Christianity Is Vile to Atheists
August 11, 2009 Posted by Amy Hall
In John Loftus’s book, Why I Became an Atheist, he quotes “exbeliever,” one of his fellow bloggers, who gives the clearest, most accurate illustration I’ve seen to describe the mindset of outspoken atheists toward God and Christianity. I’m going to quote it here because I think this is the most important thing to keep in mind about atheists when discussing God with them, but I do forewarn you that it’s quite disturbing to hear our great God spoken of in this way:
For a long time, I was an ardent admirer of Dr. John Piper. I remember a sermon of Dr. Piper’s in which he described God as a flowing fountain of delight…. But what about those of us who have left the fountain with a horrible taste in our mouths? We came to the fountain and drank as deeply as we could and, for a while, could not get enough of it…. But, then, something happened. The fountain became foul to us…. We opened the Bible and, instead of finding wisdom, we found violence and the justification of immoral acts. We found anti-intellectualism and backward thinking. We found oppression….
We tried to hold on to the fountain, but something had changed. It wasn’t the fountain; it was our taste for it. We realized that the fountain wasn’t a being; it was a religion. It was just dogma. It is like we had been drinking from it with our eyes closed and noses plugged. Somehow, though, we opened our eyes and unplugged our noses and discovered that we had been enjoying filth. The fountain was a fountain of blood and other foul things. We realized that we had spent most of our lives consuming a vile concoction…. We wanted to help [other Christians] open their eyes and see what we saw…. We described the filth to them, but even when they accepted that the fountain contained blood and other “foul” things, they insisted that those things were really “good” [emphasis mine].
I have a very difficult time understanding how someone who has known and interacted with God as a Person could later deny His existence, and I can comprehend even less how anyone could go from loving to hating Him. But that aside, exbeliever has insightfully pinpointed something very important–at the core, the difference between us is a matter of the way God tastes to us, not the intellectual question of His existence. I’ve found this to be the case over and over as I’ve read and listened to the outspoken atheists of our time (Hitchens, Harris, etc.). The conversation turns inevitably and repeatedly to the horrific nature of the Christian God. In debates, intellectual questions about existence consistently take a backseat to this objection, and every aspect of the debate absorbs its flavor.
What does this mean for us as we speak to these atheists? In the end, no person’s taste for God or the Gospel will change unless the Holy Spirit changes his ability to taste. But the Holy Spirit moves people when we explain and glorify the beauty of God and the Gospel, so we need to make a more concerted effort to, first, in the midst of every topic of our apologetics, keep the arguments close to the idea that we’re ultimately conversing about a Person–a real Person whom we love, Who is distinct from us, and Who has a will and purposes; and second, we need to focus on understanding, explaining, and honoring His character and actions. I’ve come to believe that this is where we need to begin, even before arguments for His existence. This is where we need to concentrate our speaking and writing.
Further, within this core issue of God’s character, I believe there is a truth even more deeply central to the divide between Christians and atheists–God’s surpassing holiness. I’m convinced that the atheists’ inability to comprehend God’s holiness is the particular turning point from which they have gone completely wrong. If the Holy Spirit were to reveal a glimpse of the majestic righteousness and holiness of God (and, by comparison, our sinfulness) to these atheists, the answers to 90% of their questions would fall swiftly into place. Since the Holy Spirit often uses our words as the means by which He reveals such things, we need to be prepared to speak on this subject.
To that end, if you haven’t read The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul, I recommend you begin there. Next, you must read the Bible all the way through. Over and over. And over. You must know God from every angle that He has revealed to us, and you need to wrestle with what you find there until the perfect pieces fit together clearly enough for you to help others put their own pieces together. If you don’t feel the goodness and beauty of God in your very bones, now is the time to seek it out.
Related posts:
- Beautiful, Alive, True Christianity
- It's Not Looking Good for Liberal Christianity
- Connecting Emergent Ideas (1 of 2)
- Loneliness and the Postmodern View of Language
- Whether They Listen or Not
- Book Review: The Making of an Atheist by James Spiegel
Posted in Amy's Posts, Apologetics, Religion (General)
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August 11th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
How sadly true. Maybe I just don’t hang out with enough philosophers, but I honestly can’t remember ever having a debate with an atheist where we stuck to the arguments for God’s existence. It always degenerates into, “Well, that’s a nice argument and I don’t really have a response at the moment, but I just know that Christianity is false because your “god” did so many horrible/unjust things.” Obvioulsy we need to take those claims seriously and be able to defend God’s character, but I don’t see why we should always be forced into doing ALL the work! I don’t see why “God did bad things in the Old Testament” should totally negate the Cosmological or Ontological arguments!
August 11th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
I think you’re pretty dead-on here, Amy. I’d consider myself more of an agnostic than an atheist, personally (the word Atheist just sounds much prettier to me) but even if I were to come across some evidence that the Christian God was real, I still don’t think I’d worship him.
I mean, completely leaving aside the six thousand year history of pettiness, genocide, and casual murder that David alludes to, being on the outside and hearing somebody talk about how awesome and how in love they are with a being who will condemn a person to burn alive for all eternity if they don’t love him sounds more like Stockholm’s Syndrome than anything I’d identify with love.
What I’m curious about, honestly, is how Christians can simply overlook or excuse the fact that their paragon of good is so frequently evil.
August 11th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
David — Have you ever asked them, just to keep them on track, how they know this means Christianity is false? That maybe God did all these things and He’s true? And then find out what kind of god they’re expecting to find and why? That’s one way forward. But as you know, there’s just no quick way through this–there are too many aspects of the answer that have to addressed and brought together. Probably the only way forward is to draw them out. But what makes this even harder is that it’s really difficult to get people to put the time and effort into hearing the explanations, particularly since many of the more outspoken atheists have an intense emotional reaction.
Benjamin — how curious are you? Curious enough to look into it? Or just wondering about it? I think the mistake some of the atheists I talk to often make is that they’re not willing to consider the Bible as a whole, taking all the parts at face value, when they’re evaluating whether or not what they find there is moral (leaving aside whether it’s true at the moment). Kind of like the way you would enter the world of a novel and look at the story from within the worldview of that story. I’m confident that if everything in the Bible is true–the attributes of God, the motives He gives for His actions, and the actions He takes–it all makes sense and is moral (again, leaving aside for a moment whether or not it’s true).
The mistake I see atheists making is that I’ll start to explain why God commanded the destruction of the Canaanites, and then they’ll suddenly burst out, “But God doesn’t exist, so the Israelites did it out of racism! See? The Bible is immoral!” You see the problem? Of course if God doesn’t exist, that presents all sorts problems, but the story of the Bible isn’t about a group of people using the concept of a God to control and destroy people. That’s a story the atheist is making up by bringing his own ideas into it. The Bible is a different story altogether, and that’s what should be evaluated such that one can determine if the story itself is moral or immoral if considered on its own.
I have yet to meet an atheist who is willing to do this, and I find this very strange since we read novels all the time that are for sure not true, and yet we’re able to read and evaluate them as a whole, on their own terms. But imagine if I were watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and I said, “It’s immoral that they’re fighting the White Witch! Aslan wasn’t really there. The centaurs just drummed up support for their witch hating by inventing him and demonizing the White Witch. I can’t believe how immoral this is!” That sounds crazy, and yet that’s what atheists do to me all the time when we’re talking about the Bible.
August 11th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
>>What I’m curious about, honestly, is how Christians can simply overlook or excuse the fact that their paragon of good is so frequently evil.
Benjamin, I do have a quick question for you becuase I am often curious about this: What is your theory about why this is the case?
August 11th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
>>I’m convinced that the atheists’ inability to comprehend God’s holiness is the particular turning point from which they have gone completely wrong. If the Holy Spirit were to reveal a glimpse of the majestic righteousness and holiness of God (and, by comparison, our sinfulness) to these atheists, the answers to 90% of their questions would fall swiftly into place.
Yes, yes, and yes. To wit, Benjamin’s comment here:
>>being on the outside and hearing somebody talk about how awesome and how in love they are with a being who will condemn a person to burn alive for all eternity if they don’t love him sounds more like Stockholm’s Syndrome than anything I’d identify with love.
Atheism as we know and encounter it is (historically) a reaction to Christianity specifically, and as such can be seen as a system arising out of bad theology, similar to the problem I told you about before with evolution.
The nail has been squarely hit on the head. Good job, Amy.
August 11th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Great Post Amy,
You have really brought to light something I have been wrestling with for a long time. Thanks
August 11th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
>>Benjamin, I do have a quick question for you because I am often curious about this: What is your theory about why this is the case?
My theory, though you’ll probably find it insulting, is that you subconsciously do so out of fear. If I were to suddenly be confronted with the knowledge that there was one incomprehensibly vast intelligence more powerful than anything else in the known universe and that it took a personal interest in my private opinions and would (and could) grant me immortality if I joined it’s side but would lock me away and torture me for all eternity if I did not, it would make perfect sense to join this vast intelligence’s side, even if it’s main hobby was impaling children. So the occasional callous murder, random bipolar fit, institutionalized bigotry, or pissy genocide would be relatively easy to overlook, I’d think. I wouldn’t want to go to hell.
Now, I’d like to think that even if I WAS confronted with certain knowledge of such a creature’s existence, I would still be brave enough to defy it on principle and not commit to an amoral path in life just to save my own life (or soul, or whatever) but I’m buffered by the fact that no solid evidence exists for such a creature’s existence and a personal opinion that no supreme being would have so many personality defects and so the bible couldn’t possibly be accurate, so I’m spared having to actually make that choice.
At any rate, if somebody actually did believe that to be the case, I think that a vast majority of people would throw in their lot with the supreme being. Having made that choice and not wanting to live in constant guilt, they would of course have do some pretty creative mental gymnastics to tell themselves that many of these obviously evil acts were in fact simply misunderstood good acts, much like a beaten wife will swear up and down that her husband is a good man and his anger is her fault. And that’s mostly what I get when I ask an intelligent Christian how they simply excuse all of that: mental gymnastics and/or confused rhetoric.
Strangely, I think that I would probably be much more strongly, militantly anti-Christianity if I DID believe in the Christian god. After all, if he really existed, I would have my work cut out for me trying to find a way to topple the most powerful tyrant in the history of time, rather than my situation now, which is simply trying to convince Christians to not be such dicks to people sometimes.
But for the record, I never make that mistake that you mention many atheists making when considering bible stories. I generally consider it a well-written and culturally relevant work of fiction, so I can suspend my disbelief of God for the purposes of the story as easily as I can suspend my disbelief of Superman while reading about his adventures. Apologies for the potentially insulting comparison, but I think that method of reading it allows for a good deal more objectivity than either the perspective of the atheist who makes up his own story based on his beliefs or the Christian who takes it as fact and assumes plot continuity and protagonist morality regardless of where the story goes.
… Wow, that got wordy. Sorry ’bout that.
August 12th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Thanks Gabriel and Aaron! And Aaron, somebody brought up the evolution/theology thing at the STR blog. I thought, either this guy is really bright, or he was one of your classmates.
Benjamin,
>>My theory, though you’ll probably find it insulting, is that you subconsciously do so out of fear.
Excellent! That’s what I was hoping you’d say. I was planning for my next post to be about atheists thinking we’re in fear, so it’s good to know I’m on the right track.
>>At any rate, if somebody actually did believe that to be the case, I think that a vast majority of people would throw in their lot with the supreme being.
I actually think that’s why God doesn’t personally and miraculously announce His existence to everybody. I explain why here, and I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts. It’s along similar lines to this post.
August 14th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Sounds like He’s being manipulative. But I’d say that if he didn’t want forced adoration, there wouldn’t be a hell.
I’m not sure you make a point when you say that “God is available with evidence enough to give confidence and trust to those whose hearts have been changed to desire Him.” Isn’t that sort of just pointing out that anybody believes in God does so because they want to, rather than because of actual evidence? Can’t you apply the same reasoning to imaginary friends, gremlins, or the healing power of a high-fat diet?
… You still haven’t answered my first question, though.
August 14th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
>>But I’d say that if he didn’t want forced adoration, there wouldn’t be a hell.
How does that follow? Hell was created to be a place of justice where payment for sin (and for continued, never-ending rebellion) is made. That is its purpose. It wasn’t created to entice people to worship God unwillingly. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t sometimes move people to actually repent (not just pretend to), but its purpose was not to bring about “forced adoration.”
>>Isn’t that sort of just pointing out that anybody believes in God does so because they want to, rather than because of actual evidence?
I was coming at it from the opposite direction. God is real, and there is evidence of Him available in the world, but those who hate the very idea of Him are unlikely to give themselves over to that evidence.
(By the way, my next post on Tuesday won’t be the one I described to you, but it will happen soon.)
August 15th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
As jails are designed to be a place of punishment for convicts, but their real purpose is to scare people into not committing crimes… or, depending on where and when, speaking out against the government, being the wrong minority, believing the wrong thing, etc. Unless there’s some concern on the part of the almighty of loose souls running about mucking up his plans (which, if they could, would make him a little less than almighty), there’s no reason to punish people for their rebellion except as a deterrent to bring those unwilling to be martyred under his thumb.
Furthermore, if he demands payment for sin, and humans are by their nature sinful, he’s pretty much just punishing people for the sheer hell of it, and then offering them this one special loophole to avoid it if they just worship him… it’s like mobsters charging for their “protection”. Sure, you have the “choice” of declining and being harmed by them, but nobody in their right mind would say that means they’re not being forced.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
>>there’s no reason to punish people for their rebellion except as a deterrent to bring those unwilling to be martyred under his thumb.
On the contrary, there’s a huge reason–justice. Justice demands that wrong things be paid for, and justice is a good thing.
>>Furthermore, if he demands payment for sin, and humans are by their nature sinful, he’s pretty much just punishing people for the sheer hell of it
Not at all. He’s punishing them for the sake of justice, and by punishing them He shows that He values goodness. Those who value goodness and hate when people hurt others care about seeking justice against those who have wronged others. A good judge sentences criminals to jail. If a man commits a crime, nobody cares that he did it because he’s prone to do it because he happens to like to do such things. The fact is, he did it, and he receives punishment for it. That’s justice.
>>and then offering them this one special loophole to avoid it if they just worship him
This isn’t actually a loophole. That is, God isn’t just going to say, “Oh well, I’ll let you off the hook and forget about justice in your case.” This is the whole point of the cross. God wanted to show mercy that nobody deserved, but He had to do it in a way that upheld the perfection of justice–that is, He couldn’t just sweep crimes under the rug and pretend like they didn’t happen and they weren’t horrible. The cross allowed God to be both “just and the justifier,” as Romans 3 puts it. That is, by placing our punishment on Jesus, He was able to demonstrate His justice and hatred for all things evil, while at the same time justifying us and showing us mercy. Justice is still served, however.
>>it’s like mobsters charging for their “protection”. Sure, you have the “choice” of declining and being harmed by them, but nobody in their right mind would say that means they’re not being forced.
The police tell you that if you commit a crime you’re going to jail, but there’s a loophole: If you do what is good, you can avoid jail. Are they forcing you? Is this even a bit like mobsters? Or are they simply stating a reality about justice and goodness? Hell is similar. Hating God is a great evil, and if you hate Him, you go to jail. Loving Him is not “a loophole,” it’s simply the right and proper thing to do.
If you commit a crime, you’re going to jail. If you don’t commit a crime, you won’t go to jail. Since we’ve all committed moral crimes, we’re all in pretty big trouble with God. The cross isn’t a loophole, but a way for God to show His completely underserved mercy on us while still being just.
August 18th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
But you’re begging the question, here: WHY is hating God a great evil, considering all the evil that he’s done (and continues to do, such as with the torture of eternal souls in hell)? How does not being Christian “hurt others”? How the hell is not being Christian a “wrong thing”, and do you really think that you, as a Christian, are qualified to decide that? Why, if God is the greatest thing there is, is the concept of Justice a higher authority than he himself? Why is Goodness not reflected in the works one does on earth or how one treats one’s fellow man, but only by how much one sucks up to the Judge?
Considering that the “crime” is just not loving the punisher, it’s not like the police taking you to jail if you commit a crime; it’s like the police taking you to jail if you don’t blow them when they pull you over.
You need to keep in mind that I’m not a believer. Simply saying “going against God is evil and loving God is good because He says so” doesn’t really justify or explain anything. God doesn’t HAVE to punish anybody, and the fact (if you do consider it a fact) that he only punishes people that don’t love him, whether he attributes this to Justice or not, should send up immediate red flags as to what his true motivations are, and would if he were anybody but God, I think.
August 19th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
First, you’re using circular reasoning by saying that because God is evil it’s evil for Him to send someone to hell, and then using hell to show that God is evil. But the fact is that if God is perfectly good, then sending people to hell is the just thing for Him to do.
Second, you’re doing what you said you wouldn’t do! I’m explaining Christianity to you. It’s not possible to explain an atheist/Christian hybrid because of course that wouldn’t make sense. You can’t smuggle in the idea that God is evil and then expect me to explain this new story you’re creating. (Unless you suspect that He does exist but you also think He’s evil. But if neither of us believes God exists and He is evil, that’s not a scenario that needs to be explained–although I’d be happy to discuss specific examples of where you think He has done evil and explain why given the full story of Christianity–and you’d have to grant it all for it to make sense–He has not done evil. However, as soon as you smuggle in a foreign idea–”God had different motives from what the Bible says,” etc.–no explanation will be possible because we’re no longer talking about Christianity.)
Christianity teaches that God is completely and utterly perfect, and that as Creator, He is the highest authority in the universe, and so rebelling against Him is the worst crime you can commit. In that scenario, hell makes sense. In an atheist scenario or “God is evil” scenario, hell does not make any sense, of course. Although, even in that scenario, as the ultimate King, He would have a right to put you in jail for rebelling, I just wouldn’t call that just if He weren’t good and weren’t judging your behavior justly.
I didn’t say that “not being a Christian” hurts others. I said that we’re all in trouble because we’ve all committed moral crimes and justice demands our punishment. I’m not saying we go to hell because we’re not Christians, I’m saying we go to hell because of the wrong things we’ve done. Those who come to God will be forgiven, yes, but they’re not going to hell “because they didn’t go to God for forgiveness,” but because of their rebellion and all the wrong things they did as part of that rebellion. You see the difference? Imagine a criminal today–he goes to jail because of his crimes, not because he didn’t seek a pardon. A pardon may get him out of jail, yes, but it’s the crime that caused the jail time.
I don’t follow you here. God is just. That is His character. Therefore, He only does just things. He doesn’t refer to a higher standard, He is the standard. The cross is the way He shows us both His justice and His mercy. He’s not going to act outside of His character by denying His justice.
Whoa, whoa! Our coming to God for a pardon is not a reflection of our goodness. That is, God doesn’t say, if you do this work of surrendering to Me, you will go to heaven for your goodness! It’s not because of our goodness but only because of God’s mercy that Jesus takes our punishment for us and we’re forgiven.
You are judged in part on how you treat your fellow man. That’s not good news for you or anyone else. Further, in terms of God, if you were to smack the President in the face, would you go to jail? That’s just the President. What if you rebel against the Creator of the universe?
The biggest crime is rebelling against the highest authority of the universe, but it isn’t the only crime.
No, it’s like the police taking you to jail when you commit treason against the country.
If He’s just, He most certainly does. Which judge is better–the one who lets everyone go free, or the one who sentences convicted criminals to jail?
The state only “loves” (i.e., doesn’t put into jail) people that don’t commit treason against it. It punishes people who do. You see? The state is responsible for punishing the wrong things people do and rewarding those who do good. The problem is that we’ve all committed treason against our ultimate authority, God. And you can’t just outweigh bad deeds with good deeds. If you go through a red light and you get a ticket, do you think it matters to the officer that you went through three green lights that day? No, you pay for each bad deed, regardless of what you did correctly. The fact that God offers mercy to anyone is completely above and beyond the call of duty. I don’t understand why you think He owes anyone mercy and a clean slate. No judge owes anyone that.
Second, the justice part is crucial, so I don’t think you can throw it aside. If someone commits treason, justice requires punishment if you are a good judge. Only bad judges–judges not worth any respect at all–forget about just punishments.
August 24th, 2009 at 3:57 am
I don’t think I’m using circular reasoning. Sending people to hell isn’t only evil because God is evil, it’s an evil thing that he does. Torturing people forever is an inherently evil act no matter who does it, I’d say. The fact that you and so many others believe it happens and you’re still okay with it is a little disturbing, but it’s not circular reasoning.
As much as a problem with the Abrahamic god, though, I think I question your general worldview that being human makes us inherently evil, so much so that burning us forever as soon as we die is a justified punishment. I’ve given to charities, traveled hundreds of miles to get people out of jams with no reward asked or expected, helped friends and strangers at my own expense, and several times that I can remember sustained real physical injuries to prevent harm from befalling somebody else, potentially even saving a life or two in there, although that’s a big “what if”. As an atheist (or agnostic, I suppose) I don’t really keep track in hopes of being rewarded for it later on, but if I were surprised with a trial after my death and the judge were to say “yeah, that was all pretty good, but your parents had sex to make you and you didn’t choose the right guess about the afterlife, you’re condemned” I wouldn’t really accept it as justice.
You say you don’t understand why I think he owes me mercy; I don’t understand why you think he’s entitled to enslave us. Particularly since I’ve never met the guy, and so certainly never agreed to follow his directives in the first place.
I think we’re kind of stuck here, though. You’re saying that, if I’m to accept the premise that God exists, then I also have to accept the premise that everything he does is good because the bible says that too. Since my original question was “how can Christians simply overlook or excuse the fact that their paragon of good is so frequently evil,” and your answer seems to be “if you were Christian you wouldn’t wonder about that” I’m thinking we’re not really going to get anywhere with this.
August 26th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
If I may jump in here with a few points:
First, regarding Hell. There’s definitely a sense in which Hell is a punishment for wrongdoing. But that’s not ALL it is. One of my teachers at Biola liked to say that the gates of Hell were locked from the inside. His point was that no one is forced to go to Hell who, in one sense, doesn’t want to go there. There’s no one being “tortured” (I suppose I should also point out that Hell is not literally a place where people are burned by fire, or poked with pitch forks, or whatever else you might think it is) who really wishes they could get out and go to Heaven. In fact, Ben, it’s not unlike the sentiment you expressed in an earlier comment. You said that if you ever met the God of the Bible you would hate him and do everything in your power to resist him. That’s exactly how people in Hell would feel. They wouldn’t *want* to love God and dwell in his presence, and so in that sense they’re the ones keeping themselves in Hell. It’s not like they’re kids who God just won’t let come into his playground (even though they really want to play there) because he doesn’t like them. In one sense he simply can’t let them into the playground because all you can do on the playground is play WITH God, and that’s the LAST thing those kids want to do.
Second, you said: “I don’t understand why you think he’s entitled to enslave us. Particularly since I’ve never met the guy, and so certainly never agreed to follow his directives in the first place.”
Most Christian thinkers have postulated the idea (borrowing a bit from Greek philosophy) that God is the “greatest possible being.” The idea is that God is simply the ultimate reality, the ultimate good, etc. He IS. The physical universe we live in is merely a creation of his, dependent on him in every possible way. Not only would that fact alone seem to create at least SOME obligation on out part (him being responsible for our very existence, and all), but if he is the ultimate good, and humans should always seek after goodness, it seems like he is the very thing that would give ultimate meaning to our existence and the thing after which we should seek. And since Christians believe this being has revealed himself in the Bible and in the incarnate person of Jesus Christ, we believe that he has shown how best to seek after him (even though we tend to interpret his revelation incorrectly a lot).
In other words, not only would you (if Christianity is true) have no right whatsoever to claim some kind of innocence or independence from God because you “didn’t agree” to follow his rules, but his rules wouldn’t be arbitrary either. They would be a reflection of THE good, the very fabric of the universe, and so it would literally be impossible to disobey his rules and somehow still be OK such that he wouldn’t need to put you in hell, because you’re literally going against the grain of reality, so to speak.
I don’t expect you to simply accept all of this without objection, of course, but what I’m trying to get you to see (and what Amy has been hinting at) is that Christianity is a coherent system of thought and beliefs that has been refined and expanded on for over 2,000 years and you need to take the system as a whole, not just parts of it that you can easily criticize in isolation. Right now I’m not at all concerned with trying to show you that Christianity is TRUE (I have no expectations of that happening any time soon), but merely showing you that Christianity is a COHERENT system that is not as absurd and evil as you seem to think it is.
August 26th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
I guess I am sort of going by the fire-and-brimstone definition of hell. Come to think of it, I’m not actually sure if that’s from the bible or from Milton or Dante or one of those other bible fanfictions. If hell is simply defined as the whole “afterworld” outside of heaven, then I guess I’d be okay with it. If it’s an enclosed prison-type place, as Amy or your gates analogy seem to be suggesting, that would be unfair. If it’s simply being locked out of heaven, hey, fair enough, I’d rather make my own way anyway.
If we are merely creations of his, though, I don’t think that entitles him to do whatever he wants with us. While most people don’t hate their parents, we’re certainly not obligated to pretend they’re right all the time or let them do whatever they want to us just because they created us. Hell, you’re the one who thinks a potential mother shouldn’t even be able to decide what she wants to do with the biological process that may one day be a kid. Why would our having been created by God oblige us to willingly submit to slavery under him?
But again, if his actions and his rules are reflections of THE good, then shouldn’t they be, you know, good? Or is our human sense of morality just naturally flawed, and you believe that people wanting to be truly good should try to overcome our innate human tendencies towards compassion and mercy, and try to get more into genocide and endless torture, as these are innately good acts that we simply miscategorize?
Obviously this isn’t what you believe, but if you’re equating the biblical character God with the ultimate good in accordance with the nature of reality, this could logically follow.
August 27th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
The problem with analogies like parents and children is that parents don’t have anywhere near the same relationship to their children as God does. For one thing, the parents aren’t responsible for their own existence, which was a contributing factor to the creation of the children, nor were they responsible for the environment in which they were able to meet, procreate, and raise the child, etc. Also, and more importantly, both the parents and children are on the same metaphysical level. They are equals in the sense of both being human. God, on the other hand, is not only responsible for every single factor contributing to the existence of everything, but he is in no respect equal to us in any way. In fact, because of all of this, I would say that the parent-child relationship as traditionally understood is merely a matter of convention, and that there is nothing inherent about parents and children such that they HAVE to behave in a certain way toward each other EXCEPT for the fact that God has commanded children to obey their parents (within reason and never contrary to his other commands, etc.)
Second, because of the fact that we are in no way equal to God, we are not entitled to do some of the things he does. So, for example, because we are all sinners who have willfully disobeyed God, it would be just of him to simply scrap the whole lot of us and start over, if he wanted. But does that mean we have the right to kill anybody who isn’t a Christian, or who does something that disobeys God’s law? Of course not, if for no other reason than because we are not omniscient, and so we can’t ever know for sure whether someone is truly a Christian, whether they are truly disobeying God, etc. Plus, God knows all things, including future events, so he would know if and when any person will become a Christian and accept forgiveness for sins. Since I don’t have such knowledge, who am I to kill someone who might become a Christian in the future? (obviously there are cases like self-defense, which are harder).
That doesn’t answer your question, though, that only shows you why I shouldn’t commit genocide even if God does. In defense of God I would only point out that, again, he is the one who is perfectly holy and good and we are the offenders who have fallen short of perfect holiness and goodness. If it is just to punish evil (which by definition is the absence of goodness), then God is perfectly just in punishing each and every person who has ever lived and sending them straight to hell. What is amazing is the mercy he chose to show by sending his son to earth as a human person to pay the penalty that is due to all of us so that we could have a means of being redeemed from that punishment. And of course, Jesus not only preached “turning the other cheek” and praised meekness, but he also claimed to be sent by the same God of the Old Testament. So if we can be charitable and try to take Jesus seriously, we might find a way of reconciling those two things (which I have attempted to do somewhat here, but only very briefly).
August 28th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Well I’m not saying that the humanity-God relationship is exactly like a child-parent relationship. (A child-imaginary friend relationship, maybe…
) I’m just pointing out that in no other instance do we assume that someone being responsible for our existence entitles them to full control over our fates… and I don’t think that principle needs exception just in case the someone responsible for our existence is way, way better than us.
(As an aside, you mention that parents aren’t responsible for their own existence as another difference. Do Christians believe that God created himself? How does THAT work?)
Two problems though. One, evil is not by definition the absence of goodness. That’s just neutrality. You could just as easily say that good is just the absence of evil, and that God is only special because he completely lacks evil. Which, given the actions he’s taken in the past, he doesn’t. You’re also treating it as a substance, rather than a secondary effect that derives from one’s actions. Evil is, by definition, “1.morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked: evil deeds; an evil life. 2.harmful; injurious: evil laws. 3.characterized or accompanied by misfortune or suffering; unfortunate; disastrous: to be fallen on evil days. 4.due to actual or imputed bad conduct or character: an evil reputation. 5.marked by anger, irritability, irascibility, etc.: He is known for his evil disposition.”
I think your main problem is that you don’t really understand Good as what it is, which is a subjective quality used to measure the likely effects of one’s actions, words, or thoughts. Rather, you use “Good” and “Godly” or “Holy” interchangeably. You say yourself that God is just to punish evil, but say in the same paragraph that in your mind “evil” is just anything and everything but God. So while you say “God is just to punish evil”, what you mean is “God is just to do harm against everything that is not like God” which is a very human position to take, and bullshit. Not to mention xenophobic on the part of the supposedly almighty.
And, for the record, really just adds validity to my original designation of God as Tyrant.
Also, in regards to your “it is just to punish evil” assertion, just because God can do something and can justify it (by the rules HE made up, even) doesn’t mean that it’s good. If an unarmed teenager breaks into my house in the dark to steal my xbox and then leave me in peace, I CAN shoot him in the head, and it’s justified under law in most cases. What would be right would be to warn him that I’m there and make him flee. These are two different concepts, and just because God can call himself perfectly just in punishing each and every person who has ever lived and sending them straight to hell doesn’t make it right or good. In fact, since it is both harmful and injurious to all parties involved except God, it makes it Evil. Even if it is still a Holy Evil.
Given all of these malevolent things that are supposedly done to us by this entity… is it not Just to rebel?
August 28th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
You said: “I’m just pointing out that in no other instance do we assume that someone being responsible for our existence entitles them to full control over our fates…”
Right, which was partially my point. God is absolutely unique. That would mean that IF the God that I’m trying to defend actually exists, his actions and relations would also be unique and not fully comparable to any other creature’s actions or relations. So I don’t see it as a problem that we would hold everyone else to a slightly different standard than God, in some sense. That’s the whole point, in fact. God IS the standard.
As for the good and evil thing, that’s probably not a discussion we can have here, but suffice it to say that evil as classically understood is simply the absence of good. In other words, evil is not a thing that exists. Good exists, and as a Christian I would say that the good is God. The point is that you CAN’T go both ways (saying that good is just the absence of evil), because evil ISN’T anything. There can be no such thing as “perfect evil” because that would simply be non-existence. Think of light and heat. It is perfectly acceptable to define darkness as the absence of light and cold as the absence of heat, right? Because light and heat are both THINGS, but cold and dark are both relative. The same would be true of good and evil. An action can only be evil if it fails to meet some standard of what would have been the good or right thing to do in that particular situation (and there could be multiple and equally good acts, by the way).
As to the last part, I would say that that’s not a good example for several reasons. For one thing, it strikes me as unjust to kill a person for stealing your XBox. So I would say that if the state law says that such a punishment is legal, then the law is unjust (and since all human laws are fallible, that’s certainly possible). I fundamentally reject the notion that something can be “just” but not “good.” How would you define justice in a way that doesn’t include some concept of what is good or proper or right? I don’t see how you can.
August 29th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Everything is absolutely unique, David.
But you’re flatly wrong about evil not being anything unless you’re also saying that good isn’t anything. We’re not talking about substances, here. Also, I don’t really think that evil is classically understood as simply the absence of good. That would make a vacuum “evil” in your understanding, simply because there’s nothing good about it. Obviously, something that isn’t doing anything whatsoever (or ISN’T anything whatsoever) can’t be evil, at least not if the term evil actually means anything.
Although it might explain the Christian worldview that everything and it’s mother is evil. But your “evil” means nothing. Literally.
Also, you’re falling into a dualist fallacy again. Light, dark, heat, and cold are subjective terms used to describe the secondary effects of the movements of sub-atomic particles. We measure the movement of particles as “temperature”, and terms like heat and cold are subjective terms that we use to denote our relative experience of temperature. Likewise light and dark are subjective terms we use to describe a measure of photons and our relative perception of them. I say again, if you insist on viewing the world through such a simplistic, dualistic lens, you could also say that heat is the absence of cold or light is the absence of dark, since all of these terms are subjective measurements anyway.
True, it would strike me as unjust to kill a person for stealing my Xbox, just as it would strike me as unjust to do harm to the whole of creation just because it is dissimilar from myself. But then, if I was God, I have a feeling that you would suddenly think it was good and proper for me to have shot the poor kid in the head for stealing my Xbox, no?
Me, I would define Justice as equity or balance. A balance struck in accordance with standards, requirements, or principles agreed upon or at least known by all parties involved ahead of time, ideally.
Well how do you define Justice, then, David? If you simply define Good as “of or pertaining to the Abrahamic God” and Evil as “the incremental absence of anything of or pertaining to the Abrahamic God” I’m not really sure your Justice is going to be anything I would value, but I’m curious as to what it means to you.
August 29th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
You think Christians think that the fact that your parents had sex in order to conceive you makes you guilty? No.
You keep using that word, but I honestly don’t know what you’re referring to. Can you explain what you mean? You think that my following God means I’m in slavery?
No, I’m just saying that if I’m to explain the coherence of Christianity, I need to be able to include all of Christianity in my answer in order to do so.
This is such an odd way to put it–that God punishes people because they’re “dissimilar from Himself.” Though technically correct that we are dissimilar, this doesn’t at all capture the situation. Here’s what I mean: If God’s character is perfectly good and therefore the standard of all goodness, then of course dissimilarity will be punished because where people deviate from the standard of goodness, there they are doing something wrong. It’s not wrong because it’s dissimilar, it’s dissimilar because it’s wrong and God’s character is only good.
You might as well say that a judge punishes a bank robber because the bank robber is dissimilar from himself and the law. Technically, they are dissimilar, but the bank robber is punished because what he did was wrong, opposed to the standard, not because he was different. Using the word “different” or “dissimilar” is just an unfair way to put an emotional spin on the word, but it doesn’t accurately reflect the situation.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:59 am
I’m referring in that first bit to Original Sin, but perhaps that’s just a Catholic thing. But alright, I wouldn’t consider it just if I were told “yeah, that was all pretty good, but you exist and you’re not God, so you’re condemned” either. A little worse, actually.
Willingly enslaved, perhaps, but yes. If upon death we’re rounded up and captured by him or his agents against our will and either forced to submit to his will or locked away and punished forever, wholly under his domination whether we ever agreed to be or not, then it’s totally analogous to slavery. The main difference being that at least slaves can die. Not so with the immortal souls God enslaves. Of course, as with any enslaved population, some people will identify with their captors and do everything in their power to please them to avoid whippings (and perhaps secure for themselves a place in their house rather than out in the field, or heaven rather than hell) but just because they’re more comfortable with it and may even feel genuine affection for their master doesn’t make them any less a slave. Nor does knowing ahead of time that any slave who disobeys will receive a whipping make that whipping just.
But here, you’re doing the same thing that David does and using Good and God as synonymous. My whole premise is that God is obviously, from any unbiased perspective, not the standard of goodness. You can’t keep just saying Yes He Is and saying that invalidates all my points. Er, I mean, you can, obviously, but we won’t get anywhere with it.
Well no, because if the judge were to go out the next day and rob a bank, he too would be punished. If God were to go out the next day and rob a bank (or turn an innocent woman into a pillar of salt, wipe out a city or two, drown an entire race of people, burn some folks who disagreed with his genocidal policies, etc.) it would suddenly be all hunky-dorey because he’s God. He doesn’t punish “evil” as human beings understand it so much as disloyalty; nor is there any reason to believe that his character is perfectly good, except that he himself says so. I could make a similar claim about myself, were I so self-aggrandizing.
August 30th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Ben,
Hopefully this doesn’t get too confusing carrying on two conversations at once!
Before pressing on, I think I need to try to clear up some misunderstandings and define some terms.
First, nothing I’ve said is dualist, in fact it’s the exact opposite of dualism. Dualism is the belief that reality is fundamentally two opposing forces (yin and yang, good and bad, etc). In dualism good and evil are both actual things that exist, neither is a privation (or lack) of the other. What I am saying is that evil is not something real that exists, only good is. Evil technically only exists as a hypothetical, because “pure evil” would be non-existence (which is nothing). As you know, even space is not actually nothing (even if it is a vacuum), it’s something, because scientists can talk about “space-time” as something that actually exists and is therefore useful in theorizing and scientific investigation. If space were literally nothing, they could not do this.
Second, I think you’re getting caught up on good not being a “substance” because you’re simply assuming a naturalistic (or materialistic) worldview in which all that truly exists is physical stuff. Obviously “goodness” is not something like that, so that you could go out and pick up a piece of goodness off the ground. But it doesn’t follow that because something is non-physical that it is therefore not real. I believe that goodness (like justice) is what is called in philosophy jargon a “universal”. A universal is a non-spatial property or relation that is instantiated in particular, physical things.
Third, you still seem to be missing the point about light and heat. Heat is motion, yes, and cold is the absence of motion, right? But it doesn’t really make sense to describe heat as the absence of “stillness.” Heat is created by adding motion, and cold is created by removing motion. And stillness is simply defined as NOT moving. At every point motion is the thing and stillness is the absence of it. Same with light and dark. You don’t ADD darkness to a room, for example, you REMOVE light. If there could be perfect darkness, it would only be achieved by removing every photon of light. The more photons you have bouncing around, the more light you have, the fewer photons, less light. This would be true across the spectrum.
Finally, I would probably define justice along the same lines as you did. But what I want to know is, do you think that equity, balance, etc., are good things to have? And by extension, is justice a good thing to have? I think it is (which is why I think it would be unjust to shoot someone for stealing your xbox, since that doesn’t seem to be the equitable response, nor does it create a proper balance, etc.). In any case, the point is that I don’t see any distinction between what is “just” and what is “right.” Incidentally, I wouldn’t define justice ONLY in terms of “whatever the Abrahamic God does” because (a) I would need a reason to think that the Abrahamic God is just to begin with, and (b) I would need to be able to come up with at least a PLAUSIBLE defense for problematic issues like genocide in the Old Testament. I think I can meet both of those conditions, but it would take a long time and some patience to work through all the issues with you.
But honestly, while this will probably disappoint you, I’m really not all that concerned with arguing about the “god did bad stuff in the Old Testament” stuff. First of all, Jesus didn’t order anyone to fight any holy wars, in fact he may have advocated strong pacifism, and Jesus is supposed to be the final and most complete revelation of God. Second, lots of Christians have taken allegorical or non-literal reads of a lot of the Old Testament, and while I don’t personally hold that view, there’s nothing stopping you from doing so if the Old Testament stuff is the ONLY thing keeping you from accepting Christianity (which I’m sure is not the case, so I’d rather focus on more fundamental issues).