Rational Christianity Debunked?
From debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com:
One question that I have for religious believers is how they would distinguish between the following:
(1) An all-powerful deity created and guides the universe ultimately towards a good purpose;
and
(2) An all-powerful deity created and guides the universe ultimately towards an evil purpose, but have chosen to maliciously presented himself as benevolent to play a trick on created beings.
I mean, since believers are big on creating conceptual space to make their positions logically POSSIBLE, then it is also possible that God is a Cosmic Trickster who takes pleasure in fooling them.
How could one refuse (2)? Only based upon one’s religious beliefs that (1) must be true. The problem is that one’s beliefs that (1) must be true could be part of the cosmic joke in scenario (2), and thus there is no real way to differentiate between (1) and (2) for a religious believer.
Hmm…
Christians in the audience, what do you think? I have my own ideas on how to answer this question, but first I’d like to open the floor to y’all. Has this fellow (finally after 2000 years) refuted Christianity?
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Would the simple answer to this question be that that is what the definition of “faith” is? When it comes to Christ, he would repeat the phrase, “I tell you the truth…” in several instances before making a point. There are really two possibilities that exist. Either Christ was a raving lunatic who thought he was the son of God, or he was actually telling the truth, and he is who he claims to be. You really have to choose one of those conclusions, either actively or passively. When I say passively, I mean all the people who consider Jesus “a good teacher/philosopher” but not divine as he claimed. The above debunker does, interestingly enough, neglect to consider another possibility in his/her attempt to disprove God. True he/she does introduce the concept of a supernatural being with an evil agenda, but he does it only in the concept of the one, Almighty God being evil. He does not raise the issue of there being a benevolent, all-powerful God and a malevolent, non-all-powerful being as is discussed in the Bible. Had he done this, perhaps he would’ve listed a third option that would have conveyed that what if this malevolent spirit’s (i.e. Satan for all intents and purposes) strategy was to cause people to think that God is actually the evil one?
In order to refute both of his claims, we first need to establish a foundation upon which Christianity theologically views it’s three-personal God. Yes, He is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God (Psalm 139) as what our interrogator suggests from ‘all-powerful deity’, but his term of universe is very vague and broad.
If by universe he is referring to all the galaxies, and terrestrial bodies that exist and that it is expanding in accordance to current cosmological findings, then God most certainly, in His holy Will, directs where it is moving or growing to according to being ‘all-powerful’.
Now concerning the created beings in this universe, some were given a free will and intellectual disposition. Due to the fact that these few organisms or humans in themselves have a free will to choose how they want to satisfy their happiness, they can choose to whether they want to share in a life of grace with God or not seek God at all and pursue their own prideful way to a happiness.
It brings us to the beginning of Christianity, it is God who gives us this free will at the cost of us hurting Him. He could have easily made us into tin soldiers imparting His will and working to solely praise and glorify Him. Then he could just destroy them and all of creation at His will.
Now if in the interrogator’s case of a ‘religious believer’ he refers to a Christian living in full grace with the three personal God, the believer in itself would never accuse their God of such treachery to begin with.
Now on a more logical approach which is in accordance to philosophy, evil is in itself a
perversion of good. (This requires a lot of elaboration to be just stated as is btw) To put it even more straightforward, one does not know what a crooked line is without previous knowledge of what is a straight line is. As a side note high philosophy always requires some kind of analogy. To assume that God is a ‘trickster’ originally evil, but deceiving us in acting benevolent is pure nonsense when
the two actions are in clear contrast of each other to exist coherently in an all powerful being.
To tie it into Christian theology, the whole story about Satan being a fallen angel is no fairy tale. Satan or St. Lucifer was once an angel singing in chorus of praise with all the other order of angels, but it was through his pride that he seeks his own happiness to become like God. Now as stated in Genesis, God in his infinite goodness the angels have also been given a free will. So Satan chose his own way, gathered an army of other angels, and rebelled. We are in a civil war fighting ground. This leads us to choosing our own form of happiness in the way the world defines it as power, money and being like gods superior to others. The meaning of sin according to it’s own root word, is missing the mark.
I could keep going, but let me know how it goes. To keep it short, as was stated from someone: I’d rather live as if there was a God, than live as if there wasn’t one and then finding out in the end that there is. : )
Hope everything is well in the Navy, Ensign Conrad. Godspeed!
“I believe in God as I believe the sun has risen, not because I can see it, but because by way of it, I can see everything else.”
- C.S Lewis
First, he needs to brush up on his elementary school grammar lessons, then he needs to go take a philosophy of religion class—he is not by ANY means the first person to raise pose those scenarios.
Dang it, I go and make fun of his grammar, then I let a typo slip by…
So I couldn’t quickly find any examples of my above claim, but oh well, it’s late and I don’t particularly care right now.
Dang someone decided to write an essay. I wanted to comment, but in order to refrain from appearing uneducated i’d have to read the other comments, and i only have three minutes before class. Darn. Guess i’ll have to come back later.
My question would be where he gets his definition of “good.”
We know that God is benevolent because of the things He does: healing the sick, making the blind see, oh and saving us all from the hell we deserve.
Now it is theoretically possible (assuming the definition of “good” is some absolute outside of God) that “good” is really x and God is just tricking us to make us all believe that y is good. This idea would mean that everything we believe to be “good” (healing the sick, making the blind see, etc) is actually evil and everything we believe to be “evil” (murder, rape, etc) is actually good. Yeah i guess that’s a possibility, but then you begin to wonder what difference it would make. Even if murder was the real definition of good, what reason would you have to pursue that good?