If you were convinced there was a god, would that be good news?

In today’s entry we turn to Michael Brown’s final question from his article 7 honest questions for atheists. As the title of his article suggests, Brown poses seven questions for atheists to consider, presumably in a good-faith effort to understand non-believers better. Naturally, different people who do not believe in a deity are going to answer Brown’s questions differently, and readers are invited to share their own reactions to his questions in the comments section below. The answers that I present here on my blog are my own and are not intended to speak on behalf of anyone other than myself. 

My answers to Brown’s previous questions can be accessed here:

1. Why are you an atheist? 

2. Can an atheist have purpose? 

3. Are you sure there’s no god? 

4. Can science answer the remaining mysteries of the universe? 

5. Have you ever questioned your atheism? 

6. Are you completely materialistic in your mindset?

In his seventh question, Brown wants to know how we as atheists would evaluate the prospect that the Christian god were real, whether we would welcome that or not.

He asks:

If you were convinced that God truly existed – meaning the God of the Bible, who is perfect in every way, full of justice and mercy, our Creator and our Redeemer – would that be good news or bad news? And would you be willing to follow Him and honor Him if He were truly God?

This question invites such a high degree of incoherence that it’s not answerable on its own terms, for its own terms ignore the conceptual roots of moral evaluation. It is not uncommon to find sometimes even careful thinkers treating concepts as though they exist in a vacuum, as though their meanings were isolated, detached and independent of supporting contexts. This is not accurate. Concepts condense an enormous amount of information and, with the exception of axiomatic concepts, depend on the validity and content of an entire hierarchy of more fundamental concepts. This fact has formidable implications for the question Brown poses. 

Brown asks if being convinced that the god of Christianity exists would be welcomed as “good news or bad news.” The concepts ‘good’ and ‘bad’ draw their meaning from a context of information which such evaluations must measure against a standard. The proper standard evaluation is man’s nature as a biological organism and his life needs. Man is not a rock or a whisp of dust, but an animal – the rational animal – and as such his existence is conditional, which means: he needs values in order to live. The state of achieving those values and succeeding in efforts to live is good for man, and failing at these endeavors is not good or bad for him. (For elaboration on this, see here.) 

Notice, then, that the concepts ‘good’ and ‘bad’ have a direct tie to reality, or in Objectivist terms, to existence. To say that something is either good or bad involves an evaluation of facts which exist and are what they are independent of conscious activity. If I consume something that is poisonous, this is bad for my life, and no amount of wishing, preferring, or emoting will alter this. Poison exists, is what it is and does what it does regardless of anyone’s wishes, protestations, fantasizing, or any other type of conscious activity. And evaluative concepts take this fundamental orientation between existence and consciousness as an ultimate standard. This standard is called the primacy of existence. If you’ve ever heard the expressions “wishing doesn’t make it so” and “believing it doesn’t make it true,” then you’ve heard statements which directly affirm the standard of the primacy of existence. The primacy of existence principle is wholly incompatible with theism (see here and here for starters). 

If I were convinced that the god of Christianity were real, this would mean that also I rejected the recognition that existence has metaphysical primacy in the relationship between consciousness and its objects. It would mean that I believe we find ourselves in a reality in which wishing does make it so – indeed, the entire universe and everything within it would have to be a product of wishing. This would pull the metaphysical rug out from underneath the meaning of all concepts, including those which we use to evaluate ideas and information (e.g., “good news” vs. “bad news”). In other words, ‘good’ would have no objective meaning for it would have no objective basis. It would be like asking how heavy something is outside the influence of a gravitational field: the very preconditions which make the concept ‘heavy’ meaningful are absent, so the question is unanswerable. The same would be the case if existence does not hold metaphysical primacy in the relationship between consciousness and its objects. 

So my initial response to Brown’s final question is that its own terms deny the very basis to address it on its own terms in any coherent manner. 

But there are other points to be made here. 

Consider for example the implications that such a belief would have for induction. Even Christian apologists themselves point out that induction presupposes the uniformity of nature. To draw generalizations about objects and actions, there would need to be some guarantee that the identity of objects and actions obtain consistently, in uniform manner not subject to our intensions, preferences, wishing, etc. That guarantee is the primacy of existence. But, as we saw above, if the Christian god were real, then existence would not hold metaphysical primacy – consciousness would, which means: reality would conform to someone’s whims, desires, mood swings, fantasies, etc. Under such circumstances, we would not have the guarantee of the primacy of existence to underwrite confidence in our inductive inferences. Because of this, we could not even draw generalizations about entity classes or the actions they are capable of performing. We see the fallout of this cognitive upheaval in story after story in the Old and New Testaments. One moment, the substance in the waterpots is water, the next – because conscious agent so wishes – that substance suddenly turns into wine; one moment, you step out onto the waves of a lake and immediately sink, the next – because someone believed and hoped with sufficient vigor – you’re now walking on its surface. So the very act of drawing generalizations which the primacy of existence allows us to take for granted is now fatally compromised. Every generalization would need to be made, not as high probabilities or outright certainties (e.g., touching the surface of hot stove will hurt, an egg dropped onto a hard surface will break, etc.), but as tentative pronouncements qualified by a thoroughly undermining disclaimer: X would be the case so long as conscious agents so choose. That to me does not seem to be very beneficial to man: bread is nourishing, unless a conscious agent wishes that it euthanizes those who consume it. 

Here’s another point: according to biblical mythology, the Christian god is characterized as a father and is said to have had a son – Jesus – and when this son, according to the stories we read in the New Testament, is being tortured and readied for horrific execution, this father-god lets it all happen. Brown repeats the Christian claim that its god is “full of justice and mercy,” but no honest individual would be able to argue that a father allowing his own child to be tortured and executed by evil people – especially if that father could intervene and prevent it (as surely an omnipotent being could do) – is at all an expression of justice and mercy. Exactly the opposite is the case. So even if we ignore the issues raised above, there are strong reasons to suppose that the belief that this god is real could not be accepted as “good news,” regardless of how much believers pretend otherwise. Christians will say that allowing Jesus to be tortured and executed was somehow just and merciful, which only exemplifies the extent to which they will turn concepts inside out to protect their confessional investment. If the Christian god allowed its own son to be treated so horribly, what would stop it from allowing any human being from being so treated? None of this sounds like “good news” to me. 

We can expect Christians to raise the objection that their god would never arbitrarily alter reality such that we could not have confidence in our generalizations, or that their god would never turn its back on “the chosen.” Such divine ventriloquism is hardly reassuring, for unless these same believers are themselves God, they’re in the same boat as everyone else on these matters and are speaking beyond their knowledge. They too may be uncomfortable with the idea that their god would abandon them in the time of need or suddenly invert gravity while they’re driving on the turnpike (the believer cannot know whether or not such phenomena are part of “God’s plan”), but they conveniently forget the broader teaching of the Christian testaments – namely that with Christianity, there’s not only an all-powerful god, but also an unknown number of other supernatural agents – some of them characterized as devils, demons and “unclean spirits” which act with nefarious intentions. Christian belief in this way is just like inviting icky Ricky over for the evening – for he always brings along his cruddy buddies. It’s best not to extend such invitations because you get more problems than you can handle. I don’t see how anyone could consider that “good news.” 

Christianity treats each individual human being in a most nihilistic manner. If the Christian god wants you to die a horrific death, there’s nothing you can do to prevent such a fate in a theistically deterministic universe. It would not be concerned with anyone’s feelings, worthiness or well-being, for it will always be said to have some reason for the destruction it allows to take place. As apologist Greg Bahnsen put it, “God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil which exists” (Always Ready, p. 172). How at all could one trust someone who is said to have “a morally sufficient reason” to allow evil to happen to you or your loved ones? Blank out. 

What protected Jesus from the Roman centurions? What protected Job from a wager between Satan and “the Lord” himself? What protected the thousands of anonymous persons said to have perished in a worldwide flood sent by an angry Jehovah? There were no protections whatsoever, and yet we’re supposed to call all this “good” because whatever happens is all supposed to be part of some larger “plan” that has been conceived and put into action throughout human history by a supernatural being. This being couldn’t care less about any human being – it would have no objective basis to value anyone or anything, since it is immortal, indestructible and in need of nothing. And yet we’re supposed to believe not only that it exists and caused everything we read in the testaments to happen, but also that it loves each and every one of us. 

With these points solidly established (and I’m sure more could be adduced), it is more than safe to say that such a belief could not spell good news. And no father who would abandon his child in its desperate time of need is worthy of any kind of honor or loyalty.

by Dawson Bethrick