The blog Thomisic Bent has been doing a series lately on why it was perfectly okay for God to command the Israelites to slaughter entire ethnic groups in the Old Testament, even down to the women and children. I’ve felt obliged to comment on all of them, because toward the end of my time as a Christian I began to realize just how heinous these stories are. Could you imagine God commanding something like the shootings in New Town, CT? As crazy as it sounds, what the OT suggests is even more horrific.
Thomistic Bent’s latest post, “Holiness and the Justice of God,” continues his rationale for accepting some of the Bible’s most blasphemous claims about God. Here’s an an excerpt:
As long as we compare ourselves to each other, we can convince ourselves that we’re not so dirty, and it’s really the other guy who needs a bath. But when we truly see how holy God is, we suddenly know how dirty we are…
God is patient, but will eventually demand a separation. In God’s terms, this is Hell, which is a separation from God, away from His good graces, a place where we can have what we want, to be left alone.
So we all deserve separation from God. But what if God were to select some, clean them up, and give them another chance? If He takes some of the filthy rags and cleans it up, He is not bound to take all the filthy rags.
So is part of the answer with God’s actions with the Canaanites. If God acted the way He does in the rest of the Bible, then we can conclude that He likely gave them plenty of notices about what He expected, and plenty of chances to change. The Canaanites refused, so He ordered all of them separated from Him into Hell.
Meanwhile, we sit around and compare one of them with the other and with ourselves, and say some of them are not so bad, for it seems to us that they did not do much wrong. We feel this way because we are comparing the Canaanites to ourselves, comparing one filthy rag with another. But if we, or the Canaanites, were to realize how holy God is, we would all, along with Isaiah and Peter, beg God to cast us away, for we are all deserving of separation. Only by God’s infinite mercy do any of us have a chance to change our ways.
Using this kind of logic, I could make the same case about dogs. When you compare one dog to another, there’s little difference. But when you compare a dog to a human, it’s suddenly quite clear that dogs are filthy, stupid, and completely uncivilized. That’s why we are well within our rights to wipe out all dogs. It’s what they deserve for not being as clean, intelligent, and civilized as we humans. In fact, the dogs would completely agree with us, if they could ever come to understand just how much better than them we really are. If we decide to spare any dogs, it only shows how merciful we are.
Does that really make sense? Or is it more rational for the higher being to accept the lower being for what it is? What’s even worse, when we think about this in terms of God, is that he supposedly created us to be exactly the way we are. If he’s all powerful, he could have given us the same level of perfection that Jesus had so that we would be able to live more perfectly and be more pleasing to him. Instead, he purposely handicapped us, and then decided to reject us because of the same handicap. He wants us to hate ourselves, merely for the “crime” of being what he created us to be. What kind of monster would operate in such a way?
The problem with people like the writer of Thomistic Bent is that they unquestioningly accept whatever the Bible tells them without really thinking about its implications. And I should know — I used to operate the same way. If you dig back far enough into this blog, you’ll see what I mean. But the problem with that position is that God himself has not told the writer of Thomistic Bent that all these things actually happened, or that he would have approved of them even if they had. No, these stories were passed down from generation to generation before being written down by mere men. We don’t have the original copies. And all the copies we have are divergent in certain areas. And God didn’t hand us a list of which books were authentic — that was decided by groups of men. At every step along the process, the books of the Bible have mankind’s fingerprints all over them… why in the world would we still assume that they contain the actual words of God, especially when they contain such disgusting barbarism and attribute it to him? Not to mention this type of vengeful God was typical for ancient Canaan.
Look, guys like the writer of Thomistic Bent mean well. They think they’re performing a public service by warning us about the scary sky-monster that they worship. They believe that the Christian god is very real, and their definitions of goodness, morality, justice, and mercy have been contaminated to the point that they can read everything about God in the Bible and not see it as contradicting those qualities. It’s a sad and dangerous state to be in. It’s religious fundamentalism. And while we look at the perpetrators of events like 9/11 as warped and backward, they were merely the fundamentalists of a different religion. If Christians believe that it was just for God to command the slaughter of an entire nation of people, down to the very last infant, then we can only hope they never begin to believe that he commands something similar for today.
I wish people like this would realize that even if the Christian God is real, he created us with the ability to question and reason. Even some passages in the Bible talk about the value of questioning things. If they could only apply those questions to the Bible — a collection of books that they agree were written by men, many ages ago — then maybe they would begin to see the problems in the Bible for what they are. If there really is a God, and he really does possess the qualities of goodness, morality, justice, and mercy, then such an honest, objective search for truth could only be pleasing to him, even if it leads someone away from religion altogether.
Finding Truth 
Ark,
I don’t see a problem with you exposing false statements and “calling it like it is”, but I think a few of us would like it if you could stop the insults and rudeness. It doesn’t seem to be in line with the environment that Nate is trying to create here, and Nate has even requested a tone down – do it for him. 🙂
Howie
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Nate-
“Sure, we do all have biases that influence the way we see things, and it’s hard to overcome them. But I will add that these prophecies were problematic for me before I became an atheist. I was a believing Christian when I found out about the issues, and I was shocked by them. Even when I left Christianity, I remained a deist for a while. So my biases should have pointed me in the other direction back then.”
I’ve had similar experiences to what you describe here. I have been really challenged in my beliefs on a number of things that are difficult to understand in scripture. I referenced a couple of articles at Apologetics Press in my response to William that I respect as thoughtful and honest responses to those difficult areas. Those are examples of answers that I have found to be quite helpful. For some reason, I find them satisfactory and you don’t. I don’t know why that is, unfortunately.
All this to say, I guess, that it brings me back to my original response to William. A lot of people have taken the journey you’ve taken (Christian to atheist), a lot of people have made the opposite journey, and a lot of people have maintained their beliefs after examining the information. That’s why I made a point to mention that, despite all the good faith efforts that have gone into evaluating the truth, there must be something more going on than simply processing information. Maybe it’s just that one group or the other is delusional :).
Oh, and, I didn’t mean to suddenly switch my posting name. I don’t know how that happened. I’ll play the “I’m new here” card.
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Nate-
I’ll look at the day and times of Jesus death links you posted.
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@ Howie.
Fair enough. We’ll make a deal. And I am a man of my word. That you can believe.
I will be completely civil, and not cal out any Christian for the abuse their faith has perpetrated on humanity for the past two thousand or so years if every Christian who comments on this blog will
admit that there is no biblical or historical evidence to support the Resurrection and Yashua is not divine.
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Hey Uncle E,
My comment would be incredibly huge if I took the time to properly answer all the questions you are asking. Since this topic does get confused and muddied so many times, I would like to request that we keep it a little more focussed on the part I am confused about, because if we can’t resolve that then the rest doesn’t matter too much. I wouldn’t mind trying to respond to all of your questions after that – I have thoughts on all of them and I’m sure my thoughts will not at all satisfy your requirements of justification. I don’t in any way see my worldview as superior to others – I’m an agnostic about a lot of these big questions, so if I were being honest it’s kind of hard to make being on the fence about stuff into a superior worldview! 😉 But I simply am not following the things you are saying. I have a hunch that you just weren’t being very careful with your wording in the comment I criticized, but even that I am not really sure of.
And again, atheism is very easily defined as a lack of belief in Gods which is not really a worldview, naturalism is a worldview that can be defined in different ways and confuse things even more, so let’s stick to atheism for now since your original quote used that, and I know that I am an atheist (an implicit one, but that doesn’t really matter here), but I do not know if I am a naturalist.
Here goes again:
So when I first read this it sounded a lot to me like you were stating the following:
– If God does not exist then objective moral truths do not exist
which surprised me because in our exchange on Nate’s post of 2/14 you had said that you believe moral truths can exist without God – and you confirmed that again in your response to me here (which confused me even more).
So here is my next guess as to what you are saying based on your responses:
– If I believe that God does not exist then it would be illogical to claim that objective moral truths exist.
But even this doesn’t make sense given what you believe. You have stated that objective moral truths can exist without God. If that is the case then it would not be illogical for me to state that I believe that moral truths exist even if I doubt the existence of God.
To that I believe you would say that it is only possible for someone to be enlightened enough to know that moral truths exist if there is a God. If he doesn’t exist, then the moral truths can still be there, but it would just be impossible for us to realize it. It is this premise that I simply don’t believe is sound. I don’t understand why I need to believe that. You are free to believe that of course, but you haven’t convinced me why I should, especially since you agree that moral truths can exist without God.
You are probably familiar with the regress problem of epistemology: in justifying beliefs that we have, we need to keep resorting to other beliefs, which in turn keep needing to be justified by other beliefs. At some point you get to the “bottom” where certain things can only be justified by resort to the fact that they are self-evident. The building blocks of morality (e.g. do not harm conscious beings) could be considered as these justified foundational beliefs, given that we do feel so incredibly strongly about them and they simply seem to be true in a very basic way.
I also don’t know how to justify that objects outside of me truly exist and are not an illusion without resorting to the fact that it simply seems self-evident and if I were to question that then it would lead to what I see as an absurd existence. Now I am willing to admit that questioning the existence of objective moral truths doesn’t rise to this level of absurd making existence, so that is why I am a bit more agnostic about them. But I know that there are other atheists who do believe stronger than I do that they do exist and I do not believe that is illogical.
Whew! Anyway, sorry I started this exchange out with some wording that bothered you – I just get frustrated hearing this argument (or similar ones) from apologists over and over again. If I were to become a theist again it definitely would not be because of the moral argument, because the premises just don’t seem sound enough to me. Experiential arguments rate way higher than this one to me personally. If I were to be convinced that I can’t believe moral truths exist without a god, then I wouldn’t run to theism, I would instead become a moral nihilist, and I have a hunch most atheists are in the same boat. Do apologists want to run the risk of creating a bunch of moral nihilists when there are far better arguments to use for the existence of God than this one?
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Hi Howie, let me say at the start that I really appreciated this post (and all your others). We obviously don’t agree, but you have explained yourself well, been courteous and focused, all things I appreciate.
I agree that ethics are a difficult issue, and I have been forced by trying to be brief to over-simplify – and probably to be inaccurate as well. Let me see if i can explain myself (!!!):
1. I think ethics don’t depend on God to be true, same as logic and maths.
2. But if God doesn’t exist, we live in a naturalist, probably physicalist universe, and we have arrived at our thought patterns and culture via natural selection. This will likely lead to different outcomes in different cultures, and they will be outcomes that increase the survival chances of people who will pass on their genes to children.
3. You would expect to get what we in fact see in animals – some altruistic behaviour towards other members of the gene pool, sometimes, but more competitive behaviour towards competitors (which may include some in the gene pool), sometimes quite predatory and destructive behaviour to defend one’s ability to pass on genes.
4. So on the naturalistic assumption, you’d expect ethics to develop to justify that sort of behaviour, and in fact we see social sanctions working that way in some societies at some times.
5. So, granted a reality something like that, how does a naturalist justify a quite different and “higher” ethic than that, as most do, including Nate? In my experience they appeal to notions that don’t fit the logical outcomes of their naturalistic beliefs, which we can all be thankful for. But I cannot see how they can say those conclusions are objectively true.
6. I believe that they actually “know” deep down that some things are indeed right and others wrong, even if they/we don’t always know precisely. But their worldview doesn’t give them any reason to believe they know deep down, or to trust that feeling.
7. I think this situation does indeed point to God, because God can explain this – not as the source of the ethics (I have already said they are just true like logic and maths are true) but as the creator who built a universe where these truths (ethics, maths & logic) can be expressed and make sense, who created us (via evolution) so we have a capacity to know these things deep down, and has revealed truth to us so we can feel sure that in the end, justice and truth will prevail.
8. So my argument is not that we need God for ethics ontologically, but epistemologically.
I hope that explains how I see things. I agree with you that this is a two-edged argument for God, because it can push someone in the “wrong” direction. But it is only one of a whole accumulation of arguments that (IMO) point to God, and a moral nihilist may be more open to the Spirit of God than a person who doesn’t face up to these things.
Thanks again, I really appreciate the question, and I’m glad you persisted with it.
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”8. So my argument is not that we need God for ethics ontologically, but epistemologically.”
Then your god is a blathering idiot, simply because the only tangible ‘footprint’ he has left is the bible, which is nothing more than a collection of fallacious diatribe.
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Nate: Re: your 3/31 reply.
The Bible uses the word “torment” and speaks of people in hell being in torment, not torture. It is a mischaracterization to describe God as an abusive parent that tortures people. That’s not what it says and not what it means. I’ve dealt with this.
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torment:
I’m afraid I don’t see a huge difference.
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@ Humblesmith
”The Bible uses the word “torment” and speaks of people in hell being in torment, not torture. It is a mischaracterization to describe God as an abusive parent that tortures people. That’s not what it says and not what it means. I’ve dealt with this.”
Nate is correct. The difference is marginal. It’s like forcing someone to listen to Justin Bieber music for the rest of their life.
Of course your god is an abusive parent you utter twit. Abraham was the first one to demonstrate faith in this god and what did he do? “Hey, Abe, bring your kid, let’s have a barbeque.”
And what about Moses? After all that time in the desert and he turns around and says, ”Hey.Mo. Guess what, you’re not getting in!”
And then what did he tell Joshua? “You know what , Josh, I’m utterly knackered, do me a favour, you go into Canaan and annihilate ’em all for me will you?”
Now imagine how they felt having to slaughter and butcher everything from battle hardened soldiers to tiny innocent babes to pregnant woman to old people.
Oh yes, your god is a great guy all right. And not the monstrous deity we have all come to love..sorry I mean despise.
Nate has more humility in his pinky than you could hope to acquire in several lifetimes.
But you,sir, are a sanctimonious, apologetic moron.
Silly Person.
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A drug addict is in torment; a terrorist victim can be tortured. People can be tormented by their own choices. They are tortured by others. Big difference.
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“The doors of hell are locked from the inside.”
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
I wonder, though, humblesmith, if your answers might be a little more explanatory and not so curt. Maybe, then, they would have a better chance of being taken more seriously? If left to our own devices, none of us would choose God – we would all be arguing the side that Nate and Arkenaten are arguing. I think I’m learning more compassion and listening, rather than arguing and debating, might be more useful 🙂 It is foolishness, after all (1 Cor 1:18).
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tormentor:
Would this definition not fit God, the creator of Hell? No one goes to Hell because they want to, but because God sends them there. Luke 16 is a good reference.
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Interesting thought, Nate
If the God of scripture exists, as he is represented throughout the scripture, would you want to be in heaven with him? Or, would you distrust him enough that you would rather be separated from him?
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Luke 16 – are you referencing the rich man and Lazarus? I’ll assume you are. Isn’t it interesting in the parable that, in all the back and forth, not once does the rich man ask to get out. He asks Lazarus to come down, but he does not ask to be brought up.
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“No one goes to Hell because they want to, but because God sends them there. Luke 16 is a good reference.”
Hi Nate. You know I don’t believe in the sort of hell being discussed here. But I think your innate (hey, that was an unintentional pun!) decency is obscuring the fact that many people profess to prefer to go to hell than be in heaven with God. And I think we should remember that Luke 16 was a parable about wealth inequality, and heaven/hell are just the window dressing. We should be wary of drawing hellish conclusions from it – does anyone believe people in heaven and hell will be conversing?
These comments aren’t intended to oppose or support any argument, they are just side points. Best wishes.
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Unklee the mediator.Oh Spiffing! Are you getting a conscience old boy, or merely tacitly playing both sides of the field until you see which way to jump?
When the chips are down or to use a Texas Hold ’em metaphor, when all of us around this table go ‘All in” Unklee , are you going to side with the likes of Nate, Marcus and I or are you going to show your true colours and throw in with the Humblesmiths of the world?
The question of course, is rhetorical and this is why I despise hypocrites.
You are as sanctimonious as your christian ‘colleague’.
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Obviously, I can’t speak for everyone, but for me, I’d much rather be in Heaven than Hell. If God exists, I want to know, and I want to have a relationship with him. I think that when people claim to prefer Hell to Heaven, they’re exaggerating a bit. It’s mostly something they say because they don’t believe in either, and they find the Bible’s portrayal of God to be pretty awful.
If the choices were between going to Heaven with the Christian God or having an eternity apart from him that isn’t filled with pain — maybe something like the idea of limbo, Hades, or purgatory, then maybe more people would prefer that to Heaven. But when the choices are between Heaven and Hell as the Bible portrays them, I don’t know of anyone who would seriously choose the latter.
The common argument that those who go to Hell are only getting what they ask for is absurd and a little insulting — though I realize most of the people who make the argument aren’t trying to be either of those things. It fails to recognize that many of us who reject religion truly don’t do so out of a sense of rebellion. For instance, I imagine everyone reading this no longer believes in Santa Claus. Is that because you’re rebelling against Santa Claus? If a gun-wielding maniac told you he’d blow your brains out unless you believed in Santa Claus, you might claim to believe in him, but could you really make yourself? We usually believe things because we’re convinced of them, not because we choose them. And that’s why the contention that people choose Hell is simply not true. Many of them (myself included) simply don’t believe in it.
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Nate,
This is so well put! I couldn’t agree more. If there is a God that represents all good things then I want to know that it exists, have a relationship with it (if that is possible) and be in it’s presence.
If there is a hell like the one I believe the bible describes I most certainly do not want to be there. I simply have a very hard time believing that such a place exists. It reads to me like the creation of human minds.
While theists rightly are bothered when atheists make analogies of belief in God to Santa Claus, I’d like to just clarify for them that you are simply demonstrating with a very good example that it is clearly possible for people to express doubts about the existence of certain beings without rebellion being the motive. We simply are not convinced these beings exist.
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Uncle E, I think I understand your stance, and you are right I don’t agree. I’ll give another try at a response which may get nowhere, but maybe something will get through.
First we agree that moral truths could possibly exist without the existence of a God. I wonder if we agree that we both have foundational beliefs. I think you must have some. I think some of them might be in the list you have outlined, or if we broke those down a little further we would find some. Or are you able to justify every belief you have infinitely? Or circularly? This is off topic somewhat, so feel free to ignore, but I think it does relate in an important way.
I don’t understand why this is a true statement: “If there are no gods then naturalism is true”. If the definition of naturalism is “lack of belief in gods” then it’s just semantics and means exactly the same thing. But if it means that the only thing that could exist in the universe are mass, energy and the natural laws which operate on these things, then I don’t see why atheism necessitates naturalism. Why can’t there exist things beyond natural laws which our human minds are not capable of understanding? What is it that proves that gods have to exist for these kind of “transcendental” things to exist? I’m not saying that I know that these kind of things do exist, I am just saying that I do not know how to rule out the possibility that they do exist in much the same way that I do not know how to rule out the possibility that God exists. The explanation for the existence of moral truths could fall in this same category.
I don’t believe that you have rock solid proof that God exists, but that doesn’t mean that I would say that you cannot logically claim to believe that. In the same way I don’t see why the fact that atheists may not have rock solid proof that objective moral truths exist means that atheists cannot logically claim to believe that. It is a belief just like yours. Their reasons for this could be exactly as you describe – because it just seems so self-evident “deep down”.
Something isn’t quite right with this statement. You say they know deep down. That is the only reason needed for believing they know deep down. I think what you mean is that they have no way of describing why they know this. But some do – and their answer is that moral truths exist and as rational conscious beings they have reached a point of evolutionary advancement that they are becoming aware of these moral truths which exist. Adding God to the mix isn’t necessary to claim this.
Also, I know it won’t surprise you, but I don’t see why the situation you describe can only be explained by believing in God. Actually I believe a very reasonable case could be made for quite the opposite. The fact that humans have been so incredibly screwed up in both understanding as well as implementing things related to morality could actually point to there not being gods. Not a rock solid proof of course, but maybe a more reasonable choice of the 2 conclusions. Yes, I know we disagree for sure on this.
“A person who doesn’t face up to these things”!! So are you saying we all really know that you are right Uncle E, but won’t admit it! 🙂 Uncle E, here is an honest statement – about 18 years ago when I decided I no longer had enough reasons to claim I believed in God I thought even further than you did – I believed that there was no way that there could be objective morality without gods, and so I very sadly and begrudgingly became a moral nihilist. As I have read and studied up on this topic in the past couple of years I have come to realize that I was a bit too hasty in making this conclusion. If you could prove to me that the conclusion is true then sign me up.
Now it is I who have asked too many questions, and I had a harder time staying focussed this time. If you feel responses might be instructional I am all ears.
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UnkleE,
You wrote a while back,
“Why are human beings worth more than dogs if atheism is true?
I believe that even if atheism is true, human beings are considered more valuable than dogs because as human we think we are more important than dogs. You and I are human beings and like other social mammals, we tend to herd together and prefer the interaction of our own kind to other species. Through our drive to survive as a species we put ourselves on the top of the pile and act accordingly. I’d say many insects are far more successful at surviving on a micro scale than us humans, but to think an insect is more valuable than a human is not something we as humans would like to accept I don’t think.
That being said, some human beings who live with a lot of animals might actually value their animals over most, if not all other human beings that they know. And conversely, certain dogs brought up in an environment with only one or a family of human beings might be conditioned to become protective and value those humans over their own canine kind 🙂
You also asked,
“Why should I care about another nation (be it Canaanites or Iraqis) if there is no objective morality?”
We should care because even if there is no objective morality, our collective morality as a species still exists. As our world becomes more connected, a global culture has been developing throughout history that views humanity on a whole as valuable, not only some of its grouped members.
We should care because it is more effective for humanity to be valued as a whole, mostly gone of the days of “tribes” in the western world. Now we have gangs, hoods. And people are trying to break them down so they can integrate into a society as a whole. It is also more aligned to current scientific understanding I would also add, since there doesn’t seem to be too much variation between different ethnicities on a genetic level.
Therefore, if my tribe is valuable, then the people who make up the other tribe/gang/club/hood/party/government is just as valuable in a genetic sense.
It’s our own preferences of power and bias that get in the way and cause distinctions.
Just wanted to address those two points,
Kind regards
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Then again, if God exists then as an Absolute He Himself would decide who is truly valuable and who is not out of His creation. And I’d imagine people would be weighed on their actions and beliefs, based on my understanding of the Bible.
So yes, effectiveness from an evolutionary perspective and value from a Christian perspective are very different I think.
One focuses on the effectiveness to survive and produce as a species,
while the other is focuses on the value of believing and effectively following Christs teachings, and allowing yourself to be filled and guided by God.
Two very different perspectives and goals.
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Also, even if value is only based on opinion, it still has a purpose.
– Say a puppy was introduced to a family. As the puppy grew up it developed affection for that family. The puppy, when it got older, then began to protect that family by yapping at the other dogs and strange people who walked past their house. Now how is this puppy’s preference to this particular family objective? Does this make this family more special than the other family across the road?
Now doesn’t it seem then that who we value is not objectively validated, but instead based on the attachments we develop with those we grow up with?
Do we really objectively achieve this value base? Or is this value lens, the one we look at the world through, developed in the memories and affections we shared while we were young. The memoires and affections we shared with those who were in our school, our community, our families, and our church.
How are any of us any more or less conditioned by those we grew up around than that small puppy that was introduced to the family that took care of it? Our loyality is conditioned into us, and we bite back at “strangers” who we feel threaten those we value.
There doesn’t seem to be any objective way we value anyway. This is why science strives to be value free to my understanding. When it comes to loyalty and conflict we just work off our bias. The key is education.
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“Why do people need to defend God and his actions? why does God need apologetics?”
I nicked the above quote from Portal001 off Humblesmith’s blog.
Apologies for using it and carting it over here.
This quote/question is at the root of everything concerning the christian god and the idiots that follow the religion they created to worship it.
A god has no need for its creation to speak on its behalf anymore that it should need its creation to carry out its deeds, good or otherwise.
Portal001 has struck at the core of the utter crap that is god belief.
The sooner people with intelligence begin to recognize this the sooner we will develop as a species that is ‘hell-bent’ on developing our full human potential instead of pandering to mentally disturbed individuals that peddle supernatural nonsense inculcating our children and threatening them with damnation if they do not believe.
Arguing with their ilk is fruitless. It really is time for cards to be laid on the table.
If none of us here would truly countenance Creationist nonsense espoused by idiots such as Ray Comfort or Ken Ham, then why is any leeway given to ‘ordinary’ evangelists and even their more liberal pick n’ mix. Brethren?
For them to laugh derisively at the nonsense of folk believing the notion that Dinosaurs coexisted with human beings but then fully accept the notion of a Virgin Birth, that a man could walk on water or raise the dead..including himself, that this same individual should be regarded as a god, smacks of the utmost profound hypocrisy.
That such individuals are given the time to espouse their erudite yet insidious nonsense when a person like Ray Comfort would likely be merely laughed at at best, but condemned outright, especially if he had desires on educating our children, including, I might ad, those of our more ‘liberal’ christian ‘friends’ is difficult to fathom.
Liberal, Fundamentalist. They are all, at the core, the same,and should be treated with equal contempt.
After 2000 plus years the religious have had their time to produce the goods over their supernatural claims about a god, and so far they have delivered nothing but confusion, lies, and fear.
Now it is time for commonsense and honesty to step up to the plate. The world has had enough of religious liars.
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Hey Ark,
Hope things are well 🙂
I read your post above, I think I understand what your saying.
One of the things you wrote was,
“The world has had enough of religious liars”
My understanding is that lying requires intent. Many, who I assume are genuine believers, (including those who visit this blog) I don’t think are sharing their faith out of any sort of maliciousness. I believe they are sharing those things because they believe they are called to do so, that their faith requires them to do so.
Religion seems to me to be so much more than just black and white dichotomies. I find human beings to be very complicated, even at the best of times. People can do both compassionate things and cruel things whatever their beliefs are.
I really like Nates blog because it creates a respectful space where people of different positions, perspectives and faiths from all over the world can come and reason together. If there is any understanding and progress to be made between such different perspectives, I personally believe it can only be achieved through respectful discourse.
I still think people, no matter what they believe, should be given a chance to share what’s important to them. I still believe this people should be allowed to do this without being dismissed. Putting down unwanted or minority voices seems to me as being counterproductive. Furthermore, when censorship occurs it stifles conversation and understanding, creating more alienation and misunderstanding.
How would this be any better than a church not letting atheists share their thoughts?
An open forum is what progressive communities thrive on.
It’s only through willingness for people to read and consider one another’s perspectives that understanding and common ground can be established. Once this begins, and I believe it has begun on this blog, people can develop connections and reason together with a genuine value of the other. This value can be achieved without people necessarily agreeing with everything other people believe.
I personally believe this approach is far more effective on a forum. Those are my thoughts anyway, but I’ve still got a lot to learn. Actually, I always will still have a lot to learn.
Respectfully, Ryan
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