with error.” Could you give a reason why you believe this.

It’s a simple, straightforward request.
You obviously believe you have such evidence so why not present it?
How hard could that be?

As I said (and you ignored) “Your question for me to provide some verifiable evidence is about an order of magnitude to large a question for a com box.” I even made a suggestion (which you also ignored).

Glad to engage you on any question you may have but a open ended “provide some verifiable evidence” is just a dishonest approach to a discussion.

Arkenaten (#61) said,
“The average Christian has never read the bible in its entirety, and thus, has little understanding of it”.

I suspect it is true that “[t]he average Christian has never read the [B]ible in its entirety” but do YOU have any evidence to support this or was it merely assertion?
However, even if it were true, it certainly would not follow that they have “little understanding of it”.

John.

@BillT

Dishonest? How on earth can asking for verifiable evidence for a foundational claim of your faith be dishonest?
But as you seem upset, let’s narrow it down, then.

Provide verifiable evidence for just one of these.
1.The biblical character, Jesus of Nazareth.
2. The supposed burial tomb which is claimed to have been found empty.
3.The claimed resurrection of the biblical character Jesus of Nazareth.
Or, perhaps you prefer the Old Testament:
Archaeological, or scientific evidence for one of these:
1. Adam and Eve
2. The Noachim Flood
3. Captivity, Exodus, and Conquest.

@ Tom

Where in the Bible is that commanded? Does it mean Christians must dance to every skeptic’s every question? Does this mean you understand the Bible’s commands better than we do?

Apologies. Not commanded. ”Always be ready to give an answer ….”
I’m sure you know the bible well enough to know the book and verse, yes?

Arkenaten,

So, now that Tom has provided you with the answer to your question about the evidence we have for Christianity, I’m sure that when you’re done reading the 65 articles you may have some questions. Please do get back to us with them.

@ Tom

Actually it’s always be ready to give an answer.

Yes, from Peter. as I corrected and apologized for in my follow up comment before you posted this.
Did you miss it?

Have you already decided no such evidence for the resurrection exists?

It is not my decision about whether there is evidence. There simply is no evidence, Tom.
You have nothing ( that I am aware of) to corroborate the claim.
And once again, using the text to ”prove” the text is not evidence. You know this, of course, I’m sure?
However, rather than get angry and testy, if you truly feel you have evidence then present it, and we can discuss it.
What have you got to lose but time?

Just for starters on your first question Arkenaten. As Tom mentioned the historical Jesus is verified by a number of extra biblical sources. Further, it is the overwhelming opinion of historians and scholars both secular, skeptical and otherwise that the historical Jesus existed. This is such a widely accepted historical fact that for anyone to challenge it would require them to assume the burden of proof to disprove it. That you would be so unaware of this as to chose this as an opening question would certainly throw a bad light on your overall knowledge of this subject or any related subject.

@ Bill T

Further, it is the overwhelming opinion of historians and scholars both secular, skeptical and otherwise that the historical Jesus existed.

Excellent, Bill!
Then it seems we are on the same page.
A point of agreement. That makes a nice change.

Now provide evidence for the character, Jesus of Nazareth as described in the bible.

I just posted a new article with an argument you’ve never seen before. It’s first thing on my home page now. I suggest you read the full Touchstone article; the summary there is merely that, a summary.

Super! I shall go grab a coffee and read it.

Arkenaten,

Of course, the evidence for “Jesus of Nazareth as described in the bible” (sic) (the Bible is a proper noun) comes from the Bible. Now, I gather from your prior comments (and Tom’s above post) that’s a non starter for you so if that is the case we can adjourn this here.

Wow ! So much to reply to.
Evidence.

Let’s clear this up once and for all, shall we?

There is a story in the bible.
It claims a character called Jesus of Nazareth is divine and was raised from the dead.

That is a claim.

Now, one can make an argument to justify this claim, but if all you have is the account in the bible – a text that is riddled with error I might add – then you do not have evidence.

Simply because there is no way to verify it.
You can’t really make a good argument for it either, but this is besides the point.

The fossil record is an excellent example of evidence.
Dinosaur bones are evidence of …well, dinosaurs of course!

There is no evidence to support the biblical claim that the character, Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead.
None.

Now that I have cleared this point up we can move forward.

Now, one can make an argument to justify this claim, but if all you have is the account in the bible – a text that is riddled with error I might add – then you do not have evidence.

So, I gather from your above we can adjourn this here. However, you have twice on this thread said the Bible is “riddled with error”. This is another evidence free assertion like some others you have made. Also, it isn’t true. From an historical and archaeological perspective, there have been no discoveries made that contradict anything written in the Bible. In fact, the Bible is considered the best and most important source text for academics studying the ANE.

@ Bill

So, I gather from your above we can adjourn this here. However, you have twice on this thread said the Bible is “riddled with error”. This is another evidence free assertion like some others you have made. Also, it isn’t true. From an historical and archaeological perspective, there have been no discoveries made that contradict anything written in the Bible.

If you wish to end the dialogue then that’s fine by me.
The Bible is riddled with error. Let’s look at some its erroneous text/claims.

Off the top of my head:

The Human Genome Project has dispelled any notion of an original couple as per the text in Genesis.
The Noachian Flood is myth.
The Pentateuch is claimed to be written by Moses: False.
The Captivity, Exodus and Conquest as depicted in the Bible is recognised as a geo-political foundation myth. Archaeological evidence supports this. See Finkelstein/Dever.
Also, Kenyon and the dating of Jericho. Her dating has been challenged but not refuted. ~
The gospels are anonymous, and the traditional names attributed to them were likely added at the end of the second century.
The Johanine comma is an interpolation. Fraudulent.
The woman caught in adultery is an interpolation: Fraudulent
Seven of the Epistles are pseudo-epigraphic.(Fake/ fraud)

Is that enough to be going on with?

Regards.
Ark

Tom, I have read the post and addressed the main question posed at the top of your post. The reason I don’t believe is because theists cannot provide empirical evidence for the existence of their god(s).

Moreover, the characteristics ascribed to the Christian God (all-perfect, all-powerful, all-loving, all-just, all-knowing, all-merciful, etc.) are not only logically incompatible, but entirely at odds with the actions of the God described within the Old Testament. If Christians are unaware of these things it can only be because they have not read their Bibles (because it’s kind of hard to miss the God-sanctioned commands to pillage and slaughter other tribes and nations), or because they have glossed over them and granted God a moral exemption for issuing those commands.

Until those problems are resolved, there is little else to ponder.

Note what’s going on here, by the way. You’re telling us over and over again the Bible isn’t evidence. You’re repeating yourself; you’re not explaining or giving reasons

The Bible is evidence of the Bible.
Most of what is contained within its covers is historical fiction.

Of course I have given reasons and examples.
Dinosaurs , fossils, geology,archaeology.
Verifiable , testable, evidence.

Your examples are apologetic by nature and attempts to argue in lieu of evidence.
I have had people try to tell me that the account in Corinthians of 500 witnesses was evidence!
This is, of course, palpable nonsense , yet it is trotted out time and again.

No genuine historian will countenance there is historical evidence for the resurrection of the biblical character Jesus of Nazareth.
Would you give any credence to Muslim claims that Mohammed flew on a winged horse?
Would you consider a written account evidence?

Do you realize that every one of those claims is the subject of scholarly controversy — and with strong arguments against them?

Really?
Let’s look at just two then, shall we?
You seriously do not accept the scientific evidence that flatly refutes the Adam and Eve story in Genesis? Even though it was one of your own, Francis Collins who at one time lead the research.
You believe there is scholarly controversy over the Biblical Flood story?
You think Ken Ham has a case?
Are you kidding !
Wow!
I think it prudent at this time to ask if you are by any chance a Young Earth Creationist?

@Arkenaten #110

What do you mean “the Bible is evidence of the Bible”? The Bible is a collection of 66/73+ documents many of which contain historical facts confirmed by independent sources and Archaeology.

Again, you do not know what evidence is or what the Bible is.

Mohammed? Mohammed is not in the Bible and is irrelevant to this duscussion. I would base any discussion of Mohammed on evidence just like anything else. For example, I am not an Atheist because there is very little remotely convincing evidence to support Atheism; at the same time there is a huge body of evidence confirming the truth of Theism.

John.

“Things like the Gospels are anonymous border on the laughable.” ~BillT

Great. So what information do we have about the Gospel writers’ personal lives (date and place of birth, date and manner of death, names of family members, occupations and educational backgrounds, etc.)?

@Arkenaten #115

Do you really need to be so rude about the world’s religions? It only says something about you.

Hinduism – there is archaeological evidence that the battle described in the Bhagavad Gita and Mahabharat did take place several thousands of years ago.

But don’t let facts get in the way of your firm, fixed beliefs.

John.

Yes, there is new science contradicting the genomic research you’re relying on.

Excellent! I was not aware of this. I look forward to the (link?) evidence that I hope you will provide, yes?

The scholarly controversy over the Flood is among OT interpreters. There are many who believe it was a local or regional flood, not a global one.

While I am not familiar with the archaeological nitty gritty of the localized flood position I am aware of the proposal.
My assertion was that the Biblical Flood story is nothing but myth.
There is no dispute over this, unless one is a follower of the likes of Ken Ham.

So, are you a Young Earth Creationist?

@Arkenaten #125

I have respect for other people be they Atheist, Hindu, Muslim, YEC, etc.

Based on evidence, I conclude Atheism to be the least likely of the best-known worldviews.

What was the point of your question?

John.

@ Tom

My assertion is that it’s quite likely a description of a regional flood.

Fair enough, although this is not how it reads in the Bible, and is not how most Christians have been brought up to believe. In fact, most would not likely be aware of the regional flood idea, especially as most would unlikely be aware about the story of Gilgamesh from where the biblical tale likely derives.

So, are you a Young Earth Creationist?
I’ve asked several times now. Is there a problem with answering?

@BillT

We can agree — even stipulate — that it is your opinion that the Bible is not evidence, and that there is no evidence for the Bible. Now that we’ve agreed on that, is there any need for us to hear you tell it to us again? I think not.

Everyone has an opinion about something.
We are talking about evidence.
You keep making claims about the bible – and in context the Resurrection – and have yet to provide any evidence to support such a claim.

Do you doubt the evidence of Fossils?
Are you willing to deny the evidence of gravity?

I doubt many/most of the claims made in the bible.
You claim there is evidence.
Then show me. Demonstrate that your claims ARE evidence.

@Tom

I’m not a young earth creationist.

Thank you. At least I am not dealing with a ”dinosaur hugger”. Thank goodness for that.

Is there a problem with you answering all my repeated questions about the meaning of the term “evidence”? Apart from what we were able to stipulate in comment #121, that is?

Re: evidence.
I have explained what evidence is time and again and given numerous examples.
To my mind, it really isn’t difficult so I am almost at a loss why you can’t seem to grasp it?
It must be the way I am explaining it.
Let me try to simplify it again.
I hope this time you can understand what I write.

Can you support any the foundational tenets of your faith with evidence other than claims made in the bible?

See, simple.
Evidence.
Go for it.
The floor is yours

@Arkenaten #132

Arkenaten said, “So, are you a Young Earth Creationist?
I’ve asked several times now. Is there a problem with answering?”

Tom has answered for his part but why are you obsessed with asking that question?

For my part, I am not a YEC, nor am I a 4.6 milliard years person either. IMHO the alleged age of the Earth has been increased time and time again in an attempt to make Macro-Evolution seem less ridiculous (it still fails).

RE #138 – you still don’t understand what evidence IS, and your shift-B keys are still faulty.

Why are you here? As long as you are condescending and insulting of World Religions you are not going to convince anybody of anything.

John.

@John #141

A loaded question assumes that which it asks:
Have you stopped beating your wife yet?

My question makes no such assumptions. I asked if the actions attributed to God were moral and justified.

See. This goes to prove my point. Christians refuse to meet the challenging questions head on and resort to deflection.

Why are you here? As long as you are condescending and insulting of World Religions you are not going to convince anybody of anything.

While you/your religion /its practitioners claim your god condemns non-believers to ”Hell” in whatever fashion you interpret and Muslims blow sh*t up while claiming to be a religion of peace and Scientologists are scammed, then maybe it is time non-believers stand up for those who are suckered into such beliefs?
And especially kids.
What say you, John? Don’t you reckon kids should be protected from those who would indoctrinate a Young Earth Creationist worldview where Dinosaurs and humans co existed?
Or how about protecting young Muslim girls from genital mutilation in the name of ”faith”?
So, what say you John? Are you on board or not?

@Arkenaten #144

Arkenaten said, “While you/your religion /its practitioners claim your god condemns non-believers to ”Hell” in whatever fashion you interpret […]”
If you don’t believe God or any created gods exist, why should this bother you?

Arkenaten said, “[…] Muslims blow [stuff] up while claiming to be a religion of peace[…]” – perhaps you should be on Richard Dawkins’s Facebook page instead. Atheism is responsible for hundreds of millions of murders starting in a big way with around a million murdered in the name of Atheism & “Reason” during the French Revolution.

Arkenaten said, “then maybe it is time non-believers stand up for those who are suckered into such beliefs?”
There you go with arrogance and condescension in tandem. I, for one, have not been “suckered” into anything. I suggest you take a look at Atheism if you want to save anybody.

Arkenaten said, “Don’t you reckon kids should be protected from those who would indoctrinate a Young Earth Creationist worldview where Dinosaurs and humans co existed?” – fallacious argument. See #141 above.

Arkenaten said, “Or how about protecting young Muslim girls from genital mutilation in the name of ”faith”?”
I don’t claim any expertise on Islam, but I think FGM is to do with culture not Islam. Sam Harris makes similar mistakes when trying to pass off cultural practices as religious practices. This is a Christian blog and your question would probably be better directed to a Muslim blog.

But you missed the main point. Do you really think you will convince any Christian to change their religion to Atheism when you are so rude and condescending about Christianity in particular and world religions in general?

John.

That’s evidence. And for now I’m playing the game your way, by listing examples.

Excellent! Yes this is all evidence. Well done, Tom. And we make progress.
Jerusalem is also mentioned in the bible and we know the city exists. Evidence.

The account of a global flood is also mentioned in the bible yet there is no evidence.

Now, once again, provide evidence for the biblical character, the miracle working, raised from the dead character Jesus of Nazareth.

@ John,
I am an atheist. I do not ”have” a religion.

The blog was referenced on another blog by someone called Kim. I popped over to have a read.
I find the Christian religion fascinating.

@Arkenaten #154

Arkenaten said, “I am an atheist.” Yes, so my assumption was correct.

Arkenaten said, “[t]he blog was referenced on another blog by someone called Kim. I popped over to have a read. I find the Christian religion fascinating.”
– so I ask again, what are you trying to achieve if not to convert Christians to Atheism?

John.

Comment deleted by siteowner for repetitive “This is not evidence.”

Commenter is at immediate risk of being banned for repeated violation of comment policy.

@John #147

God’s command to completely destroy the Amalekites — for a slight committed by their ancestors several centuries in the past, no less — are either moral or they aren’t. So I’m not sure why you directed me to make a book purchase in lieu of granting a simple yes or no answer based on your own opinions.

Nonetheless, after parsing through the book reviews — both good and bad — it appears the author presents the same unconvincing reasons I’ve encountered elsewhere: special pleading that the people they killed were ‘really bad’ people, or that the morality of that era was different from our modern enlightenment values, or that God was constrained to pushing morality forward in a piecemeal fashion because they were incapable of grasping it all at once, and finally — that might makes right. (And on a side note, some of the negative reviews came from believers who questioned the soundness of the author’s theology and extra-biblical rationalizations.)

Now let’s be honest: if someone presented similar justifications for the atrocities committed under the command of recent dictators (like Mao, or Stalin, or Hitler, or Pol Pot, or Pinochet, or Saddam), I doubt you’d need to consult outside opinions before rendering a moral judgement on their character.

The fact that such books even exist attests to the fact that Christians struggle with the moral difficulties encountered while reading the scriptures.

So, ultimately, the question isn’t “why don’t atheists ask what Christians have thought on these matters?” (because we have) — it’s “why do Christians keep regurgitating the same flimsy arguments in support of their beliefs?”

@Ron #164

Ron said, “God’s command to completely destroy the Amalekites — for a slight committed by their ancestors several centuries in the past, no less — are either moral or they aren’t. So I’m not sure why you directed me to make a book purchase in lieu of granting a simple yes or no answer based on your own opinions.”

And there goes your dishonesty again, that is your one and only mention of the Amalekites so far. If you want my opinion, then – God has never done anything immoral.

Ron said, “I’m not sure why you directed me to make a book purchase”.

Because if you were GENUINELY interested in the answers to your questions, you would read that book (or similar ones).

Ron said, “after parsing through the book reviews [… a]nd on a side note, some of the negative reviews came from believers who questioned the soundness of the author’s theology and extra-biblical rationalizations.”

I am assuming you haven’t read the book then and don’t intend to do so? Instead you rely on anonymous “reviews” on Amazon by people you assume are qualified to to criticise Dr Copan (PhD Philosophy of Religion). I am guessing you have never done any university-level study. If you had, you’d know how to assess an online source for its veracity, accuracy, and usefulness. I could recommend more books to you but I suspect that would be pointless, you appear to have no interest in learning.

Ron said, “[n]ow let’s be honest”.
So far you have shown that you are nothing but dishonest.

Ron said, “the question [… is] ‘why do Christians keep regurgitating the same flimsy arguments in support of their beliefs?'”

OK, so here’s the challenge. Read Copan’s book and then come back here and prove to me that Copan’s arguments are not sound. Until you’ve done that, I’ve finished with you.

John.

Bill.T.,

On #169 — Yes well put. One cannot make sense of the two words “examine” and “evidence” in the little phrase of “examine evidence” without bringing all sorts of concepts to the table. Such is definitely a worldview populated with all sorts of (often un-examined) assumptions.

There are several problems with the claim “My A-Theism is “nothing-but” a lack of belief.” The premises behind that are reviewed at https://metachristianity.blogspot.com/2019/01/faith-non-theism-fallacy-of-non-theism.html

PS: Off topic. I’m putting a few items together on Genesis and I recall a while back you had introduced into a discussion the fact that Cain in fact encountered lots of other folks upon leaving Eden. The context was God creating Adam and of course the fact that there were other folks running around is interesting. You had mentioned that and if you have anything you could point to then thank you in advance :-}

@Ron #167

Ron, so far your dishonesty has appeared in every post. I will call you out for it every time you do it. You now say, “[h]ow is citing a specific example of a command to go and slaughter another group of people dishonest?” You were being dishonest before by claiming I refused to give my opinion on that question, and now you are doubling down by lying about me again. Stop it. You are not fooling anybody.

Ron said, “[t]hen by default you deem God’s sanctions to plunder and commit genocide as just and moral.”

You are question-begging again, and trying to present YOUR OPINION as fact. If you are trying to present yourself as uneducated, inflexible, and ill-informed then you are doing a good job of it. However, if you want to be taken seriously then I suggest you accept the challenge I gave you in #166. So far you have shown no interest at all in learning the subject. At the moment you sound like Dawkins’s understudy.

John.

@John #172

Merely re-posting your accusation of dishonesty doesn’t make it any more factual or true. Because I was soliciting your thoughts and opinions. But instead of granting me a direct and honest answer, you sent me to an Amazon book link and asked me to purchase Mr. Copan’s thoughts and opinions. Had that been my intent, I would have just done so without involving you.

As to begging the question, there is no other alternative: if you believe that “God has never done anything immoral” then any edict issued by God (including a command to commit genocide) must be moral.

@John #175

It appears you’re more interested in attacking my character than discussing the topic at hand (God’s moral character), so I’ve lost interest and will bow out of our conversation.

Bill.T.,

Thank you and agree. Quite helpful.

Yes it’s surprising that our Non-Theist friends assert that covalent bonds sum to the various contours of the Adamic which continue existing after the body dies. Even hylemorphic dualism houses “that” and yet they suppose that ANY [physical history] of dirt-to-body can account for “that”.

One must note “what it is” which Scripture is in fact “telling us about”, and that of course is the ontological history of “becoming” as it relates to Cosmos and to Conscious Observer. I think that is where our Non-Theist friends get tripped up :-}

As in: Ontology? Well… so then…

Is physics ontology?
Is cosmology ontology?
Is Mathematics ontology?

Of course not. Neither is convertible with ontology and yet our Non-Theist friends insist the ontic referents populating Genesis’ ontological history of becoming wrt Cosmos & Conscious Observer ought land in physics, cosmology, or mathematics.

The intriguing part is that there is no such thing there as “Allegory” or as “Metaphor” on the Christian’s part and yet there is just that within the Non-Theist’s attempt to locate such ontic referents in physics / cosmology.

Think that through: given the non-convertibility of that which is Physics/Cosmology (…and QM / mathematics ….see http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2018/07/fallacies-physicists-fall-for.html …) for that which is Ontology we find that any Meta-Narative which is in fact constituted of ontological referents which land within Physics / Cosmology is in the end all the stuff of Allegory and of Metaphor, whereas, any Meta-Narrative which is in fact constituted of ontic-referents which land in that which is actually Ontic as per Being & Existence & Reason & (Etc.) is in the end a Communique which is anything but Allegory or Metaphor. Hence the term Divine Communique in some of the linked items here, which is what Scripture “is”.

That’s nuanced but like your verses above its not that hard and yet people miss it all the time. And it actually comports with what we find in Scripture, and with what the baggage of Metaphysical Naturalism is revealing as we learn more about physics.

We have now our Non-Theist friends and their Metaphor of Illusion v. Sean Carroll and the 4D Block in which Change is in fact illusion (and so on wrt “metanarrative” and “landing in metaphor / allegory” etc. It just pours out over on that side of the equation… contra the Christian side of it…).

There too we find the Christian Metaphysic out-reaching even that, as per http://disq.us/p/1xdbs9l

As for Genesis and Allegory? It’s actually the opposite:

http://disq.us/p/1tem7fk
http://disq.us/p/1te6iow
http://disq.us/p/1m57bqz
http://disq.us/p/1m4nx9h
http://disq.us/p/1mi53x3

Starting at https://twitter.com/M_Christianity/status/1077207336488525825 there’s a brief thread looking into those distinctions.

Thank you again :-}

Amalekites? Conquest? Sinai?

The fallacy of “God Condones X”?

Means & Ends v. Moral Excellence?

→ See → http://disq.us/p/1z50shs