The Futility of Theodicy

Several weeks ago on his blog, Christian apologist James Anderson plugged Greg Welty’s newly released book on the problem of evil on his (Anderson’s) blog. Readers can find this in his entry Why Is There Evil In The World (And So Much Of It)? Though not an in-depth review, I’m afraid it’s more of the usual syrupy praise for the labors of a fellow-traveler in the faith doing what he can to strengthen believers’ devotion to the imaginary.

Of course I have to admit upfront that, whenever I see another book come out which, once and for all, presumably puts the problem of evil to rest (why else would a Christian theologian publish a book on the problem of evil to begin with?), part of me (the mature, adult part of me) is inclined to yawn, down a hot cup of delicious coffee, and go on with my day teeming with productive labor. Another part of me (one more inclined to playfulness) says “Oh goodie! Yet another effort to battle this untamable dragon!” and likewise yawns and moves on to another fulfilling day of personal achievement. That is to say, I probably won’t be running out to buy Welty’s book any time soon. 

Does One Need Evidence to Be an Atheist?

“[A]theism is just a statement of what an atheist doesn't believe rather than what he does believe” – Steve Hays

Over on Triablogue, Steve Hays posted an entry provocatively titled There’s no evidence for atheism. In it, he argues that atheists are essentially at a loss when it comes to producing a positive case for atheism, that the most they can do is raise objections to theism. One wonders if he has ever read George H. Smith’s book Atheism: The Case Against God. Of course, that raises the question of what constitutes a positive argument for a position. Then again, we should also not overlook the obvious fact that atheism is not a position to begin with; it is essentially a negation, a negation of theism. Sort of like a-Moonism: here “a-Moonist” would simply refer to someone who does not subscribe to the teachings of Sun Myung Moon. This does nothing to indicate which views to which an a-Moonist does subscribe. In fact, I’d wager that Steve Hays would consider himself an a-Moonist (in spite of Moonism’s Christian roots), just as I do given that I do not subscribe to the teachings of Sun Myung Moon.

So the question boils down to: Does one need a positive argument to support a negation of a belief system? Does one need evidence if he does not subscribe to a belief system? Do I need evidence to be an a-Moonist? If so, why?

The Tragedy that is Christian Morality

Over on Triablogue, blogger and long-time visitor to my blog Justin Hall challenged Steve Hays on his naïve, one-size-fits-all attempts to malign atheism and those who hold no god-beliefs – those dastardly evil people known as “atheists.” In his blog entry, Atheism has no brakes, Hays is apparently attempting to blame atheism for the tragic goings-on that have recently come to light concerning Planned Parenthood. Not surprisingly, he has a difficult time making any connection between the two.

Ironically, Hays laments the evil that goes on in the world while his own worldview teaches that “God controls whatsoever comes to pass” (Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, p. 160) and that “God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil which exists” (Bahnsen, Always Ready, p. 172). Given Hays’ worldview, the people at Planned Parenthood are nothing more than puppets doing the will of the Christian god as they fulfill its “divine plan.” Since, according to Christianity, everything that happens in the world, happens according to “God’s plan,” Planned Parenthood is just one more instance of planned evil.

It’s pretty hard to lay blame on atheism when you worship a god which has intended evil to proliferate the world from before the beginning of time, but then again, Christians are not known for the logical solvency of their worldview.

Shining a Bright Light into Dave's Dark Cave

Dave McPhillips posted several comments responding to blog A Reply to Dave McPhillips on Bahnsen’s Treatment of the Problem of Evil. Dave is another wannabe presuppositionalist, trying his hand well beyond his skill and well beyond his knowledge of the topics that come up in debate. The darkness of ignorance encouraged by the Christian worldview is strong with Dave McPhillips: it has served to keep him from the light and has effectively reduced him to repeating apologetic slogans liked a well-trained presuppositionalist marionette.

For those who have been following my blog for several years now, do you notice a pattern? Every couple months another apologist comes by, often with some drive-by comment, speaking his nonsense and often not realizing how summarily he and his worldview have been refuted. Many disappear after the first round, but on occasion they return after a brief season only to wedge their feet deeper into their oral cavity. All too often this takes the form of simply asserting dismissive remarks like “that’s arbitrary,” “that’s subjective,” “that begs the question,” etc., without even attempting to explain why the tidbit in question commits the offense so charged. In fact, had my critics bothered to read more of my blog than just the brief passage that made them bristle to begin with, they would find that I have already anticipated their objections and have validated my position, even if they do not approve of it.

 

But after a few short rounds, they disappear for good and never come back, never the wiser, never the more enlightened. This is the effect of Christianity: it corrals the believer’s mind into a cave of ignorance where it seeks to enslave it to its mystical fantasies. Very few seem to find the courage it takes to question Christianity’s subjective premises and recognize them for what they are. To do this requires the choice to be determined in one’s honesty. Without this choice, the believer will be forever ensnared in Christianity’s tangled web of lies and deceits.

So here we go again.

A Reply to Dave McPhillips on Bahnsen’s Treatment of the Problem of Evil

A visitor to my blog posting under the name Dave McPhillips recently submitted a comment in response to my blog entry titled Greg Bahnsen on the Problem of Evil.

Here is what Dave wrote:

The problem of evil is not a problem for the believer but rather a problem for the unbeliever. what Bahnsen and Van Til were teaching is that if one wishes to hold a moral complaint against anything in this world one must have a standard of morality with which to evaluate between good and evil.Moreover,one must first define what they mean by "evil" given their espoused worldview and how that definition is meaningful. As a Christian I have a standard of morality by which to distinguish good from evil (i.e. the holy character of God) but as an unbeliever who holds that we live in a random chance universe that is material in nature, there would be no objective immaterial invariant moral standard with which to evaluate right and wrong. in the end all unbelieving systems of thought relegate morality to the realm of subjective relativism. if so, then who's to say whats right or wrong? it would simply be different strokes for different folks.

Those who have read my above-linked blog entry will note that Dave does not interact directly with what I have stated there. Nor does Dave make any attempt to defend Bahnsen's proposed solution to the problem of evil.

I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part II

I continue now with the second installment of my examination of James Anderson’s responses to “four common objections” to Christianity found in the paper I Reject Christianity Because _______________ which was recently posted on the The Gospel Coalition website. (For the initial installment in this series, see Part I.)

The second objection posed to Anderson is the problem of evil:

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning play J.B., Archibald MacLeish nails it when his character Nickles declares: "If God is God, he is not good; if God is good, he is not God." How can you believe in a God who would allow so much senseless evil and suffering in the world?

In response to this, Anderson writes:

Nickles gets it exactly backwards. God is by nature good; if God isn't good, he isn't really God. Or to be more precise: if there's no good God, there's no God at all.

Of course, it would be quite easy to imagine an evil god just as Anderson wants to imagine an all-good god that is on cozy terms with evil. And of course, the evil god would probably want us to think that it’s all-good, and it would likely call itself all-good. And if it rules by fear (cf. Prov. 1:7 et al.), it would want its believers to resist questioning this on pain of that fear.

A Reply to Matthias on Imagination and Its Role in Theism

A visitor to my blog named Matthias recently posted several comments to various blogs of mine. Posting under the moniker McFormtist, this is apparently Matthias McMahon of the Choosing Hats blog. Since Chris Bolt’s departure from that blog and absence from the comments sections of my blog (and pretty much elsewhere so far as I can tell), it is nice to see one of CH’s crew over here at IP asking questions and participating in discussions. I welcome Matthias’s inquiry and find his friendly tone refreshing.

Matthias has posted comments inquiring on various aspects of my critique of theism on the following blog entries of mine:

Three Steps Proving that Theism Cannot Be True 

A Proof that the Christian God Does Not Exist 

Confessions of a Vantillians Subjectivist

The following is a reply to Matthias’s 15 Jan. comment to my blog A Proof that the Christian God Does Not Exist.

In Shambles: Nide's Crumbling Worldview

Nide has posted some comments replying to my previous blog entry responding to him here: Christian Anti-Morality: A Response to Nide. While it does not appear that Nide has finished his response to what I stated to him in that blog entry (he left his last comment with an indication that there was yet more to come), I am moving on with a response to what he stated in his reaction to what I wrote.

Christian Anti-Morality: A Response to Nide

The following is a reply to comments made on this blog by Nide (aka “Hezekiah Ahaz”).

Greg Bahnsen on the Problem of Evil

Greg Bahnsen (1948 – 1995) was the most high-profile popularizer of presuppositional apologetics of his day. He remains today one of the foremost interpreters of Cornelius Van Til’s apologetic works, his lengthy Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis being published posthumously from Bahnsen’s own manuscript, which he completed shortly before his death (p.xv). The result is 764 pages, including a bibliography and three indices (for bible verses, names and topics) of excessively repetitive droning about how the “unbeliever” can’t account for this, can’t account for that, doesn’t know how to put on his pants in the morning, doesn’t know how to put his shirt on, etc. Throughout all this Bahnsen nowhere lays out an actual epistemological method for one to apply and come to the same “knowledge” Bahnsen and other Christians claim for themselves. Truly, it is a most ironic spectacle.

What some may find surprising is the fact that, in the space of 764 pages, there is in the topical index only one reference to the problem of evil, and that is to a footnote straddling pages 525 and 526 of Bahnsen’s thick tome.

And while it is rather lengthy in itself so far as footnotes go, Bahnsen states in that footnote that the problem of evil is, in his experience, “the most popular argument urged against Christianity.” So while his book is over 700 pages, he spends just one paragraph, relegated to a passing footnote, on addressing what he says is “the most popular argument urged against Christianity.”

Answering Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism, Part IVb: Collectivism, Evil and Slavery

This will be the final installment of my extended reply to Dustin Segers’ questions for atheists. My previous responses to Segers can be found here:

Answering Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism, Part I: Intro and the Nature of Truth
Answering Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism, Part II: The Nature of Logic 

Answering Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism, Part IIIa: The Uniformity of Nature 

Answering Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism, Part IIIb: The Problem of Induction 

Answering Dustin Segers’ Presuppositionalism, Part IVa: Objective Morality

In the present entry, I continue my exploration of Segers’ final question, namely:

”How do you account for objective morality without God?"

I have already provided a direct response to this question in my previous blog entry. In this entry, I explore some of the political implications of the moral system found in Christianity, focusing on Christianity’s proclivity towards collectivism, its affinity with Nazism and communism, the problem of evil, and the issue of slavery.

Christianity's Sanction of Evil

Prologue

Over the past two weeks or so, while I’ve been living temporarily in the seaside resort town of Cha’am, Thailand (since the part of Bangkok where I live has been flooded and unreachable), I’ve been party to several discussions with presuppositional apologist Sye Ten Bruggencate. Readers of my blog will remember my critique of Sye’s website where he’s published his version of a presuppositional argument for the existence of his version of the Christian god.

Well, we’ve butted heads again, and the results have been, shall I say, historic.

Some Thoughts on Presuppositionalism and the Problem of Evil

Christian apologist Dan of Debunking Atheists agreeably affirms Greg Bahnsen’s solution to the problem of evil, which reads as follows:

God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil which exists. (Always Ready, p. 172)

Bahnsen offers this statement (for which he cites no biblical citation specifically supporting it) as an overlooked premise which satisfies the problem of evil:

1. God is all-good.

2. God is all-powerful.

3. Evil exists. (Ibid., p. 171)

Bahnsen adds to this formulation of the problem of evil the claim that his god “has a morally sufficient reason” for evil. Bahnsen does not tell us what that alleged reason is. He does not even suggest possible candidates for what it could or might be. Bahnsen’s concern is to claim that his god does have a reason for allowing and/or committing evil, and that reason is “morally sufficient.” In essence, Bahnsen is passing judgment on something he has not seen; he is pre-judging as “morally sufficient” something which he cannot even show actually exists, and whose identity is unknown. Bahnsen nowhere explains how we can morally evaluate something that is unknown, and yet attempts to solve the problem of evil by affirming a premise which does exactly this. Such prejudice is rash and baseless, and the opposite of morally responsible.

All this is to say that Bahnsen offers a defense against the problem of evil, but fails to validate a crucial component integral to that defense, namely the notion of a “morally sufficient reason” for evil. As we examine Bahnsen’s own statements around his proposed defense against the problem of evil, and Dan’s additional comments on the matter, consider what kind of mind is required to take the view that there is such a thing as a “morally sufficient reason” for evil. Bahnsen himself shows no indication that he winces at the idea; in fact, he seems gleeful in affirming it.

Bahnsen clues us in on the psychological process by which the Christian mind comes to the evaluation of reasons which are unknown, as “morally sufficient” when he states the following:

If the Christian presupposes that God is perfectly and completely good -- as Scripture requires us to do -- then he is committed to evaluating everything within his experience in the light of that presupposition. Accordingly, when the Christian observes evil events or things in the world, he can and should retain consistency with his presupposition about God's goodness by now inferring that God has a morally good reason for the evil that exists. God certainly must be all-powerful in order to be God; He is not to be thought of as overwhelmed or stymied by evil in the universe. And God is surely good, the Christian will profess -- so any evil we find must be compatible with God's goodness. This is just to say that God has planned evil events for reasons which are morally commendable and good. (Always Ready, pp. 171-172)

Observe Bahnsen’s procedure here, and notice how its entire weight is borne on faith-based assumptions:

Step 1: Assume on faith (i.e., on the basis of hope and desire) that there is a god.

Step 2: Assume in advance of anything else, that this god “is perfectly and completely good.”

Step 3: Commit yourself “to evaluating everything within [your] experience in light of [these assumptions]” – i.e., deliberately allow them to predetermine the outcome of any evaluation, inference, supposition, judgment, conclusion you may make about said god.

Step 4: When you observe evil in the world, “retain consistency with [these assumptions] about God’s goodness by now inferring that God has a morally good reason for the evil that exists.”

Step 5: Don’t worry about what specifically that reason might be; you might never know what it is (in fact, it’s preferable that you don’t know what it is). Bahnsen himself concedes that he has no idea what this “morally sufficient reason” could possibly be when he writes:

the Bible calls upon us to trust that God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil which can be found in this world, but it does not tell us what that sufficient reason is.

The apologist finds delight in such ignorance, pretending that it indicates some “higher knowledge” to which man has no access. The purpose here is not to establish the claim that the Christian god has a “morally sufficient reason” for evil. Rather, it is simply to assume, on the basis of prior assumptions accepted on faith, that whatever reason said god supposedly has is, sight unseen, a “morally good reason” for evil. Don’t even worry about knowing what such a reason could be; don’t try to hypothesize examples; don’t think critically about what you are expected to accept as knowledge. The important thing is not to evaluate specific instances, but to settle in your mind at any cost that whatever reason this god might have for allowing or committing evil, it’s a “morally good reason.”

Step 6: Rationalize Steps 4 and 5. For example, remind yourself that “God certainly must be all-powerful in order to be God; He is not to be thought of [i.e., imagined] as overwhelmed or stymied by evil in the universe. And God is surely good.” Given these assumptions which are affirmed in advance of contemplating anything that might be called evil in the world, pretend to have drawn the conclusion “[therefore] any evil we find must be compatible with God’s goodness.”

Step 7: Put out of your mind the fact that the very notion of evil being “compatible with God’s goodness” is indistinguishable from evil being compatible with the nature of an evil god. I.e., suppress genuine moral judgment in order to replace it with morally bankrupt prejudices resting on faith-based assumptions which are to be accepted in advance of any judgment for no good reason whatsoever (for to evaluate a reason as “good” would defy the very procedure under consideration).

Step 8: Having gone through Steps 1 through 7, pretend that you’ve established as a conclusion to prior reasoning that “God has planned evil events for reasons which are morally commendable and good.” Again, do not inquire as to what these reasons might be; what is important is that you presuppose that they are “morally commendable and good.”

If those reasons are in fact “morally commendable and good,” then, by deeming them as such, the apologist is essentially saying everyone should go and do likewise, for they are “morally commendable and good.” But what if everyone went around, like the Christian god, allowing and/or committing evil and claiming to have a “morally sufficient reason” for doing so? If this would not be a suitable formula for man’s choices and actions, then how can one call the Christian god’s supposed “reason” for allowing evil “morally commendable and good”?

In attempting to turn the problem of evil into merely an emotional difficulty as opposed to an actual contradiction, Bahnsen openly admits that he does not know what reason his god might have for allowing or using evil to achieve its ends:

The problem which men have with God when they come face to face with evil in the world is not a logical or philosophical one, but more a psychological one. We can find it emotionally very hard to have faith in God and trust His goodness and power when we are not given the reason why bad things happen to us and others. We instinctively think to ourselves, "why did such a terrible thing occur?" Unbelievers internally cry out for an answer to such a question also. But God does not always (indeed, rarely) provide an explanation to human beings for the evil which they experience or observe. "The secret things belong to the Lord our God" (Deuteronomy 29:29). We might not be able to understand God's wise and mysterious ways, even if He told us (cf. Isaiah 55:9). Nevertheless, the fact remains that He has not told us why misery and suffering and injustice are part of His plan for history and for our individual lives. (Always Ready, p. 173)

I have already written on a broader problem in Christianity, what I call the problem of imperfection, in my blog Was Adam Created Perfect? Bahnsen avoids addressing, even acknowledging, that Christianity is unable to resolve the inherent contradiction in affirming the view that the universe was created by a perfect creator, while imperfections exist in that creation. The problem of evil is essentially a more isolated aspect, or manifestation, of this broader problem, which few apologists ever consider.

In trying to downplay the logical conundrum raised by the problem of evil, Bahnsen proposes a solution which affirms the notion that evil is justifiable if one has a “morally sufficient reason” for it, and, apparently pleased with himself, proceeds to call the persistence of the problem of evil a “psychological” problem rather than a philosophical problem. Bahnsen thus announces that he sees no philosophical problem in affirming the notion that evil is justifiable if one has a supposedly “morally sufficient reason” for it.

He says that the psychological problem of evil arises as a result of not knowing what that reason might be, for not having a suitable answer to the question, “why did such a terrible thing occur?” Bahnsen’s claim that whatever reason his god has for allowing or using evil to achieve its ends, it is a “morally sufficient reason,” is intended to calm the believer’s mind by appeasing the wrong end of the contradiction: by camouflaging evil with the guise of goodness to make it seem acceptable.

Bahnsen complains that “Unbelievers internally cry out for an answer to such a question also,” but “unbelievers” are not the ones whose worldview brews such a philosophical quandary in the first place, nor is it the “unbeliever’s” worldview which posits the notion of a “morally sufficient reason” for allowing or using evil as the solution to the problem of evil.

In spite of the raging nature of this question, given its mystical premises, Bahnsen reports that “God does not always (indeed, rarely) provide an explanation to human beings for the evil which they experience or observe,” that “He has not told us why misery and suffering and injustice are part of His plan for history and for our individual lives.” Bahnsen even suggests that believers “might not be able to understand God's wise and mysterious ways, even if He told us.” So Bahnsen acknowledges that he does not know what reason his god might have for using evil to achieve its purposes, and says that he probably wouldn’t understand it even if he were to learn of it, and yet he still calls it “morally sufficient.” For Bahnsen, the moral is not the understood, but the obeyed. Understanding plays no central role in the Christian conception of morality.

The bottom line for Bahnsen and his worldview, then, is that evil is morally justifiable so long as one does not disclose his reasons for adopting its use. Something does not need to be known or understood in order to call it “morally sufficient,” and Bahnsen was the type of individual who found this “solution” to the problem of evil satisfying.

Bahnsen does affirm that evil is a serious issue. He writes:

It is important for the Christian to realize –indeed, to insist upon – the reality and serious nature of evil. The subject of evil is not simply an intellectual parlor game, a cavalier matter, a whimsical or relativistic choice of looking a things a certain way. Evil is real. Evil is ugly. (Ibid., p. 164)

But if Bahnsen takes evil so seriously, why then does he offer as his solution to the problem of evil the claim that his god has a “morally sufficient reason” for evil? In giving this as his solution to the problem of evil, Bahnsen is essentially conceding that his god is ultimately responsible for the reality of evil in the world; we have already seen that Bahnsen thinks that “misery and suffering and injustice are part of His plan for history and for our individual lives” (p. 173). And, presumably, since this god is supposedly both omnipotent as well as free, it should be able to achieve its ends and create a universe without evil ever coming into the picture. So the conclusion that the existence of any evil anywhere is ultimately the responsibility of the omnipotent creator which is supposed to have created everything in the first place, seems unavoidable. Indeed, if Bahnsen didn’t think his god were responsible for the reality of evil, he wouldn’t need to claim that his god has a “morally sufficient reason” for evil. As I pointed out above, Bahnsen does not tell us what “morally sufficient reason” his god supposedly has for the evil that exists in the world; he doesn’t even give an example of a reason which he considers “morally sufficient” for allowing or committing evil. Indeed, to do so, Bahnsen would simply be giving us a glimpse into his own views, which he prefers to keep private for obvious reasons. So it comes as no surprise that Bahnsen does not elaborate on this point.

Dan writes:

This can't be a discussion as to "God is going to clear up the mess." He will, but that is not an adequately sufficient answer for the non-believers here. The question the Atheists here have is not whether God will 'take care of it' but, why did God allow it? Why is there a mess to begin with? Is God sadistic or impotent?

Actually, the question is more like:

How could a good god, which is characterized as a “loving father,” choose to allow it?

Or, consider the following:

How is a god which allows evil, and/or makes use of evil to achieve its goals, any different from a god that is evil?

If the Christian god is supposed to be “all-good,” then presumably any action it chooses to do must originate from good intentions, since all its intentions would supposedly be good. Also, bear in mind that this god is supposedly in control of everything. Presuppositionalists in particular are eager to affirm such a view. Observe:

God controls whatsoever comes to pass. (Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, p. 160)

God’s thoughts make the world what it is and determine what happens – which is why all facts are revelatory of God… (Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, p. 243)

God controls all events and outcomes (even those that come about by human choice and activity) and is far more capable and powerful than modern machines. (Van Til's Apologetic, p. 489n.43)

So how does the Christian square events and outcomes which are not good in nature, with the view that the Christian god, which is supposed to be “all-good” and only “all-good,” is in control of everything? Bahnsen’s own proposal, that his god has “a morally sufficient reason for the evil which exists,” does not reconcile the matter. On the contrary, all it accomplishes is portraying the Christian god on cozy terms with evil. So the problem persists.

Predictably, Dan writes:

The Atheist are [is] in a real quandary when he tries to argue for the problem of evil, he has to first make a moral judgment that is objectively correct. Objective moral judgments can only be grounded in the transcendent God of Christianity.

Several points here:

First, Dan misses the internal nature of the critique launched by the problem of evil. The problem of evil points to a state of affairs which is inconsistent with what the Christian worldview would have us believe. Christianity affirms both horns of the conflict, namely that an all-good, omnipotent and omniscient creator created the entire universe and all its contents, even “control[ing] whatsoever comes to pass” within it, and that evil exists in the world. The conflict is thus confined within the Christian worldview.

Contrary to what presuppositionalists typically say, the conflict to which the problem of evil draws our attention is not the non-believer’s (alleged) failure to ground moral judgment without reference to the Christian god. On the contrary, since both sides of this conflict are affirmed by Christianity, so the problem obtains regardless of what the non-believer can or cannot do.

This conflict not only destroys the Christian worldview from within, it also has profoundly damning implications for the moral character of those who actively seek to defend it, especially in a manner like Greg Bahnsen. By definition and by virtue of its nature, an all-good being would not willfully use evil to achieve its ends: its all-good nature would preclude any willingness complicit with evil. Consequently, a being which does make use of evil to achieve its ends cannot rightly be called “all-good.” But this is what Christianity essentially teaches in this respect: that its god is all-good, but also that its creation contains evil, and the “all-good” god is ultimately responsible for the evil. The task of the apologist is to reconcile these teachings without contradiction. But the contradiction cannot be reconciled without compromising either side of the conflict, even if the believer wants to say that his god has a “morally sufficient reason” for the evil it uses to accomplish its ends. Indeed, the very notion of a “morally sufficient reason” to allow or make use of evil is a contradiction in terms: that which is morally sufficient abstains absolutely from evil. Is there such a reason as a “morally sufficient reason” to commit murder? Is there such a thing as a “morally sufficient reason” to rape children? Is there such a thing as a “morally sufficient reason” to burglarize a house? Is there such a thing as a “morally sufficient reason” to evade relevant facts in one’s reasoning? These are questions for the Christian who affirms the notion of a “morally sufficient reason” for allowing or committing evil to consider.

Second, Dan incorrectly assumes (most likely because he wants it to be the case) that “objective moral judgments can only be grounded in the transcendent God of Christianity.” He does not establish this claim; no apologist really does. Apologists love to repeat this kind of claim, but it is typically accepted by believers on faith: they want it to be true, and on the basis of this desire, they affirm it as if it were true. A dead give-away here is the use of the concept ‘objective’ in qualifying “moral judgments,” a concept that is anathema to the Christian worldview (see here).

We’ve already seen that the Christian worldview is opposed to moral judgment as such. Actions which are chosen by a volitional agent are always subject to moral evaluation. But Christians have imperatively insisted that no one has the right to judge their god’s chosen actions. Even this insistence, however, is at odds with what Christians like Greg Bahnsen urge us to swallow: they tell us that their god and all its actions are good, which is a moral evaluation. And yet we’ve been denied the right to make any moral evaluations. In fact, we’re told that we have no basis to make moral evaluations to begin with.

Now the apologist speaks of “objective moral judgments.” But does he understand what objectivity is? His claim that “objective moral judgments can only be grounded in the transcendent God of Christianity.” In other words, in the apologist’s view, objective moral judgments are not grounded in reason. The presuppositionalist literature in fact confirms this analysis. Bahnsen explains the presuppositionalist understanding of objectivity as follows:

For Van Til, objectivity in the Christian worldview is not a matter of having no presuppositions (and letting a pretended neutral reason find the pretended external truth, which is actually organized by the subjective mind of man), but a matter of having the right presuppositions – that is, having the divine point of view gained through revelation. (Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, p. 286)

So clearly, for the presuppositionalist, reason has nothing to do with objectivity. If it did, why wouldn’t Bahnsen make mention of this when he gives the Christian “understanding” of objectivity?

Moreover, the presuppositionalist conception of objectivity does not rule out the view that wishing makes it so. On the basis of the Christian worldview, wishing does make it so, especially if the wisher is the Christian god (see here). Think of it: a conception of objectivity which allows wishing to make it so!

This is how the Christian worldview divorces “objectivity” from reason: by underwriting its conception of objectivity with the primacy of consciousness, and doing away with reason in epistemology. It manifests itself by accepting an enormous sum of mystical premises as “truth” which are said to be “divinely revealed” and are consulted as the ultimate guide to understanding the world. It should be obvious that one can easily claim to “know” anything by an appeal to “revelation,” especially when it comes to “knowledge” of “the supernatural” and “duties” which men are supposed to adopt and follow. So the appeal to divine revelation offers absolutely zero safeguards for ensuring genuine objectivity in one’s identifications and conclusions.

Of course, apologist Dan does not anticipate this objection, for not only does he take it for granted that reason has nothing to do with moral judgment (he voices no concern over the absence of reason's mention in the presuppositionalist script), he expects his claim that moral judgments need the Christian god in order to be objective, to be accepted on faith (i.e., on the wish that it be true), essentially on his own say so. He gives no argument, so he does not even present this claim as a conclusion to prior reasoning. It’s a stipulation, not a conclusion, not a discovery one makes by applying reason to the world.

But perhaps I’m hasty in assuming that Dan means the same thing as Van Til does with the word “objective.” In that case, what could he possibly mean by “objective”? He uses this term as if its meaning were self-apparent. But going by what I understand by the concept ‘objective’, his claim that objective moral judgments need to be grounded in the Christian god is clearly false. This is because objectivity is essentially the methodical application of the primacy of existence to knowledge, while Christianity is fundamentally opposed to the primacy of existence (see here). Consequently, the apologist is using a concept (the concept ‘objectivity’) while ignoring its genetic roots (the primacy of existence) by underwriting it with a worldview which explicitly denies its roots (i.e., Christianity). In other words, we have here an instance of the fallacy of the stolen concept.

Dan writes:

The Atheist cannot logically generate the problem of evil.

What Dan means here is that, by virtue of his atheism, an atheist has no rational basis for moral concepts (like ‘good’ and ‘evil’) that is consistent with his non-belief in the Christian god. Of course this overlooks the internal nature of the problem of evil. As I pointed out above, the problem of evil is a problem within Christianity regardless of what any particular atheist can or cannot do.

Additionally, notice that Dan nowhere establishes this claim by means of proof. He simply asserts it, apparently expecting everyone to accept it on faith. After all, that’s how he accepted it. Accepting a claim on faith essentially means supposing it is true because you want it to be true. Dan wants this claim to be true, so he pretends that it is true. In this very sense, faith is a pretense.

Dan write:

Its not a problem for the believer

What Dan is really saying (without the courage to come out and say it plainly), is that the believer doesn’t have a problem with evil. He’s already conceded that, according to Christianity, his god has a cozy relationship with evil since it uses evil to achieve its purposes. Dan does not explain how this can be morally good, and apparently doesn’t see any need to. Indeed, he doesn’t see any need to explain this because he ultimately doesn’t care.

Like any believer, Dan’s concern is to be an obedient worshiper who disallows himself the freedom to judge his god as anything other than a “good” god. But by doing so, he destroys the meaning of the very concept ‘good’. Since his god is on friendly terms with evil, it is a god which deliberately chooses not to take an uncompromising stance against evil. So just by worshiping such a god and calling it “good,” the believer concedes by his own actions that he has no problem with evil. Just as the god he worships, the believer is ultimately indifferent to evil, because he’s ultimately indifferent to values, and this is because he is ultimately indifferent to life on earth. So logically, while the believer has no problem with evil, he has an insurmountable problem with good.

What should be noted here, however, is that even the believer himself is not consistent with the logical implications of his worldview’s stated position on its god and evil in the world. On the contrary, the believer routinely acts as if his own values were important. In other words, his own actions defy the moral ambivalence inherent in his theism.

Dan writes:

but it is, ironically, the problem for the unbeliever.

Not the Christian problem of evil. The atheist does not posit an “all-good,” “all-knowing” and “all-powerful” god which uses evil to achieve its own ends. That’s the problem of evil. This is a problem for the Christian worldview. As we have seen, the Christian’s “solution” to this is essentially to wipe out all rational meaning from the concept ‘good’ in order to justify his belief in a god which deliberately uses evil to achieve its ends. Notice that even when Dan repeats Bahnsen’s claim that the Christian god “has a morally sufficient reason” for evil, he does not (just as Bahnsen did not) identify what this supposedly “morally sufficient reason” might be. This only indicates that the apologist is not looking for a way to resolve the logical conflict highlighted by the problem of evil, but rather to prop up a psychological means of rationalizing belief in such a thing. He’s essentially trying to have his cake, and eat it, too. Most non-Christians should see right through this farcical distortion of morality.

Dan writes:

The Atheist need to make good on the statement that its evil first.

Again Dan ignores the internal nature of the problem of evil. It is Christianity which affirms the existence of evil in the world, regardless of what specifically the atheist’s worldview might happen to teach. Presuppositionalists guarantee us that they will continue in their failure to address the problem of evil so long as they ignore the internal nature of its critique of Christianity.

But presuppositionalists do have an incentive to ignore the internal nature of the problem of evil, namely the fact that it cannot be defeated. Christianity says that the world was created by an all-good, all-knowing, all-controlling and omnipotent god, and it also says that evil exists in the world. As an example of evil in the world, Dan himself cited the torture of children (he quoted Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov at length to give an example of this). If one accepts the premise that an all-knowing, all-controlling and omnipotent god created the world, he cannot logically escape the implication that any evil that exists in the world is ultimately there because that god put it there. Essentially, the apologist needs to explain how evil finds its source in something that is supposedly “all-good.” Bahnsen fails at this task. So does apologist Dan.

by Dawson Bethrick

Was Adam Created Perfect?

I am now back from my trip to Thailand, back to the comfort of a temperate clime and a bug-free home. While my journeys to SE Asia are always an exciting adventure, it is always an unavoidable realization upon returning that there is no place like home!

Just prior to my departure for SE Asia last month, I posed a question to my readers. The question was:

Was Adam created perfect?

Much to my delight, my question sparked a lively discussion among several visitors to my blog. And though the discussion did not wholly go in the direction I had originally in mind (and that’s not at all a bad thing!), I encourage readers to peruse the comments section of that blog and ponder many of the points that were made there. Very interesting food for thought can be found there, and I am grateful to those visitors who contributed to the discussion.

As for the question, Was Adam created perfect?, the answer to this question of course depends on whom you consult.

In the comments section of my blog in which I posed this question, Robert Bumbalough stated:

Since the two Genesis creation accounts are fictional, then the only creation that occurs, perfect or otherwise, happens in the brains of those who fantasize about those stories.

And of course I agree with the essence of Robert’s statement here. In that case, one could say I’ve posed a trick question. Since there is no god, no creation, no Adam, then obviously the question as to whether Adam was created perfect or not, is purely academic.

But if we focus our sights on the internals of Christian thought, the question acquires special gravity. Christians have throughout history affirmed the historical reliability of the book of Genesis in one sense or another (the New Testament clearly assumes its historicity), and even today typically insist that there really was an Adam and that this Adam really was created by a supernatural deity. But even here we find a conspicuous lack of uniformity on the issue which my question raises. The answer seems to vary depending on who’s providing it. In the same comments section, a Christian who calls himself Vytautas made it clear that he does think Adam was indeed created perfect when he responded:

Yes, since God made him very good. He did not have any defects such as being dead in sin, which causes men to hate God. Also he was made with the potential to fall into sin, so that he had free will with respect to whether or not to obey God.

So here’s one Christian’s vote for Adam having been created perfect. And Vytautas is by no means alone on this. Christian apologist Cornelius Van Til agrees that Adam was created perfect (at least at one point [1]). He writes:

...I have frequently explained that by the term “autonomous man” I mean the idea of a man who virtually denies his createdness. As created in paradise man was a distinct ontological entity over against God. As made perfect he recognized that God his creator was also his lawgiver. (The Defense of the Faith, p. 188; emphasis added)

But then there’s Christian apologist John Byl, who writes:

Adam, the first man, was created good and upright, in the image of God. Though good, he was not yet perfect: he had the potential to fall. He could freely choose between good and evil. He had the capacity to serve God. Unhappily, Adam chose not to serve that glorious purpose. Giving in to the devil, he wilfully subjected himself to sin and death. Thereafter man became enslaved to sin. (Free Will and Responsibility; emphasis added)

In contrast to Van Til, Byl explicitly contends that Adam was not created perfect. Such disagreement between two Christian thinkers is perplexing. Both Van Til and Byl are Christians, and as Christians, they’re supposed to be “led by the Spirit,” that is, the Holy Spirit. Or so we’ve been told? But the views they affirm are in direct conflict with one another. Either Adam was created perfect, or he wasn’t. It can’t be both.

It is noteworthy that, while Vytautas takes the claim that Adam was created “very good” to indicate that Adam was therefore created perfect, Byl allows that Adam “was created good and upright,” but still “was not yet perfect.” For Vytautas, being created “good” is an indication of perfection, while Byl apparently thinks it is possible to be “created good and upright” and still be “not yet perfect.” Also, Byl’s phrase “not yet perfect” seems a bit misleading, since according to the story Adam never becomes perfect (or in Van Til’s case, regains his perfection after the fall). Byl is happy to point out that Adam “had the potential to fall,” but he does not explicitly state that Adam also had the potential to achieve perfection. A “fall from grace,” which is typically how Christians characterize Adam’s spiritual decline, is not necessarily a fall from perfection. And while the book of Genesis does, in umbrella fashion, appear to affirm that Adam was “very good” (Gen. 1:31, which occurs after Adam was created, reads “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good”), “very good” does not necessarily mean or imply “perfect.” “Very good” and “perfect” are not synonymous. I can score 97% on a test and be said to have a “very good” score on it, but my performance on that test was not in fact perfect.

Now, I could understand two heavy-weight Christian thinkers conflicting on something utterly trivial, such as whether Abraham left Ur (cf. Gen. 11:31) on a Tuesday morning or on a Tuesday afternoon; it’s hard to see how either position on such an issue would have much doctrinal significance. But on a matter such as whether or not Adam was created perfect, conflict among Christians is rather surprising. Wouldn’t Christian doctrine be clear on such a matter? Wouldn’t the Holy Spirit protect believers from error on such a point? Would we be wrong to expect Christianity’s more tutored representatives to speak “with one accord” on such fundamental matters? How could two Holy Spirit-filled Christians disagree like this?

Byl explains his view that Adam “was not yet perfect” with the premise that Adam “had the potential to fall. He could freely choose between good and evil.” Do Byl and other Christians think their god can “freely choose between good and evil,” or do they think that it is constrained from such choices as this? If the Christian god “could freely choose between good and evil,” it seems that, according to Byl’s reasoning, it would therefore have “the potential to fall” as well. I doubt Byl and other Christians would care much for this implication, which seems plain enough to me from the statements given. If the Christian claims that his god is a free agent, possessing freedom to choose its actions (as Christianity typically does claim about its god; states one source: “God is a free agent, who does what pleases him”), then according to the Christian worldview it is apparently possible to possess free will and yet never fall short of glory, never sin, never do evil, or what have you. But curiously, Christians typically seem to think that their god could not have created Adam both as a free agent and also as a being which could refrain entirely from all evil, sin, or what have you. In spite of the claim that the Christian god created Adam after its own image, this god seems quite unable to replicate its own qualities in what it creates. Was Adam created perfect, omniscient, infallible, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, infinite, incorruptible, etc.? Christian apologists will likely insist that their god chose to create Adam without these qualities. But this not only raises concerns against the claim that man was created “in God’s image,” but also questions as to why it would have so chosen, given its own alleged perfection. In effect, Christians taking this course of defense are saying that their god chose to create something imperfect. How can we call a creator “perfect” when it creates something less than perfect, whether intentionally or not?

Of course this leads to the problem of evil, which in fact is part of a broader problem within Christianity, a problem to which Franc Tremblay refers as “Problems of Deficiency,” or what I call simply the problem of imperfection.

In regard to the problem of evil, commonplace are evasive responses such as the following:

the Bible says that everything that God creates is good so why did He create evil? Evil is not a “thing.” God did not create evil. Evil is an illusion created by a wrong choice. That choice was man’s choice. So if evil is the result of man’s free will, then does that mean that God created evil by creating free will?

It seems odd to say on the one hand that “God” created everything distinct from itself, and on the other hand that it is not responsible for the profusion of evil which is virtually ubiquitous throughout its creation. Byl himself insists that “God is not responsible for moral evil; he is not the author of sin,” and holds that “the moral responsibility of sin remains with those who actually do the sin.” Though this is a typical position among many Christians, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a case of blaming the creation for its faults (even though they were allegedly created by a “perfect” creator which created exactly what it chose to create). Paul, in Romans 9:21, asks: “Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” One would think that a potter would have such power over his clay, especially if he were perfect and omnipotent, as we are expected to believe in regard to the Christian god. But why would a potter, especially if he is rational, spend his efforts in making a vessel “unto dishonour”? What would motivate someone to do this? If Paul is saying that his god has deliberately created some human beings “unto dishonour,” it strikes me that Paul’s god is rather deranged, certainly not rational, and itself not perfect (for a perfect creator would not deliberately create something “unto dishonour”). The idea that we are created either “unto honour” or “unto dishonour” by a supernatural being can only mean that we are here to serve someone else’s ends, which essentially reduces us to slaves. And many Christians in fact believe this: we are either slaves to their god, or to the devil it created for no rational purpose. Even worse, Christian claims make it clear that we are essentially puppets of their god. Greg Bahnsen, for instance, in his radio debate with George H. Smith, declares, “…I’ve got a heavenly father who created the entire universe and controls every detail, even to the hairs on my head…” According to the Christian worldview, we are all under the insuperable control of an invisible magic being. This amounts to what I have called the cartoon universe premise of theism. So to say on the one hand that the Christian god “controls every detail,” but then say that man chose to “create evil,” is to affirm two horns of a contradiction. So-called “compatibilist” theories which are deliberately contrived to untangle this problem ring hollow and are entirely unconvincing. Indeed, they appear to have been concocted entirely for the purpose of trying to conceal this contradiction.

The claim that the creation of evil “was man’s choice” seems to overlook another important aspect of Christian doctrine. According to the gospels and other NT documents, there exist demons and devils, invisible supernatural beings which are evil and look for ways to cause havoc on human beings, particularly “the elect.” Were these demons and devils created by any human being? Of course not; human beings don’t create supernatural entities. So according to Christianity, no human being had a choice in the existence of these malicious supernatural beings. Even in the case of the serpent in the Garden of Eden which tempted Adam and Eve, neither Adam nor Eve created the serpent. So the existence of these menaces could not be man’s doing, and therefore that they exist (as according to Christianity they do) could not be man’s fault. Why isn’t their creator to be faulted for creating them? Wells makes a topical point on this matter: “The most important task of such a theology [as derived from gospel exorcism accounts and related material] would, I suggest, be to explain why an all-powerful and all-benevolent deity permits legions of supernatural entities to practice untold evil.” (The Jesus Myth, p. 170.) Apologists, perhaps recognizing the incoherence of blaming human beings at this point, may take the position that their existence is all part of their deity’s “perfect plan.” One could say this about any deity one imagines. The question at this point is how any imperfection could have a place in a “perfect creation” or a “perfect plan”?

Perfection is not a work in progress, and as such, it seems that it would be an unchanging state. Something in motion is either in motion toward a goal, or toward no goal. If it is in motion toward a goal, that can only mean that the goal has not yet been met. If the goal has not been met, we have a condition of incompleteness. If something is in motion toward no goal, and yet it is ultimately in the control of a volitional agent (cf. Van Til’s claim that “God controls whatsoever comes to pass,” The Defense of the Faith, p. 160), then we have a volitional agent which controls things to move for no particular purpose, for the sake of achieving no goal. Such action would be arbitrary, for there would be no objective criterion behind the choice to move it; it would be choice divorced from goal-achievement. Neither condition would qualify as a perfect state.

But going back to our question – namely whether or not Adam was, according to Christianity, created perfect – it is important to keep in mind that Christianity clearly and explicitly puts the blame for the existence of evil in the world squarely on the shoulders of Adam (and the rest of humankind as some kind of inheritance). This view is sufficient to give us a clue as to whether or not Adam was created perfect. We saw above that “evil is an illusion created by a wrong choice,” and “that choice was man’s choice.” (That Adam is not specifically named here is no accident; all human beings are said by Christianity to be guilty of a choice made by one man.) This choice was made by Adam in the Garden after being tempted. A man’s choices, particularly those made apart from the duress of emergency situations, follow from his judgment. I see no indication in the Genesis story which suggests that Adam was under any duress when he chose to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. On my reading of the story, this was not a choice made in the heat of an emergency. Consequently, if Adam’s choice to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was “a wrong choice,” this could only mean that Adam’s choice to do so was not governed by perfect judgment. A volitional creature which makes any choice not governed by perfect judgment would clearly be a defective creature, assuming perfection as the operative standard. The conclusion here is inescapable: Adam was created without perfect judgment. He had at best imperfect judgment. Which means: Adam was not a perfect creature. And tracing this defect back to its creator, the conclusion that Adam’s creator was not a perfect creator, is also inescapable. Had Adam been created with perfect judgment, he would not have made a “wrong choice”; any choices he made would have been in line with his perfect judgment.

So clearly Christians must be wrong to suppose that Adam was created perfect, for his most infamous act is characterized by choice governed by imperfect judgment. And if Adam was created imperfect, as the story of his fall clearly and unequivocally implies, then it would be entirely wrong to call Adam’s creator a perfect creator. It does reason no justice to blame the faults of a perfect creator’s creations on its creations themselves, without considering the involvement of the originating source. A perfect creator would, by definition, create perfect creations; otherwise, it is a violation of the concept ‘perfect’ to call it “perfect.”

by Dawson Bethrick

[1] Van Til does not seem to be wholly consistent on whether Adam was created perfect or not. In the same book, he goes on record to acknowledge as a "fact" that "[man's] being, as finite, was inherently defective" (The Defense of the Faith, p. 160). It would be conceptually incoherent to call something "perfect" and yet at the same time admit that it is "inherently defective."

[SIC]

I recently found the following unsolicited e-mail from a Christian in my inbox:

Your talk is nonsense

Instead of using your time for this nonsense. Why don't you just repent of your ignorance And start asking God to forgive you. Oh but I remember you said you don't believe in God. So, then tell me who do you believe in? In your self, stone, wood, air, moon, sun or what. You think you're good enough to be god. Give a Good reason that I would believe. Yea. Cause you Don't have one.

I'll give a good reason to believe in God. Remember this for the rest of your life and you can share it As well. Jesus is the Only Lord and Savior. If you believe You will be saved from going into the lake of fire.

Remember this very specific thing that I'm going to say. God is God and not your puppet. He will do as He will. If you can make God do what you want then He is not God anymore.

Mr. Dawson you can keep on waiting for that demonstration of power But you are never going to get it. For the intention of your heart is not good. Your discussion is evil nonsense talk which have no meaning.

I just want to ask you something. Do you know who Lucifer is? Mr. Dawson have you had a bad life? What pushes you to believe what you believe? What proofs do you have for what you believe? We live in a world that has laws. We are obligated to follows these laws. If we break any one of these laws we have face a judge and he will judge us According to the offense committed. That's a proof that bad and good exists. Just like there is rules and regulations to follow here on the world there is devine rules and regulations. You will have to face the heavenly Judge for not believing in His Son Jesus Christ. What excuse are going to tell him? That you didn't know that he exist because He didn't demonstrated his power of moving a mountain. That you spent your

Time arguing against him and wasn't evidence to believe in him. I'm sorry If I didn't use the correct words but I feel disappointed and sad at same time when I See what they write about God. All God wants to do is love us.

ALL,

If you can’t see it, this has [SIC] written all over it. That is, its author suffers from acute Self-Inflicted Christianity. I found it so entertaining, that I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to examine it. So let’s do some lighthearted atheology, shall we?

Clearly this guy (I’ll assume it is a man, but this may be wrong for all I know) is really out there. As a pastor I once knew would say, he’s “sold out for Jesus.” I suppose so. It’s interesting to note that he asks why I don’t “just repent of [my] ignorance,” while Christians are always telling us that Romans 1 indicates that we do not have this “excuse” (see vs. 20). He asks why I don’t “start asking God to forgive [me],” only then to acknowledge the fact that I have no god-belief to begin with. I don’t ask things that do not exist to “forgive” me of things I haven’t done wrong to them. Indeed, how do you wrong something that doesn’t exist?

He then asks “who do you believe in?” What part of the concepts “atheist” and “non-believer” does this person not understand? If he is interested in knowing what I affirm to be true, he is welcome to start reading my blog. He could start with A Succinct Summary of My Worldview. He can also familiarize with what I hold to be true by examining some of the many articles I have published on my website Katholon.

As possible answers to his own question, he suggests my “self, stone, wood, air, moon, sun or what.” Notice that, with the possible exception of the unspecified and open-ended “what” at the tail end of his list, each of the things he mentions actually exists. I exist (which means: my self exists), stones exist (there are some in my backyard right now), wood exists (there’s wood all over in my house, both in the frame and in most of the furniture), air exists (I breathe it all day long), the moon exists (I’ve always loved looking up at it), and the sun exists (it helps my basil plants grow). So why wouldn’t I recognize that these things exist? Is this Christian upset because I acknowledge things that do exist, and don’t put faith in things that do not exist? Is his complaint really an expression of some kind of worldview jealousy?

He says that he will “give a good reason to believe in God,” and proceeds to tell me that “If [I] believe, [I] will be saved from going into the lake of fire.” I guess this fellow doesn’t see that he simply multiplies his own burdens here, for at this point, not only does he need to demonstrate that his god exists, he also needs to demonstrate that a “lake of fire” also exists. His “just believe” rendition of Christian apologetics is remarkably indistinguishable from the “just pretend” indulgences of a child. That itself is not remarkable, though; it is all too commonplace among adherents of Christianity, from the occasional pew-warmer to the most dedicated church pastor, to the studious apologete who’s gung ho for his god. Believers are so absorbed in the fake environment of their shared fiction, that they suppose everyone else is just as prone as they are to believing in analogous fantasies. Their approach is to substantiate one bit of fiction by appealing to another bit of fiction. The more sophisticated apologists at least make some attempt to conceal this, but it’s there all the same.

He goes on to admonish me with severe words:

Remember this very specific thing that I'm going to say.
God is God and not your puppet. He will do as He will.
If you can make God do what you want then He is not God anymore.

I see. Well, I guess I won’t try to make the Christian god do what I want it to do anymore. The Christian god is not my puppet (glad that’s settled!). But according to Christianity, I’m its puppet, since “the potter is sovereign over the clay in both control and authority” (John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God, p. 178; cf. Romans 9:20-21). After all, on the Christian view, I’m nothing more than a lump of clay in its god’s hands (even though it doesn’t have any hands – it has no body!), and what I am and what I do have already been pre-determined since before the foundations of the world (cf. Rev. 17:8).

But don’t be surprised to find below that there’s apparently something I can do to keep the Christian god from doing something it might otherwise want to do.

He then writes, referring to the “power” of his god:

Mr. Dawson you can keep on waiting for that demonstration of power But you are never going to get it.

And this is supposed to be news? Of course there won’t be a demonstration of his god’s power. If his god is merely imaginary, it doesn’t have any power to demonstrate in the first place. I already know this won’t happen, that’s why I’m not “waiting” for it to happen.

What’s interesting is his reasoning for why his god won’t demonstrate its power. He writes:

For the intention of your heart is not good.

So where above he exclaimed that his god is not my puppet, that “He will do as He will,” now he’s saying that there’s something that I’m doing that prevents his god from demonstrating the power it allegedly possesses. My intentions are sufficient to determine what his god will or will not do. The Christian god spooks easily, you see, and runs off to hide in the shadows at the first hint of non-belief. Non-belief is like a light switch: just turn it on, and watch the cockroaches scurry away.

Clearly theists need to make up their mind. If their god exists and does what it chooses to do, then don’t blame non-believers when its chronic absenteeism becomes more and more conspicuous with each passing moment. So often with religious apologetics, we find that action figures are always sold separately. A demonstration of the supernatural is always confined to the pages of some storybook, and take place only in the imagination of the reader.

Then my Christian correspondent blurts out:

Your discussion is evil nonsense talk which have no meaning. [SIC]

My “discussion is evil nonsense talk”? How is it “evil”? What harm have I caused? How has anything I’ve written caused the destruction of values? Or, is it simply because I challenge the alleged truth of religious claims, and for this reason he condemns it as “evil”? Notice that he nowhere interacts with any of my arguments. He just dismisses them flippantly, as I would expect.

Then I was subjected to a most grueling interrogation:

I just want to ask you something. Do you know who Lucifer is?

Yes. Lucifer is the name of a character in the cartoon universe of Christianity. Lucifer is supposed to be the embodiment of evil itself, according to the Christian worldview, though I don’t think it is as evil as the god that Christians worship. After all, that god is said to have created Lucifer in the first place, and could have acted against Lucifer long ago if it wanted to. In fact, were I a believer (and I can attest to this, because I’ve been there before), how would I be able to determine whether things like the tsunami in the Indian Ocean of 2004 were caused by the god of the bible, or by Lucifer? Not that it would make much difference to the victims of such tragedies, but as a believer it would be difficult to know which invisible magic being is responsible for which calamity. This is the domain of faith: imagine one way or another, and hope for the best.

Mr. Dawson have you had a bad life?

Actually no, I can't say I have. I’ve had a very good life, save for a brief portion when I wandered far too deeply into mysticism than I should have. And even then, I still made the best of it. (Look what I’ve learned!) But I finally made the decision to be honest, and I cured myself of Self-Inflicted Christianity. Any believer can do this. But other than that, my life has been wonderful, and it gets better everyday. Would believers prefer that I be miserable? Probably. It’s stubbornly difficult to convert an atheist who’s happy. And encountering such a person, stable as he is in his ways, causes ample resentment in believers.

What pushes you to believe what you believe?

“Pushes”? I don’t think anything “pushes” me to do anything. I choose to think and to be honest, and my devotion to rational philosophy naturally follows. Nothing forces me to be who I have chosen to become. I wouldn’t want to be anyone else than who I am, quite frankly.

What proofs do you have for what you believe?

Proofs which solidly support what I believe, of course.

We live in a world that has laws. We are obligated to follows these laws. If we break any one of these laws we have face a judge and he will judge us According to the offense committed.

I’m ready to face any judge. So long as he is a rational judge, I have nothing to worry about. Where Christianity teaches "judge not, lest ye be judged" (Mt. 7:1), I go by a radically different dictum: Judge, and be prepared to be judged. That’s one reason why I realized that I never needed Christianity. Christianity is for those who are afraid of judges and justice. I don’t fit that category. Not by a long shot.

That's a proof that bad and good exists.

Oh, there are better proofs than this. Have you ever stubbed your toe, cut your finger, or broken a bone? A rational understanding of good and bad has its ultimate basis in our nature as biological organisms. Christianity attempts to use this truth in its tactics to get people to fear hellfire, but philosophically it misses the point completely. It is because we face the fundamental alternative of life versus death that we need values, and a means of identifying them and the courses of action proper to achieving them. Good and bad have nothing to do with the whims of an invisible magic being that does not face such an alternative. An immortal, indestructible and eternal being would at best be indifferent to whatever may be happening around it. It surely would have no vested interest in exercising control over things.

Just like there is rules and regulations to follow here on the world there is devine [sic] rules and regulations.

I think he means biblical “rules and regulations,” such as “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk” (Ex. 34:26), or “Masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Don’t threaten them; remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites.” (Eph. 6:9).

Don’t worry, I can assure you that I haven’t transgressed any of these. I’ve never seethed a kid in his mother’s milk, and I’ve never owned a slave to begin with, let alone mistreat him/her in some way.

You will have to face the heavenly Judge for not believing in His Son Jesus Christ.

It seems that believers are the ones who are judging – and condemning – others for not believing in the Jesus of the gospels. Regardless, that’s fine with me – they can condemn me all they want. In reality, they’re condemning me for being a spoilsport in regard to their fantasy. And if the Christian god is so warped as to consider it “evil” that one does not “believe in” one individual who may or may not have actually lived in first century Palestine, it is one small-minded god indeed! I could not, in good conscience, worship such a brutish thug anyway.

What excuse are going to tell him?

Excuse? No, I’m not the one who needs any excuse. The proper question is: what excuse is your god going to give me? His apologists are always trying to come up with an excuse for their god. That’s why they spend so much time developing their theodicies – a "justification" of their god. They wouldn’t devote so much energy to this task if they didn’t think their god needed an excuse for the choices and actions they attribute to it. What is its excuse for allowing the Hitlers, Stalins, Mao Tse Tungs, Pol Pots, Saddam Husseins, the Jim Joneses, the Marshall Applewhites, the terrorists of 9/11, the Harrises and Klebolds, the Cho Seung Huis, and the Jeffrey Dahmers of human history to execute their murderous rampages? This is an issue of moral character. If you had the choice to allow or prevent Adolf Hitler coming to power in Germany in 1933, or Jeffrey Dahmer killing his first victim, what would you do?

Now I don’t have the power to prevent the Adolf Hitlers, the Saddam Husseins, the Jim Joneses, etc. from acting on their destructive choices. But if I did have such power, do you think I’d just stand idly by and watch them wage their massacres? I’m not the one with the power to intervene on these things, so I’m not the one who needs to find some excuse for failing to do so. But if I did have that kind of power, do you think I’d allow these injustices to take place, at the expense of the lives of people just trying to live and enjoy their lives, raise their families, and chase their dreams, and then try to pass those injustices off as serving some “higher purpose”? If you do think this, you've got me confused with the god you worship.

The problem of evil is ultimately a character test for the individual attempting to engage it. Christians routinely fail this test, and they do so openly, so that we know what kind of people they are. Greg Bahnsen, for instance, shows us his true colors when he offers as a Christian solution to the problem of evil the premise that his god “has a morally sufficient reason for the evil which exists” (Always Ready, p. 172). This tells us about Greg Bahnsen more than anything else. It tells us what he thinks about morality. On this view, evil is morally justifiable. His proposed solution to the problem of evil brings this out explicitly: Greg Bahnsen’s view of morality sanctions evil means in the pursuit of desired ends. So thought Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Saddam Hussein, Tim McVeigh, and a whole list of humanity’s villains. What else do we need to know about Greg Bahnsen at this point? Here we have the mystic of spirit enabling the mystic of muscle, just as Ayn Rand described in her novel Atlas Shrugged.

Now many human beings have taken and will continue to take action against the Adolf Hitlers and Jeffrey Dahmers, and in so doing they often put everything they have, including their very lives, at dire risk. They stand to lose it all. The Christian god, being immortal, indestructible and eternal, has nothing to risk, nothing to lose, and yet even its own self-appointed spokespersons acknowledge that it “allows” these tyrants to carry out their intentions, and they try to come up with ways of excusing this moral default. In fact, since they claim to worship this being, and call it perfectly righteous, they must be proud of its choice to sanction evil and allow it to reign over the world. That's what they think, isn't it, that evil reigns over the world their god created? Now of course, their god would stand to lose nothing if it had decided to put a capper on evil men long ago; then again, it stands to gain nothing by doing so, too. Values have nothing to do with its choices and actions. Indeed, its spokesmen would not even allow that its permissiveness of evil be characterized as moral default, even though they would hasten to condemn any human being, who hasn’t anything analogous to the power religionists claim on behalf of their god, for failing to act against evil when he has the opportunity to do so. And yet, on the Christian view, such passivity would simply be an expression of obedience to the will of the ruling consciousness, for we read in Mt. 5:39 that Jesus said “I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.” According to “the good book,” Jesus doesn’t want people resisting evil. Jesus must prefer that evil steamroll its way through our lives without impediment.

My Christian correspondent then tried to answer for me as he guessed what kind of “excuse” (for precisely what, is unclear) I might try to come up with:

That you didn't know that he exist [SIC] because He didn't demonstrated [SIC] his power of moving a mountain.

Well, if this were my reason (or “excuse” [sic]) for not buying Christian BS, what is so wrong about it? According to the New Testament, Jesus went around 1st century Palestine demonstrating his power to its inhabitants all over the place. Are stories of these performances, indistinguishable as they are from modern-day fictions in their essence and content, intended as substitutes for similar demonstrations before us today? If so, then I’ve got a bridge for sell.

He makes another guess:

That you spent your Time arguing against him and wasn't [SIC] evidence to believe in him.

I’m not arguing against “God.” Rather, I simply put the claims and defenses that theists give for their faith-based worldview under the magnifying glass, to see what I might find. If theists really believed that their apologetic cases were as airtight as they posture them to be, this shouldn’t bother them. But it really seems to get their gaggles up, doesn't it? What’s noteworthy is how deafening Christian silence in response to my arguments really is. As I pointed out above, this Christian nowhere attempts to challenge any of the arguments I’ve posted on my blog or my website.

I'm sorry If I didn't use the correct words but I feel disappointed and sad at same time when I See [SIC] what they write about God.

With this statement, he makes it sound like his objections essentially stem from the fact that his feelings have been hurt. Well, I have no intention of hurting people’s feelings. There there now.

All God wants to do is love us.

We’ve seen how much the Christian god loved its own son. Look what your god allowed to happen to its own son. I can’t put it better than one Christian did:

He allowed His own Son to be tortured, mocked, spit upon and beaten beyond recognition, then crucified on the cross to die for your sin, my sin and the sins of all mankind.

So the Christian god loved people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Jim Jones, and Jeffrey Dahmer, so much that it allowed its own beloved son to be slaughtered by a bunch of primitives who, like clay in a potter’s hands, were just doing what they were predestined to do all along. If that’s how it treats its beloved, I wouldn’t want to become one. On this note, if you read between the lines of the benign, attractive persona that the bible puts forward as its face to the world, John 3:16 really reads like this:

For God so loved Tim McVeigh, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.

After all, according to the gospels, Jesus allegedly said, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mk. 2:17; cf. Mt. 9:13, Lk. 5:32). So the Christian god’s deliberate allowance of its son’s destruction at the hands of the Romans was for people like Tim McVeigh, so that they could have the opportunity to “repent” and be reconciled to that same god. You see, this god wants a relationship with people like Tim McVeigh; it wants Tim McVeigh’s adoration, devotion, worship. It wants to call Tim McVeigh “son.” It manifests its glory by suspending justice in order to justify the unjust.

by Dawson Bethrick

Answering Ecualegacy, Pt. 3

We continue now with my response to Ecualegacy's comments.

I wrote:

Sending other human beings to represent it will always be insufficient

Ecualegacy replied:

He could have just created us with a certainty of His existence in our minds. But I think I beat the dead horse enough about that line of atheistic objection.

Saul of Tarsus was not “just created... with certainty of [Jesus’] existence” already in his mind; at least the story implicitly assumes that he was not, since he is first introduced to us as a persecutor of Christians, not a committed believer. So why does Ecualegacy think he needs to take the discussion in this direction?

Over and over again, he continues to avoid my point, even though it is exemplified in the book of Acts. In order to manifest its reality to Saul of Tarsus, the god named Jesus appeared before him as he was traveling to Damascus to persecute early Christian believers. That’s the story we read in the book of Acts. That’s the model that the New Testament gives us. Why is it wrong for me to point to this model as an example? Christians believe it actually happened as it is reported in the book of Acts, do they not? St. Paul comes across as quite confident in what he claims in his letters. Do Christians think that Jesus was violating Saul’s free will by appearing to him?

In fact, many apologists claim that the Christian god did create us with certain knowledge of its existence already implanted in our minds, or at any rate made this knowledge in man somehow inescapable. They go on to claim that non-believers are actively and willfully “suppressing” that knowledge. They cite passages from the first chapter of Romans to substantiate these assertions. For instance, Greg Bahnsen writes:

With respect to the revelation of God in nature, Paul categorically declares that those who do not believe it are “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20 – etymologically, “without an apologetic”!). After all, they do not merely have some vague and uncertain evidence for the living and true God, but actually “know” the truth about Him (vv. 19, 21). It would be an unwarranted misreading of Scripture to understand the kind of “certainty” that it claims for the truth and believability of the Christian message to be a “practical” or “moral” certainty of dedicated conviction – and not at the same time an intellectual or rational certainty. (Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis, p. 71)

Christian believers do this so that they can feel better about believing in their imaginary god by vilifying non-believers as dishonest suppressors of “the truth.” And yet not one of them can prove his god’s existence.

Again, one can make any claim he wants about something that does not exist in the first place. All he needs to do is imagine it, and if the distinction between reality and imagination is unclear to him in the first place, then he may very well think he’s talking the truth when he tells us about his imaginary deity.

Now it’s true, Bahnsen and his bible are not very clear on this point. Is it saying that man was “born” with this knowledge already implanted in his mind? Well, such a supposition would make one believe that such knowledge is universally inescapable. There’s some suggestion of this in what is being claimed here, for it is used to hold every human being liable to such knowledge. On such a view, knowledge is automatic, not the product of mental effort. How is this possible for minds that we are constantly being reminded are fallible, finite, inferior, incapable of anything on its own? The other alternative is that this “knowledge of God” is thought to be inferred from nature somehow. But what specifically in nature is the focal point where this alleged inference begins is not stated, nor does the claim identify the steps one needs to make in the chain of inference to go from “nature” to “God.” They say the devil is in the details, and that’s probably why Bahnsen never points them out. To make matters worse for Bahnsen, if the “knowledge of God” so claimed is thought to be inferred from nature, who is doing the inferring if not the fallible, finite minds which Christianity condemns as worthless to begin with? Again we’re back to men as the origin and medium of god-belief claims. The objects I observe in the natural world do not come with a label or stamp indicating “Made by God” or “Made in Heaven.” If I accepted the rudimentary error that the world was created by an act of consciousness to begin with, what would lead me to suppose that it was the Christian god as opposed to some other invisible magic being which did the creating? The Lahu tribesmen tell me that Geusha is the world’s creator. Geusha is not the Christian god; for instance, Geusha did not send a son to be crucified by Roman authority. What makes the Christian claim true but the Lahu claim false? Both the Christian god and Geusha are equally indistinguishable from what people may merely be imagining. So to go with Christianity, we have to arbitrarily special-plead the case. An honest man would not do this.

I wrote:

for human beings can be deluded, they can lie, they can be sincerely mistaken.

Ecualegacy responded:

Here we have some classic objections to Biblical authenticity. Were the NT Scriptures:

A) products of an early 1st Millennium JK Rowling?
B) products of a prolific, but deluded band of apostles?
C) products of sincerely mistaken apostles (Hey Thomas, I could have sworn I saw Jesus at the Bizzare [sic] yesterday!)?
D) the true and accurate Word of God?

I'm never going to be able to prove to you that A) is absolutely false, so I won't bother trying.

It is good that Ecualegacy admits this in regard to his point A) above. So long as the possibility that portions of the bible are fictitious cannot be ruled out, it must be reckoned with. Christianity views human beings as innately depraved creatures which can produce no good of their own. And yet human beings are the only medium through which this omniscient and omnipotent deity chooses to reach human beings? This makes as much sense as trying to dig a hole with a shovel whose handle is made of rope.

Ecualegacy writes:

At the same time, I'm not going to waste time trying to argue that Homer wrote the Illiad, that Caesar wrote the Gallic Wars, or that Plato wrote The Republic.

Good call. Neither will I. I don’t base my life on those writings, either. In fact, it wouldn’t change my life one iota if the texts Ecualegacy mentions turned out to be pseudonymous. For all I know, they very well could be. I’m just being consistent here. Unlike Ecualegacy, I have no confessional investment in who the authors of any ancient texts might have been.

Ecualegacy writes:

Not exactly the same league or importance as the Bible, I'll admit, but we have copies of the New Testament BY FAR closer to the autograph date than for any of the other ancient major writings I've listed (or are in existence so far as I can tell...unless it was scratched on a slab of marble or dug straight from the ground).

It’s never been very clear to me why believers are so anxious to put stock in the amount of “copies of the New Testament” there are throughout history, or in how much closer they are in time to the purported “autograph date” than other ancient writings. A copy of a fiction is still a fiction, even if it were penned a month after the original, and Ecualegacy has already admitted that he cannot rule out the possibility that the bible is fictitious.
Ecualegacy wrote: If, however, you allow for the possibility that the NT was written when traditional NT scholars think, then you have some uncomfortable questions to answer (uncomfortable for the unbeliever that is).

The documents which have been assembled into the New Testament had to be written sometime. The dates that various scholars have attributed to the elements comprising the New Testament have never impressed me very much. And scholars are far from unanimous on when anything in the NT was first written down. Naturally those who want the content of the New Testament’s writings to be true, will push for early dates on all or most of the documents, to allow less time for legendary material to creep into the narratives. Some apologists even seem to think that legends or simple invention could not wind up in documents purporting to record events which happened some 10 years earlier, for instance. In fact, however, it only takes a few sessions of writing to pack a narrative with invented details.

But even this common apologetic move is premised on circular reasoning, for it is clearly assumed in such efforts that what the stories relate actually happened, and that they actually happened when the stories purport to have taken place, which is at best loosely figured according, for instance, to known reigns of rulers mentioned in some of these documents. To claim that the gospel of Mark, for instance, was written only 35 or 40 years after the events it records, is to assume that the events it records actually happened in the first place. But that’s precisely what the believer is called to prove. So he begs the question by playing the dating game. Had he something more secure than appeals to human scholars and their estimations about when such-and-such document was written, we would have most likely seen it by now.

Ecualegacy continued:

How in the world would the early church community accept any of the NT Scriptures as true when they PRESUPPOSED that the very people they were addressed to could heal, prophecy, and speak in tongues. Not that glossolalia trick, but genuine, "Hola, yo puedo hablar espanol perfecto sin un dia de escuela" kind of tongues. Too bad I can't speak spanish without studying it. I've been married to a lovely latin wife for 5 1/2 years and still am not yet fluent.

Is this supposed to be one of the “uncomfortable questions”? I can already see a couple problematic assumptions which Ecualegacy has apparently accepted without much critical reflection. For instance, the way he phrases his question suggests that he believes that there was only one “early church community,” when in fact it is most likely the case that there were many different communities constituting the budding church. Different communities no doubt had different teachers, and different teachings as well. The various gospels are thought by many critical scholars to reflect competing views of Jesus among different communities which were at best only loosely connected. Keep in mind that there were no Zondervan bibles in circulation at this time, so not everyone in church was in possession of the rarefied canon we have today. They were lucky to even have a copy of one or two letters in the beginning, assuming there were any in existence to begin with.

Another problematic assumption lies in a similar vein. Ecualegacy seems to think that groups of people presuppose things in unison, as if they truly were of one mind. We are not in a position today to know the intimate details of what each member of the various ancient Christian communities that existed back then may have been presupposing. Some may have presupposed, as Ecualegacy suggests, that “the very people [the books of the New Testament] were addressed to could heal, prophecy, and speak in tongues.” But to affirm this of the members of the early church is anachronistic. Are we to suppose that every community had a copy of I Corinthians, the letter in which St. Paul itemizes the various “spiritual gifts” they can expect to be distributed among those who believe? Even the members of today’s churches, with the benefit of mass-produced bibles, complete with center references, concordances and commentaries, do not all presuppose that all believers (the ones to whom the bible is addressed) are running around possessing one or more of the spiritual gifts that we find listed in I Cor. 12. I remember when I was a Christian, how I was taught to suppose that the reason we did not see these gifts manifested among the church membership was because of the presence of sin, or lack of faith, or simply because “the Spirit” didn’t want to show off. The believing mind can invent all kinds of “reasons” why one should not be surprised when “the fruits of the spirit” manifest themselves in ways that are indistinct from what would be the case if there were no “Spirit” to begin with.

But in spite of these corrections, Ecualegacy might still wonder why anyone in the early church community would accept the New Testament texts as truth if he “presupposed” that the people to whom they were addressed “could heal, prophecy, and speak in tongues.” The implication behind Ecualegacy’s question is that he acknowledges that these things weren’t really taking place. So why believe they were taking place?

And though it’s most likely the case that the average believer did not “presuppose” that the gifts we read about in I Cor. 12, for instance, were being manifested in the lives of fellow members (the average believer most likely learned about these “gifts” well after conversion anyway, after making the initial downpayment of a life-altering confessional investment), anyone who did could have still believed that the NT texts with which he may have been familiar were true for any number of reasons. For instance, he may have listened to embellished testimony from fellow believers in which they claimed to have performed healings, or prophesied, or spoke in tongues (even “that glossolalia trick” that Ecualegacy mentions can be convincing enough to someone who wants to believe). I myself have heard many Christians claim that they had performed healings or other miraculous stunts. Unfortunately no one was looking at the time, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, right? The desire to believe religious teachings quite often fosters an underlying context of fantasy and denial. The believer is taught to accept claims from fellow believers uncritically and to fear doubts, so he actively seeks to squelch them.

I think a rather candid statement from John Frame answers much of Ecualegacy’s question here. Frame writes that

a person with a wish to be fulfilled is often on the road to belief. (Apologetics to the Glory of God, p. 37)

Look around. Even today people believe all kinds of things that they’re told to believe. We see people today and in the recent past believing the most bizarre claims, and in fact acting on those claims as if their eternal souls’ livelihood depended on them. Look at the Jim Jones cult-massacre. Look at the Heaven’s Gate drop-outs. Look at the Branch Davidians and their spectacular cookout. We have people today going on mainstream Christian television broadcasts claiming to be able to heal and prophesy and do all these other neat tricks. Even though they never produce the real McCoy, there are still people out there who put their faith in such claims, even after they’ve been exposed as charlatans. The NT promises that believers will display these abilities, and many have claimed to have possessed them. But even Ecualegacy cannot speak Spanish without torturous effort. He’s just as mundane as the rest of us.

As Ecualegacy points out, the New Testament makes a number of very tall claims about various abilities which believers can expect to acquire as a result of becoming “new creatures in Christ.” One of those abilities is referred to as the gift of tongues. Ecualegacy says it’s “too bad” that he cannot speak Spanish “without studying it,” which suggests to me that he did not receive “the gift of tongues.” If it were all a fiction, I would expect that he would have to acquire skills in a foreign language just as anyone else does: by firsthand effort.

Ecualegacy writes:

Add to that the incredible claims of the scriptures which people could go and investigate for themselves.

Oh, the claims are there alright. But how could they be investigated? And how do we know that they weren’t investigated and the results of those investigations ignored or even repressed? Are we to expect that committed believers would record and broadcast the findings of investigators who determined that St. Paul, for instance, was telling a few tall ones in order to solidify the churches he founded? I have already written about this topic in my blog Five Hundred Anonymous Witnesses. To date, no Christian has addressed the points I raise in that piece.

Ecualegacy:

Add to that the perfect moral teachings of the apostles and the profound testimony of their selfless lives.

Far from perfect in my book of morals, that’s for sure. That they called for selflessness is itself an indication that what they were peddling was a foul-smelling fiction. I have already written about morality in the following blogs:

Christianity vs. Objective Morality

Do I Borrow My Morality from the Christian Worldview?

Rational Morality vs. Presuppositional Apologetics

Calvindude’s Defense of Christian Moral Bankruptcy

Hitler vs. Mother Theresa: Antithesis or Symbiosis?

Common Ground Part 5: Ethics

I’ve not seen any Christians offer much in way of response to these posts, either.

Ecualegacy writes:

You simply can't pay charlatans enough to do what the Apostles did.

Ecualegacy has already ejected his points from the broader context he earlier admitted as a real possibility. If the stories in the bible are fictional (above he admitted that he was “never going to be able to prove” that they are not fictional), such as legends which grew with each retelling until they were finally written down (there is ample evidence for this throughout the New Testament itself), then there’s no need to take the stories of “what the Apostles did” as anything other than fiction, or at best as embellished storytelling. So Ecualegacy is simply begging the question here.

But let’s grant Ecualegacy’s point and consider how much the apostles should have charged for their “selfless lives.” On the same token, how much do you suppose Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven’s Gate cult was paid for his beamed-out antics? How much was Jim Jones paid for his suicidal crusade? How much was David Koresh paid for his Texan compound cookout in 1993? These people were sold on the idea that their rewards would be coming in “the next life,” not in the form of financial reimbursements that they could take to the bank in this life.

Ecualegacy writes:

If it were one guy, you might dismiss him as a freak. But 12 and more? That's stretching the odds. Nor can we hope they were simply deluded. That's too any
people making too many mistakes.

Again Ecualegacy is begging the question by assuming the truth of what he has been called to defend. The story does indeed mention 12 immediate disciples of Jesus (one of which betrayed him, so it’s now down to 11; even St. Paul forgot this at one point in his letters). But if it’s just a story, then there’s no need to take these numbers seriously. And even if we did, is “12 and more” really so impressive? Over 900 individuals died at Jonestown in 1978 for a religious cause; most of these deaths were suicides – for what they believed. “You simply can’t pay charlatans enough to do what the [People’s Temple members] did.” By Ecualegacy’s measuring stick, Jim Jones’ message must have had some truth to it. If a mere 12 is “stretching the odds,” how much more is 900 plus “stretching the odds”?

Ecualegacy writes:

Besides, suppose I had "better" or "irrefutable" evidence that the Bible is true. Something like the OT describing the evolutionary process like a modern text book or predicting the exact date a spectacular comet would swing by? What would you really do with that knowledge?

The facts of the evolutionary process was available to thinkers 2000 years ago just as they are to us today. Granted, the technology we have today makes the relevant data much more readily available. And our understanding of how to integrate the facts we gather from the world is also far superior. But in fact, some ancient thinkers did suspect a common descent to the variety of flora and fauna they observed in the world. See for instance the 6th century Greek philosopher Anaximander, considered by many today as “evolution’s most ancient proponent.” So if a mere human being with no connection to the Christian deity could recognize at least on a primitive level the commonality in the origin of species, then would the presence of such a recognition in the bible suggest divine authorship or inspiration? I don’t think so.

As for comets, their itineraries are not impossible for men who study the nighttime sky to project. So this would not be very impressive either. Nope, the omnipotent, omniscient, infallible and perfect creator of the universe would have to do something that men could not by any measure come close to matching.

Ecualegacy writes:

Would you "like" God any more than you do now?

It’s not about me liking Ecualegacy’s god or about his god doing something for me. After all, it is his god that is the one desiring worship and sacrifice, not I. I’m simply pointing out that, if this god were real and it truly wanted to make its existence known to me, it would know what it needs to do. Sending apologists whose arms are loaded with the cheapest forms of argument is certainly not going to impress me. I already know too much to be taken in by it all. But there was a time when I did not know so much, and at that point in my life I was a Christian. Now the cat is out of the bag. I’ve grown up.

Would it help if I invent my own god in my imagination and confess that I worship it? By calling it “God,” would Ecualegacy approve of my worldview, choices and actions any more than he does now, even though I openly admit that I’m just imagining? Or, would that not be enough? Would he need to make sure the god I invent in my imagination is commensurable in some way to the one he has imagined in his mind? Well?

Ecualegacy writes:

Would you be any more inclined to do what he has told you to do? You'd still be coming at him with the same prideful arguments you are now I suspect. But only you can answer that question for yourself.

Since Ecualegacy’s god is merely imaginary and does not actually exist, it will never be able to answer my arguments. Nor will Ecualegacy himself. He can deflect, evade and spin the issues, but he will not be able to meet my arguments on their own ground. He can chalk this up to pride, but citing my pride is not an argument. He does this so that he can settle in his mind that he is right and I am wrong, given his aversion to pride. But it does nothing to affect my position. At that point he’s simply trying to quell his own nagging doubts.

I wrote:

You can cite Holding and Miller and any other apologist all you want, but at the end of the day these are just other human beings, and they too fail to provide a method by which we can distinguish between what they call “God” and what they may merely be imagining. What they do provide is an example of how one can settle confusions and contradictions which arise as a result of their desire to protect a delusion in their minds.

Ecualegacy responded:

"Delusion in their minds" is a conclusion I think you've reached prematurely.

The conclusion is sound, as this argument demonstrates:

Premise: Any worldview which affirms, depends on or reduces to the primacy of consciousness metaphysics is delusional.

Premise: Christianity is a worldview which affirms, depends on or reduces to the primacy of consciousness metaphysics.

Conclusion: Therefore, Christianity is delusional.

For support of this argument’s premises, see my blog.

Ecualegacy writes:

And if this post weren't already 2500+ words long, I'd spend another 500 or 1000 more taking you through the steps.

Steps to what? Please, don’t hold back on my account. If you’ve got something, it’s no use telling us you have it and then withhold it. Bring it on.

Ecualegacy writes:

But you really ought to do some homework for yourself and go look up the experts.

But I am an expert.

Ecualegacy writes:

Besides, your objection sounds suspiciously like Carl Sagan's famous line about wanting somthing like a flaming cross orbiting the earth to prove God's existence.

This, too, is not an argument. Nor does it answer the question on the table: How can I distinguish between what Ecualegacy as a Christian believer calls “God” from what he may merely be imagining? Is Ecualegacy saying, in roundabout manner, that it is wrong for me to ask this question? Or, can he recognize that this is a legitimate concern (since there is a difference between the real and the unreal, the actual and the imaginary) and address this problem in the case of his god-belief?

Ecualegacy writes:

For crying out loud, people landed on the moon and the average man on the street is starting to believe the conspiracy theorists who say man didn't!

Again, this is not an argument. Perhaps Ecualegacy doesn’t have any to begin with? Let’s wait for my next installment in this series, and see what more he has to say.

by Dawson Bethrick