Abstract

Sunday, 16 March 2003

James R wrote this after several pages of correspondence with AW! He decided to offer something from some book that he admired.

Here is an excerpt from a great book called The Case for Faith (Student edition) by Lee Strobel. Lee Strobel was a journalist, husband, and atheist. Yep, you guessed it, after searching for two years to find the answer he became a Christian. You can hear Christianity as explained by Christians.

Have I been reading about Christianity as explained by Martians? You all have this delusion that you are an oppressed and misunderstood minority when the history of Christianity is one of Christians oppressing everyone else. This is not a question of faith but of fact. Try reading some.

Since Evil and Suffering Exist, a Good God cannot. If there is a loving God in control of the world, how do you make sense out of the kind of evil and suffering that the world saw on September 11, 2001? If God is loving, all-powerful, and good, then it seems as if evil and suffering should not exist. After all, if God is all-powerful, then he should be able to prevent suffering. If he chooses not to, then how can he be considered good? For many people, that´s one of the biggest objections to the Christian faith. Doesn´t the very existence of such awful suffering prove that there is no such thing as a good, all-powerful God?

All good questions, I agree, and the beginning of his answer is, ’No Easy Answers’. That poses another question. Why is it so difficult for an Almighty God to get over His simple message? Your hero says, ’I don´t have all the answers. I´m not sure anyone does.’ Now if you can get that into your head, and other Christians’ too, we will have gotten somewhere. This admired writer you cite doubts anyone has the answers, but you and all the Christians I have corresponded with KNOW they have the answers. Either your man is not a Christian at all, or you are all wrong to pretend, or assume, you have the answers.

Is it God´s Fault?

Now the teacher refers to some supposed ’philosopher’ called Peter Kreeft. Needless to say this man is not a philosopher, he is a Christian theologian. No philosopher would begin by assuming that the bible is the fount of all truth. Any such idea is contrary to philosophy, but it is the core of Christian theology. Is this an innocent mistake? Nothing that professional Christian writers set down in print can be assumed to be an innocent mistake. Christians are incorrigible liars when it comes to persuading someone else of their faith. The end justifies the means for them.

Can You Believe the Bible?

The great leader’s answer is that you can believe it because he does. He adds, ’If you´re not sure about the Bible yourself, you can still explore what it says, in much the same way that a scientist works with a hypothesis even if the hypothesis hasn´t been proven.’ Does he mean by this, test it? If he does and means it sincerely, then no one could ever be a Christian because it is easy to show that the bible is not trustworthy in some obvious points. If it is untrustworthy about these obvious things then who but a madman would believe it in other, more difficult respects?

“If God didn´t create evil,” I said, “then where did evil come from?” “Once God chose to create human beings with free choice,” Peter explained, “then it was up to them, rather than to God, whether there was evil or not. That´s what free choice means. Built into the situation of God deciding to create human beings is the chance of evil and the suffering that results.”

This is the Christian explanation all right. It squarely puts the blame for evil on to human beings where it, in fact, belongs because God has no part in it at all. But taking for the sake of argument that God did have a part in it, He cannot escape from His responsibility so easily. He made people knowing that they would be evil. He therefore created evil knowingly, or, if you prefer it, He created the means whereby evil would enter the world and he knew it. He is the Creator in Judaeo-Christian theology and He is responsible for what emerges from His own Creation.

“Then why didn´t God create human beings who were unable to choose to hate, or destroy, or to do all the other things that cause pain and suffering?” I pursued. “Why didn´t he create people capable only of being kind and loving?” “Think of it this way,” Peter suggested.” If you push a button on one of those talking Barbie dolls, and it says, ‘I love you,´ how meaningful is that? If ‘love´ or ‘goodness´ is something programmed into you, something you have no choice about, is it really love? Real love must involve a choice.”

We have been here before. If the spectrum of choices were only loving or hating, then eliminating hating admittedly leaves only loving, and so there is no choice, but this is just not true. Both love and hate are, in my experience relatively scarce emotions among the whole gamut of human emotionality. Most people you pass in the streets of a crowded city you are indifferent towards. Of those you know, there are many more levels of response between love and hatred. If hatred is interpreted as that level of dislike that leads to actual harm, then God could have eliminated that and left all the other possibilities, and we would have been no wiser. Instead of killing or seriously wounding your neighbour, hatred would be shouting at him and perhaps going so far as to threaten him, but harm or death could not be the outcome because God actually forbade it.

“God gave people free choice because that´s the only way they could experience love, which is the greatest value in the universe,” Peter continued, “but then humans abused their freedom of choice by rejecting God and walking away from him. And that´s how human suffering came into the world.”

This is plainly rubbish. It is a common Christian ploy to pretend that there are only a certain number of responses when there are many more. Here there are a full spectrum of responses from deep love to hatred not just love and hate. To eliminate hate as one response does not leave only love. It is a crude ploy suitable only for Christians because they are simple.

It´s pretty easy to see how human beings are responsible for a lot of the suffering in the world. Drive-by shootings, for instance. Philosophers call it “moral evil”—the immorality and suffering that come because people choose to be selfish, arrogant, uncaring, hateful, and abusive.

No one would disagree with this, as noted above, but it has nothing to do with God. Suffering can either be caused by human beings or caused by something else. If God had anything to do with it and was Almighty, then He could stop both. In fact, God is unnecessary, and it is the suffering that is a prime factor in the evolution of species and ultimately humans. Fundamentalists do not like evolution, not only because it dispenses with God, but because, if any attempt is made to have both God and evolution, then God is plainly a monster for allowing the suffering that drives evolution. It also shows that the whole idea of the lion lying down with the lamb is childish nursery fantasy, but Christians believe it.

Some people estimate that 95% of the world´s suffering results from human actions. For example, people look at a famine and wonder where God is, but the world produces enough food for each person to have 3,000 Calories a day. It´s human corruption and self-centeredness that keep people from being fed.

An interesting point, this, since it is Christians who control the economics of the world, and have done for several hundred years. If God does not want to stop suffering like this, then why haven’t the half a billion wealthy Christian people in the world’s advanced countries? Christianity, I though, was supposed to be a moral way of living that made people better human beings. I suggest it does not, but that some people like to be labelled as Christian because it has been given a falsely good reputation. Among them are some people who are actually good, but not most.

Or can they? Here´s how Cliffe Knechtle explained it in his book Give Me an Answer: “When we humans told God to shove off, he partially honored our request. Nature began to revolt. Genetic breakdown and disease began. Pain and death become part of the human experience.”

Is this serious? Anyone who can believe this contrary to everything that history and science knows has to be a fool. It beats me, in this world of science and universal education that anyone can read this and not burst out laughing.

We´re realizing more and more how interconnected everything in the world really is. Cutting down rainforests leads to higher CO2 levels, leading to a thinning of the ozone layer, leading to global warming, leading to increased melting of the polar ice caps, leading to increased flooding…. You get the idea. Is it so strange to think that human action and the natural world are connected in ways we may not see so clearly?

What has all this to do with Christianity, and, moreover, what contribution has Christianity made to our knowing this? If we had believed the Christians we would have known none of it. The stuff you are relating to persuade people to be Christians has been denied by Christian. They denied all of this knowledge, and some still do.

“So by creating people with choices, God in effect did create evil,” I persisted. “God did not create evil and suffering,” Peter said firmly.

What authority has he for being so firm. Is he God, or is he one of those Christians who have a direct line to Him? If He thinks the bible is God’s word, then what is his philosophical basis for that? Why do Christians believe everything that utter tossers tell them?

“But if God is God, couldn´t he have known what would happen?” I asked. “Couldn´t he have anticipated the consequences of giving people free choice?” “[There´s] No doubt he did,” Peter agreed. “But let me ask you a question: When you start a new relationship—whether it´s a friendship or a relationship that might possibly lead to falling in love-can you foresee the possibility that the other person may sometime disappoint you or hurt you or even walk away from you completely?” I nodded. “So why do you ever make friends or start relationships?” Peter asked. “I guess it´s because it´s worth the risk,” I said slowly. “Having good friends, and all the wonderful things about being in love with my wife—that more than makes up for the risk of getting hurt.” “I think it´s the same with God,” Peter said. “He knew we´d rebel against him, but he also knew many people would choose to follow him. It must be worth it to him, because he not only created us with free choice, but he even created the way to bring us back to him after we rebel—through the suffering of his Son Jesus.”

Isn’t this just tedious? This philosopher is now telling us that God is selfish. He creates a world with evil in it because it is worth it to Him that some people will not be evil. Now if God were clever instead of selfish, He could have had everyone being good and that should have pleased Him more, and saved Him the trouble of arranging for the murder of His son, but because He is selfish, and because He is a megalomaniac who must have the ants He created worshipping Him out of free will, He created evil in the world to give them a choice. How do we know that such an insane God did not create evil to punish us, while He had a giggle at our plight? If rhis is philosophy then I am Plato, and you are Aristotle.

Why Doesn´t God Wipe Out Suffering? “Even if God didn´t cause suffering in the first place,” I said,” why doesn´t he put a stop to it now? “That time pain was a good thing for her. I was wise enough to have foreseen it was good for her. Now, certainly God is much wiser than I was with my daughter. So it´s at least possible that God is wise enough to foresee that we need some pain for reasons which we may not understand but which he foresees as being necessary to some eventual good. Therefore he´s not being evil by allowing that pain to exist.”

None of this explains anything. When Christians run out of arguments, they resort to the mysteries of God It is for our own good even though our philosopher does not know what, and in this case, God has not told him. The line was faulty or the Holy Spirit fell asleep. Moreover how does pain for the 3000 people who died on 11 September help them? Their pain is to help someone else, no doubt, so what happened to the 3000? Some of them must have been sinners, so they went straight to hell. Perhaps they were all killed and went to hell, and that is why God allowed it. Or perhaps they all went to heaven because they were martyrs, just as the Moslems who did the deed did it knowing that they would go straight to heaven. God does us harm to do us good! Why do Christians believe all this dangerous drivel? How do they differ from Moslems in this insane beliefs of God and heaven?

Now the philosopher compares us with athletes training for success

Just as a grueling workout helps an athlete build stamina and strength, difficult life experiences can shape a person´s character to make him or her a winner in some other way. The Bible describes it like this: “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3).

I can see nothing wrong with this reasoning except that it has nothing to do with God. If you insist on bringing God into it, then you are talking about the organ you say He gave us, but that Christians persistently neglect to use. We use our brain to overcome problems that we face in life. That includes deciding whether rogues and tricksters are trying to make fools of us to their own advantage. The New Testament, on the contrary, tells us that we have to be fools and therefore neglect the brain God supposedly gave us. Well, it is certain that ours brains came with the rest of us, so that, if God is the Creator, He created us with a brain. He did not create us with a bible instead of it. The bible was written by the aforesaid rogues and vagabonds, and I used my brain to make the judgement.

Some people point to pain as an experience that redirects them. A woman I work with has a brother in law with Down´s syndrome. For some reason, the connections that convey the message of pain through the nervous system don´t work very well for him. He could rest his hand on the red hot burner of an electric stove and not notice it until he was severely burned. If you or I did that, the pain we feel would make us snatch our hand back in a second. Physical pain protects you and me from something worse.

Now your philosopher is talking, but not about God. He is talking about what we have learned since we abandoned the stupidity of believing that all truth was in this book called the bible. This is the explanation of physical pain. It is a mechanism useful in evolution to prevent harm to the individual of a species. It makes the individual avoid anything dangerous to it. There is no need to mix God with this explanation. But, if, as you say, God did make us with the capacity to feel pain, He must have foreseen at the time that Christians would finish up burning people slowly while they were tied to pillars and could not escape, tortured them cruelly with all sorts of different ways of causing excruciating pain, and knew that powerful Christian countries led by powerful Christian leaders would ignore everything that His son supposedly taught and killed and murdered and cooked and minced anyone at all that they did not like, or even innocent people that got in their way. Believe what you like, but do not pretend that it is coherent, even if some half-wit that calls himself a philosopher tells you it.

That happened in a dramatic way in the life of a friend named Terry. He was going down the path of drug addiction and stealing, and it took the pain of a barroom brawl that knocked his teeth out, being robbed while he was stoned, and finally landing in prison to show him that crime and addiction are a dead end road. In prison, he has committed himself to turning his life around.

Every society crook that I can think of that ever got caught claimed that they had been on the road to Damascus while they were in nick. It gives the society judges an excuse for letting them off lightly. Even non-society crooks try it, just like your example. Others try the other tack. The Devil fooled them so they were not to blame, Milud! As I write, the news is that the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, fooled the courts when he said he heard voices telling him to knock out the brains of prostitutes with a pein hammer. It turns out that the hammer had been a favourite weapon of his in fights with men years before he decided prostitutes were easier victims. Neither God nor satan are to blame for these people. The responsibility for their crimes is their own. If some really do turn their lives around, then that is fine, but why let God take the credit? The same rule applies. They decided to be wicked and they themselves decided to go straight. “It´s your own fault you´re suffering,” is dead right. Teaching kids this would be more useful than telling it is not their fault, but Satan’s or God’s.

Positive from Negative: Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” In other words, God will take bad circumstances and bring good out of them—if we´re committed to following him.

Now here is another interesting thing. The Zoroastrians and the Old Testament Jews that followed them were concerned that wicked people often did extremely well in life and finished up prosperous and happy. That is the reason why they invented the idea of a last judgemet, and that is what Christians still believe 2500 years later. Why, though, does God not punish wickedness there and then? To judge from this citation from Romans God rewards those who love him, so successful drug dealers and confidence tricksters are God’s beloved?

The classic example from the Bible of how God can bring good out of evil is the life of Joseph. His brothers sold him into slavery, his employer´s wife framed him for a crime he didn´t commit, his employer had him thrown in prison. Ultimately, though, Joseph rose to power and influence and was in a position to save the lives of his family and many others. (It´s a great story; you can read it in Genesis 37-50.) Joseph summarized his life experience to his brothers this way: “As for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are this day.”(Genesis 50:20)

Your source does not tell you that this ancient story called the Two Bothers is known from a much more ancient source than God’s Word. It is like the Flood, and the infancy of Moses, and many more biblical stories. Has God got no imagination, that He had to use old stories from other sources?

That has even happened with the horror of the September 11 attacks. “None of us would ever wish the evil that has been done to our country,” said President Bush, “yet we have learned that out of evil can come great good….We have seen it in the courage of passengers who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground. Passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer….We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers working past exhaustion. We´ve seen he unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers in English, Hebrew and Arabic….Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment.”

And now we are seeing what the Fundamentalist Christian Bush meant. No turning of cheeks here. He is out for vengeance and personal gain. That is true Christianity, as we know from history, even if it does not match that of the poor Galilean whom Christians call a God, but ignore in almost every other respect. I am not a Christian, that is plain enough, but I can read God’s word as well as anyone else, and it does not say, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." Christianity was supposed to be more civilised than that, but it proves that Bush and his Christian war cabinet are not Christians, if the gospels are the criterion of it. I suspect, though, that they are mainly in company that agrees with them, even though prominent Christian leaders do not. Who now are we supposed to believe?

Anyone who can believe that an Almighty being could devise such an method of redempttion as murdering a man on a cross in Roman times is truly stupid. God, tou say, is Almighty! If He wanted to send signs, then signs He could send. Tens of thousands of people died on the cross in the centuries around the time of Christ. How do you know that you got the right one? Some Christians, mainly burnt and tortured savagely by the dominant sect of Christianity, did not believe the crucifixion was an act of God at all, but was an illusion created by the Devil. The modern Christian churches believe therefore in the Devil’s illusion. No wonder it is so wicked! These Christians murdered by the surviving Christians believed Christ was an angel sent to show mankind how to behave, and only by behaving in that way can people be saved. If they were the true Christians, then no one is being saved, because all Christians believe what the Devil wanted them to, not the truth. If they were right, the God’s Truth you all bandy about with excessive confidence is Satan’s Truth, and you are all dupes of the wicked God.

“And that brings me to what may be the most important good thing that God could bring out of your pain and suffering,” Peter said. “God might just use it to get your attention and draw you close to him.” In his book The Problem of Pain, writer C.S. Lewis says, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

What was He saying to the people that I just mentioned, then? And what was He saying to the ones who did the torturing and burning? You are all empty heads. If I were to believe in these supernatural beings controlling our lives, then the history of Christianity says only one thing. Christianity is the work of the Devil.

It isn´t Fair Peter explained: “God promises that when he puts an end to suffering, the rewards for those who love him will more than make up for what they suffered [See the box “Taking the Long View.”] At the same time, he´ll judge everyone who causes suffering. But he´s delaying that day so that more people can put their trust in him and spend eternity with him. The Bible says, ‘The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance´ [2 Peter 3:9]. He´s delaying everything out of love for me. For you.”

More utter stupidity. So He delays until the last man expires on earth to allow everyone who ever lived the chance to repent. What asylum is this philosopher locked up in? Christians are invited by their ministers, a caste of crooks and tricksters, into giving them money to help the dead-heads find God, thus allowing the priesthood to live comfortably and often in luxury. They will find that all their payments were faithfully recorded by God’s angels and they will be on the roll of honour for the balmy place. "God has all eternity to make it up to me." Ho! Ho! Ho! Nice one, eh!

The Megaphone of Pain. The number of prayer services that followed the attack on New York City seemed to suggest that Peter might be right. When things are going your way, how easy is it to forget about God? It´s when things are going wrong that we turn to God—either for help or to blame him.

I would like to know of the ones who blame Him. It strikes me as singularly sick that Christian dupes suffer something awful like all those who lost relatives and friends in the 11 September atrocity and go straight to Church to praise God! I have related before in astonishment the words of a minister told that six of twelve schoolchidren had been killed in a school bus. ’Thank God it was not worse!’ It is too sick to be a joke!

You tell the story of someone who let his infant daughter be crushed under the wheels of a car driven by his wife. It is a truly sad story, though not unusual. But when you consider that had he been employed as a carer for the infant girl, he would have been sued for negligence, and it is doubtful that anyone would have been sympathetic. He was negligent, since his wife specifically asked him to watch out for the daughter. Anyone with that on his conscience would need to be redeemed by God. Slowly, he was healed, the story ends, but that happensd with or without God, or indeed with any other comfort you care to substitute for the Christian God. When he became a minister, had his wife left him, by the way?

Marc has been transformed into someone who will devote the rest of his life to bringing God´s compassion to others who are alone in their desperation.

Meaning indoctrinating others into Christianity while otherwise being relatively idle. Christianity does nothing other than appeal to emotion. It cannot appeal to intellect because it is intellectually void of content. The dying God on the tree has appealed to women since Old Testament times, and that is before Christianity was invented. Give them a sob story and they will join. I once gave a beggar a pound coin for his appeal to me in the street, sobbing and distraught, apparently because he did not have the money to get to see his dying wife in hospital. Someone had robbed him of his wallet. It was his regular act, but I do not regret giving the coin, it was so good. It would not be quite so appreciated if he did it every day outside my front porch. The church is no better.

But the ultimate answer is Jesus´ presence. That sounds sappy, I know.

Don’t you all!

I hope this sheds some light on what I’ve been trying to say.

Not a glimmer. And I have been through all this with you before. It is no better coming from Christian phonies making big bucks out of the devotional book market in the US or wherever else. I am not a cynic, but if I were, the first thing I would do is write a pro-Christian book. The market never seems to tire of them, and the Christian churches love to see the shelves massed down with utter tripe, because it makes it all the more difficult for the seeker after truth to pick out anything that makes sense.

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Archaeoastronomy | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | Atheist Experience | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History