Responses to John Loftus ("Tough Questions for Christians")
Finally!
I found John Loftus’s Tough Questions for Christians and I wanted to respond from my Sorta-Christian-And-Not-Really-Atheist perspective.
First set of questions:
Can God be surprised? Can God laugh? Can God think? Thinking means weighing alternatives. But if God knows everything then can God think? Is God metaphysically free? Did God ever choose his character and his moral standards? Does God ever know what it is to make a choice?
These questions are all philosophically interesting. However, I believe that it is outside the realm of human knowledge to understand the nature of God. Much like Einstein’s mind-bending concept of “spacetime” as a whole unit, the metaphysical existence of God isn’t something we can really wrap our heads around. So—all these answers are, “I don’t know.”
Is God good?
When presented with the three statements: 1) God is omnipotent; 2) God is omnibenevolent; 3) evil exists/bad things happen; it is clear that one of those three statements is incorrect. Christians would probably say that #3 is not the correct statement, as everything is based on God’s will and therefore everything is ultimately good. Deists and atheists both disagree with #1 and #2. From my perspective, #1 is probably false. I think God probably has a way to affect the world, but not completely control it. From a Biblical perspective, however, there is little to support the falsity of #1, and much to support the falsity of #2. The OT supports the notion that God isn’t omnibenevolent -- God commits genocide and stuff.
I find this answer very unsatisfying. I want God to be omnibenevolent—I’d prefer a God who is 100% good over a God who is 100% powerful. But what I want to be true is unsupported by any physical evidence or historical text that I have found (including the Bible). This brings me to the conclusion that if there is a God, and He is the God of the Bible, I don’t like the things he does. And the answer to Loftus’s question (in my estimation) is, “probably not.”
If God didn’t need anything, then why did he create us?
Hm. I don’t know the answer to this. I’d question the validity of the “if” statement, though. How do we know God doesn’t need anything? Our human definition of perfection logically excludes God having needs, but those definitions are human constructions with human limitations. I don’t see any problem with God’s need. (I also don’t necessarily agree that God is perfect, but that’s another discussion.)
Loftus then puts forth several questions that challenge Calvinist thinking:
What’s the point of creating humans, if God planned everything in advance?
What is the basis of God’s foreknowledge?
If God gave us free will and he knew we would abuse it so badly, then why give it to us?
Can God create free creatures who always obey?
Why didn’t God create us with a propensity to dislike sin?
So these questions aren’t really answerable from my worldview. I don’t believe the Bible is inerrant, I don’t believe that the picture of God in the Bible is accurate, and I don’t believe that any of these concepts (about foreknowledge, free will, etc) as they relate to God are necessarily true. So I guess my answers to all of these questions are “I don’t know, but I don’t accept the basis of the ‘if’ statements.”
Loftus then has two questions about why God allows bad things to happen (slavery, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc—that’s oversimplifying his questions, but this is a long post). Again, if, from the textual and physical evidence, I have come to the idea that God is probably not all good, that’s the answer. God allows bad things to happen because he’s either not all good or not all powerful.
These answers are leading me down the path of a major crisis of faith. I think God would probably still be worthy of worship if He were not omnipotent, but probably not if He weren’t omnibenevolent. If He’s not all good, just how bad is He? The textual evidence tells of genocide, Hell, and more horrific (and in my mind, unethical) things performed by the hand of God. I’m not an atheist, but it’s hard for me not to reject the Christian God, whether or not He exists.
A final note: I don’t know where I get the ideas that slavery, misogyny, discrimination against homosexuals, and discrimination against non-Christians are unethical. It appears that God didn’t say those things are unethical (often quite the opposite, in fact), so I guess I didn’t get them from God. I do know that I feel horrible about these things happening in human history, and I do believe evil (as either an absolute or as a human construct) lies in each one of those things. I can’t justify believing these things are evil and believing in Christianity too.
I found John Loftus’s Tough Questions for Christians and I wanted to respond from my Sorta-Christian-And-Not-Really-Atheist perspective.
First set of questions:
Can God be surprised? Can God laugh? Can God think? Thinking means weighing alternatives. But if God knows everything then can God think? Is God metaphysically free? Did God ever choose his character and his moral standards? Does God ever know what it is to make a choice?
These questions are all philosophically interesting. However, I believe that it is outside the realm of human knowledge to understand the nature of God. Much like Einstein’s mind-bending concept of “spacetime” as a whole unit, the metaphysical existence of God isn’t something we can really wrap our heads around. So—all these answers are, “I don’t know.”
Is God good?
When presented with the three statements: 1) God is omnipotent; 2) God is omnibenevolent; 3) evil exists/bad things happen; it is clear that one of those three statements is incorrect. Christians would probably say that #3 is not the correct statement, as everything is based on God’s will and therefore everything is ultimately good. Deists and atheists both disagree with #1 and #2. From my perspective, #1 is probably false. I think God probably has a way to affect the world, but not completely control it. From a Biblical perspective, however, there is little to support the falsity of #1, and much to support the falsity of #2. The OT supports the notion that God isn’t omnibenevolent -- God commits genocide and stuff.
I find this answer very unsatisfying. I want God to be omnibenevolent—I’d prefer a God who is 100% good over a God who is 100% powerful. But what I want to be true is unsupported by any physical evidence or historical text that I have found (including the Bible). This brings me to the conclusion that if there is a God, and He is the God of the Bible, I don’t like the things he does. And the answer to Loftus’s question (in my estimation) is, “probably not.”
If God didn’t need anything, then why did he create us?
Hm. I don’t know the answer to this. I’d question the validity of the “if” statement, though. How do we know God doesn’t need anything? Our human definition of perfection logically excludes God having needs, but those definitions are human constructions with human limitations. I don’t see any problem with God’s need. (I also don’t necessarily agree that God is perfect, but that’s another discussion.)
Loftus then puts forth several questions that challenge Calvinist thinking:
What’s the point of creating humans, if God planned everything in advance?
What is the basis of God’s foreknowledge?
If God gave us free will and he knew we would abuse it so badly, then why give it to us?
Can God create free creatures who always obey?
Why didn’t God create us with a propensity to dislike sin?
So these questions aren’t really answerable from my worldview. I don’t believe the Bible is inerrant, I don’t believe that the picture of God in the Bible is accurate, and I don’t believe that any of these concepts (about foreknowledge, free will, etc) as they relate to God are necessarily true. So I guess my answers to all of these questions are “I don’t know, but I don’t accept the basis of the ‘if’ statements.”
Loftus then has two questions about why God allows bad things to happen (slavery, tsunamis, hurricanes, etc—that’s oversimplifying his questions, but this is a long post). Again, if, from the textual and physical evidence, I have come to the idea that God is probably not all good, that’s the answer. God allows bad things to happen because he’s either not all good or not all powerful.
These answers are leading me down the path of a major crisis of faith. I think God would probably still be worthy of worship if He were not omnipotent, but probably not if He weren’t omnibenevolent. If He’s not all good, just how bad is He? The textual evidence tells of genocide, Hell, and more horrific (and in my mind, unethical) things performed by the hand of God. I’m not an atheist, but it’s hard for me not to reject the Christian God, whether or not He exists.
A final note: I don’t know where I get the ideas that slavery, misogyny, discrimination against homosexuals, and discrimination against non-Christians are unethical. It appears that God didn’t say those things are unethical (often quite the opposite, in fact), so I guess I didn’t get them from God. I do know that I feel horrible about these things happening in human history, and I do believe evil (as either an absolute or as a human construct) lies in each one of those things. I can’t justify believing these things are evil and believing in Christianity too.
posted by SuperSkeptic at 12:34 PM
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