Tag Archives: Responses

“Free Will” Can’t Solve Theodicy.

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Recently a Christian named Jordan told me that God had to have created a world with evil, because otherwise we wouldn’t have free will.

Here is my response.

Jordan, you are now implying that the ability to choose evil is more important than avoiding evil, in the eyes of God.

A bold assertion.

And yet a necessary one, probably, if one believes a “benevolent” (when it does not limit the ability of Creation to do evil), omnipotent god exists.

Still, I hold it makes no rational sense at all. We wouldn’t call god “good”, then, should we. We should call him evil-enabling, since that is what — by your own argument — he values more than goodness!

Since when has free will (or the illusion of it) needed the ability to do evil, and since when is free will more important than morality or general happiness? This is why I can never, ever respect theology. Each answer reveals more contradictions and absurdities.

A Run-In with a Street Preacher

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I ran into a street preacher, whom we’ll call Fred, a week ago. He dropped some pretty crazy gems that I just had to share. (Note I’ve tagged this entry with “Responses,” indicating it contains answers to common conversion efforts.)

Starting Off with Atheists in Foxholes

Fred begins by saying something generic and attempting to hand me a flyer for his church. “I’m an atheist,” I say, taking care not to begin with “Sorry” — I’m not going to apologize for my rationality!

“Oh, we’re all atheists!” Fred exclaims, then leans forward: “But if you jump out of a plane, who do you think you’ll be praying to?”

Never mind I’ve been skydiving, no gods involved. I play along. “Perhaps, but it wouldn’t necessarily be your god I was playing to.”

Fred maintains his conspiratorial stance and shares his Secret with me: “Well, there’s only one God, you know!”

“But there’s no proof,” I say.

“Exactly,” Fred says in an attempt at argumentative Aikido. “That’s why it’s all about faith!”

Being a guy who attempts to have rational beliefs this doesn’t sit well with me. But at least this guy knows, in theory, that faith a the lack of evidence… or does he:

“But if you look at all the prophecies…”

Not a Real Christian

One of my absolute favorite things to hear Christians say is “Oh, they aren’t real Christians.” (That’s the No True Scotsman fallacy, and for whatever reason, Christians, especially evangelists, love it.)

Our friend Fred doesn’t let me down.

After Fred encourages me to just take the flyer and consider converting, I mention that I was raised Christian, I know the stories, and I’m never converting, and he becomes a bit excited. “What were you raised as?” he asks. “Because I thought I was raised Christian too, but I wasn’t!”

“Catholic.”

“Me too!” Fred shares. “Well that’s something we have in common!”

“If Catholics aren’t true Christians,” I ask, “Tell me, what religion would you have been in, say, 1,000 A.D.?”

Fred didn’t have an answer, but religious fragmentation and the chronologically & geographically determined nature of faith are things I’ve thought about before.

The Loving God’s Hellfire

We discussed theodicy in an amusing way.

“If God loves me, as you say,” I asked Fred, “Why would he make me, knowing I, as a rational thinker, would have to reject Him, causing my damnation? Why would he make so very many people who would just go to hell? Heck, how could Native Americans go to heaven before Europeans came over?” I asked rhetorically.

“Well we have to choose. Do you want us all to be boring automatons?” Fred started. I could see where this was going already. The spectre of “free will” is always used as a counter to the problem of evil.

“Here’s the thing,” I say. “You clearly believe that for us to have free will, we have to be able to hurt each other.”

“Yes.”

“Why is that necessarily true? Wouldn’t a perfect God be able to create a world with free will, without letting us hurt each other?”

Fred isn’t convinced — that isn’t, of course, how our world works, but if you’re an omnipotent, loving creator… “I don’t think so,” Fred says.

“But isn’t that what Heaven is?”

“No, everyone is Heaven is sinless.”

“Tell me, Fred. Are you going to heaven?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever hurt anyone?”

“Well, I’m sure we’ve all said some things —”

“So are you just going to be an automaton in Heaven, then? Or can you hurt people in Heaven? See how I just made you argue against yourself? It just doesn’t make any sense,” I say, referring to Christianity.

I consider this a slam-dunk argument against typical Christianity, proving my point about theodicy and free will and how a loving, all-knowing, all-powerful god can’t exist in this world. Yet our preacher friend is wholly unfazed, resolute in his mission to convince others that something he knows is unprovable is not only the Truth but also the Only Way.

“The Holocaust was God’s Plan”

“You know why the Holocaust happened? Because the Jews – well, most of ’em – refused to recognize their own Messiah, their own savior,” Fred shared.

I was so shocked by this claim of Fred’s that I have a hard time remembering what prompted it. Perhaps it stemmed from our discussion of why there is evil in the world.

“You know what I think? I think the Holocaust happened because this guy Hitler used the Jews as a political tool,” I counter. Never mind the role the Catholic Church played in this atrocity for now. Never mind that Hitler was a Christian.

“You’re thinking little picture, I’m thinking ‘big picture,’” Fred says.

“Oh, so what then, God leaned down — ” I cup my hands to my mouth and bend forward — “and whispered, ‘Hey, Hitler! Have you heard about these Jews? They’re really pissing me off!”

“Well, no, I don’t believe God talked to Hitler.” Of course not. Hitler couldn’t possibly be a true Christian, could he? It’s cognitive dissonance in action: Fred likes God and Christianity; he hates Hitler, thus he can’t imagine Hitler being Christian or supported by God, even when it logically follows from what he’s just said.

By now I’ve had enough of this offensively uncritical guy. “So God just caused the Holocaust indirectly, with magic? I don’t believe in magic. Have a nice night,” I say, walking off.

Response to “Whatever makes people happy”

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A common defense of theism and religion in general is that, while irrational faith-based belief has no grounding in reality, it’s fine because it helps people cope with real life.

The most obvious response is to point out that religion hurts people besides the believer:

  1. War. Obviously.

  2. Intolerance.

  3. Child abuse.

  4. Terrorism.

    On May 21, 2005, LaRose haunted by what appears to be a sad and hard life began drinking heavily. Depressed over her father’s recent death, LaRose in an attempt to take her life, swallowed eight to 10 prescription muscle relaxers. Failing to kill herself, Colleen LaRose was now at a crossroads in her life. After months of receiving counseling for depression and alcoholism, LaRose apparently found spiritual rebirth in the form of Islam. Unfortunately, the brand of Islam that gave her purpose to live was a brand that advocated death to America, the West and Israel.

    — When looks can kill: The Story of Jihad Jane AKA Colleen Renee LaRose

  5. Et cetera.

More subtly, but just as valid, is the observation that religion doesn’t even necessarily make the believer happier.

  1. While the most common “benefit” of belief is “coping with death,” studies have shown religious types actually have the hardest time coping with their own death.

    Case closed!

    But if that didn’t convince you, read on.

  2. People I know in real life have been very much hurt by their religion. A family member, for example, is incapable with dealing with human sexuality in any but the most conservative context, to the detriment of this person’s personal life.

  3. A number of friends of mine have broken up with significant others because they found they loved them “more than they loved Jesus.” (This kind of blows my mind, since that means their closest relationship is with an imaginary, Aramaic-speaking friend who wants to send most people to hell.)

  4. As recounted in The God Virus, religion can even make priests miserable. The author of the God Virus tells of a priest so overcome with Catholic-inspired guilt over his occasional masturbation — that he ends up hating himself for it, unable to think of much else.

Science and Religion, part 1

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Can we ever really know anything?

That is a question I hope to answer in a longer blog post. For now, let’s rephrase the question: “What is a better way to know things? From science or religion?”

Well, given that

  1. The foundation of all religions is faith, and
  2. Faith means something is not scientifically proven, or even logically impossible, yet taken to be true (“believed”) regardless, and
  3. Since no religion has been scientifically proven to be true (that is, they are all taken on faith), then
  4. Any religion is equally valid, so
  5. Take Christianity (defined such that the Bible is taken to be true) for example, which is perfectly valid with faith as our only guide, and then
  6. Consider the many, many places the Bible has been shown to be incorrect.

Thus, faith leads to incorrect conclusions. Science could basically win by default, but to be fair, it needs examined as well. I am not going to do that now, though. Since you are reading this online, I assume you have already conceded that science works.

Diversity of Religion & “Other Religions are Corrupted” Response

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The vast numbers of different religions and denominations (parodied here) in the world is possibly the strongest reason to deny any and all religions with any sort of interventionist, personal, or judgment-dealing God.

Deluded Christians and Muslims commonly skirt this accusation by rationalizing that other religions are corrupted by man or “the devil.” However, there is a terrific atheist response to this claim.

A Conversation

Atheist: “Can you explain the diversity of religion in the world?”

Theist: “The devil has caused corruption of the true religion.”

Atheist: “Then I have two challenges for you.

“One: How do you know your religion is correct? Couldn’t it be corrupted in the same way as you claim countless other peoples’ religion is corrupted? Don’t other believers of other religions have the same response to this question that you do?

“Two: Christians, Jews and Muslims pray to the same god, the Abraham’s god Yahweh. If God answers prayer or guides human understanding in any way, should we not expect God to consistently guide understanding for all these earnest believers, resulting in a mass conversion to the ‘correct’ religion and even denomination?”

This is the response that is so very strong. At this point there is nothing the theist apologist can say that holds up to reason without contradicting basic tenets of their religion. For example, saying that God does not actually shape human understanding is to deny all authority of the Pope, pastors, rabbis, imams, and ayatollahs and is more of a deist belief than a theist one; it also contradicts the idea that God plants faith in the hearts/minds of humans, which leads us to science and atheism. No matter the response, it is impossible for a God who is all-loving and all-powerful who cares about orthodoxy (right belief) to ignore the earnest prayers from confused beliefs whose “corrupted beliefs” may earn for them eternal damnation. It may also be pointed out that the theist will rationalize a response to fit the facts everyone knows are true about the variation of belief, despite the way their own beliefs should predict that most of the world (if not all) would have the same religious beliefs they do!

Personal anecdote

The day I came to terms with my budding atheism was the day I voiced my doubts of Christianity to a professor, asking for a bit of guidance. I will never forget the professor’s response. He said something to the effect of, “We should not worry too much about believing the right thing. People have so many different religious beliefs that, if there is a God, He is almost certainly nothing like what you have been told.”

Perhaps the argument discussed in this article is not so strong for everyone, but I found it extremely convincing.

Let me know what you think.

It’s not a religion. It’s a relationship.

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This page attempts to reduce the use of this rhetoric, which is neither effective nor accurate, by making atheists and heathens aware of some responses to it and by asking Christians to avoid it.

I remember sitting on the balcony of a highrise apartment down in Miami watching the boats go by and trying to win a relative to [C]hrist. He made a comment that he “wasn’t very into religion,” followed by my canned comment of, “Oh, but it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.”

—Anonymous post from a former Christian on No Gods Allowed

Atheist David Hawkins points out on his MySpace blog that such a claim simply isn’t true, while demonstrating his imperviousness to the argument.

Most Christians who claim they aren’t religious consider their sacred holy text, the Bible, inerrant or at least divinely inspired and they often insist that you must believe … in the Trinity. … This is far and away enough to qualify [their beliefs] as religion by definition.

Indeed, where would one even get the idea to begin a prayerful relationship with Jesus if not ultimately from the Bible or clergy? It goes without saying both sources are clearly religious in nature.

Saying that your Christ-centered beliefs are not a religion, but rather a relationship, also opens up those who use the line to attack. If there is “no religion” involved, that would seem to imply no scriptures or dogma are serious contributors to one’s beliefs; if revelation comes directly through this relationship, then the lack of agreement that followers of Christ have on even the most basic doctrines of how salvation is attained would suggest that the relationship is entirely imaginary.

If one’s beliefs regarding Jesus are “not religious,” then a skeptic may wonder if one may maintain a relationship with Jesus while becoming a Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Sikh, or Buddhist. After all, religions are generally held to be mutually exclusive, but a relationship won’t preclude one from converting to a particular religion.

Even more light-heartedly, one may inquire as to the comparative benefits of a relationship with Christ versus a boyfriend or girlfriend.

The “relationship” is certainly not as friendly as Christians would like to assert; after all, Jesus is the only “person” who claims to torture us for eternity should we reject his “friendship.”

Dave urges Christians to avoid this rhetoric and instead use more sincerity in their attempts at conversion and apologetics.

That sentiment is echoed here.