John Zande’s post is a brilliant work of satire that shows the problems of trying to match the state of our universe to the existence of an omni-benevolent god. Definitely worth a read.
If we found a bomb concealed in a children’s kindergarten, primed and set to detonate when it would wreak the greatest possible carnage, we would reasonably assume that someone vicious and vile – someone evil – had designed the device and had purposefully put it there maximise suffering. How much more reasonable must it be for the impartial observer to then attribute the world as we know it to a vicious and vile, non-contingent, omnipresent, omnipotent, omnimalevolentdesigner? Is this not, after all, the most likely explanation for the world before us?
Who else but a perfectly malevolent being would arrange for the enormous suffering present and guaranteed in our perilously thin, blisteringly violent biosphere? Think of the pain and destruction wrought by earthquakes, floods, cyclones, tornadoes, droughts, famines and disease. Would a benevolent designer have made provision for…
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Finding Truth 
bowls*
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I do see where your coming from though. And there are sects that can be oppressive.
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But then again,
I guess since if people assert that there is no distinction between human beings to other animals,
then any behaviour and emotion we exhibit, whether it be empathy, kindness, sharing and compassion would still be considered animal behaviour, but these behaviours would be unique to our species.
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not that empathy, teamwork or sharing is unique to humanity, but the way in which we express these things is unique.
If you believe in God, these attributes are unique in other ways as well.
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Ryan, in comment you made to Black ops you said it boiled down to faith. And sorry to sound like a broken record, but where did that faith originate?
You might say hope in god or something similar, but that wouldn’t be so. It would be in the source that told you that you should hope in a god or in salvation. That source is always man. Whether they’re your parents, friends, the men who translated the bible, the men who compiled the bible, or the men who wrote the books of the bible and claimed they were speaking for god.
Once I realized that, and after seeing many of the problems in the bible, it all became clear that a faith in the christian god only comes in on the back of one’s faith in men first. It’s a house of cards. You must first have faith in those men in order to have a faith in the god they told you about.
and to your questions, i only will say that there are not only two choices: 1) god of the bible and 2) no god at all. There are an infinite number of other choices – a fact that also makes the problems in the bible harder to dismiss with mere faith – because “faith” can answer anything in such a way.
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Hi William,
I think faith is something that will always involve trust, and that’s true whatever we place our faith.
Religions as movements have a lot of benefits, they can bring people together, create community.
And motivate people to look after and include people they may wouldn’t necessarily consider. Like the homeless, the sick, the dying.
However, certain religious movements can also exclude people and motivate people to do harmful things. Treating other people groups as “others”.
I know families who have opened up their houses, beyond their immediate friends or family. And I believe they are motivated to do this through faith. As a consequence they have created a warm household, a valuable space that people in youth group appreciated over the years growing up, where people can go to and find acceptance. We always felt welcome.
I know I have repeated this point, but a faith where people are not only valued for their use, but instead simply valued because they are made in the image of God, and that Jesus died for them, that God is in control. I believe such a faith is brilliant.
Starting from that foundation, people can learn more about others without locking up their doors in fear.
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Ryan, I certainly agree that religion has some merits. I can see where a certain type of faith in certain types of religions are very selfless and giving; perhaps even very noble.
But my point is that faith doesn’t prove anything as fact – as I know you know. I was trying to point out that trust and having faith in people is all we really do… unless of course god himself comes down and speaks to us directly.
But this indirect book, which contains many (apparent) contradictions and errors, which is highly contested by those who claim to believe in its divine origins, was penned by man, assembled by man, and delivered by man – none of it by god; hence it is not a direct revelation.
While it may lead people to believe in god and jesus, the way some believe in any of the world’s other deities, that belief only come from a faith in man, not in god. You believe what the men have told you, and you have faith that they speak fact.
Since god has literally shared nothing with you, how could your faith be in him? Everything you know about god was given to you by man.
So, I am saying that while people believe in god, their faith is only in man.
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I personally believe in God and also believe that He has done very good and nice things for me — things that could not necessarily be explained by confirmation bias because, in many cases, they were rather unusual and difficult to explain by ordinary means (outside the standard deviation) and some were unexpected.
Having said that, however, even not being an atheist, agnostic or deist, I recognize that the ONLY proof of God is faith, and according to Scripture, faith is a gift of God — so if you don’t believe in God, it’s because He’s decided that He isn’t going to allow you to. Which I find all so very odd and does nothing to diminish my suspicion that it’s pretty much about drama.
As for the Bible, well, especially the New Testament, and Jesus being the savior, I have some questions. The great heartburn I have is that apparently the Catholic Church was responsible for the whole thing, which does not inspire a lot of confidence. And then, there seems to be an indication that the New Testament was based on oral stories and fables which some of those in authority in the RC declared should be written down and then the Church would be the final arbiter of what was published and what was not. There are uncomfortable similarities to Mythra (not Mothra, who battled Godzilla) — stories eerily like the story of Jesus. Then there is history and there doesn’t seem to be much written valid historical record of Jesus, unless you count the stories which were created and then counted to support the stories which were about him as self-referent, effectively bootstrapping the whole thing.
While the New Testament (and who wants the baggage of the Jewish religion corrupted by their little stay in Babylon and thoroughly screwed up by the Pharisees) has much to recommend it as wisdom literature which can certainly be used a life guide (with some adaptations), one wonders at some of the pronouncements which ring hollow in today’s world (which have been discussed here). Was there an Apostle Paul? If there were, was he really taught personally by Jesus in the Arabian desert? If that were true, are we looking for the fourth coming of Jesus (so many forget that after the resurrection he went up to the Father to be accepted and had his second coming already)?
Yes, yes, I know about the prophecies of Daniel, and even if you say they were written later, it’s tough to explain away certain aspects of them which could not be known even centuries later when it might have been written.
In a world where we can’t even really agree with happened in 1963 in Houston, Texas, the library and the grassy knoll, how can we be all that certain what happened nearly 2,000 years ago, particularly since there are absolutely no original source documents available (the only thing available are copies of copies of documents and then the Dead(ly) Sea Scrolls, admittedly from heretics way beyond two standard deviations from the norm)? And what about some of the works like the Gospel of Thomas which is absolutely daft?
And then the Catholics and the Protestants can’t even agree on the Ten Commandments, particularly about bowing down to graven images (we’ve had this discussion before).
The questions lead us back to one conclusion: It’s all based on faith. The problem is, where did the faith come from? For many in the extreme cults (like the ones where the cultmeister is now serving a prison term as a convicted felon for Income Tax evasion), the answer is that the cult leader defines what faith is and from there on, having accepted that, you have to have faith that everything he says is true and have the faith that whoever disagrees with him is wrong — with absolutely no proof at all, but the hapless borderline personality types following the narcissist, sociopath, psychopath, insane lying false prophet convicted felon all must accept his absolute rulership no matter how psychotic his ramblings might be, or else loose their salvation. Oh, yeah, and in addition to be his narcissistic source, be sure to give him plenty of money for his luxury fund for no particularly good reason except he wants to live the good life without doing much to earn it.
It’s no wonder that with these sorts of questions, bracketed by the religious cons, that people have adopted skepticism. It’s rational to abide by Dr. Phil’s “Life Code” to avoid the BAITERS. People are chaotic and irrational. There’s not much reason to have faith in some unqualified random stranger.
It occurs to me that at some point, faith must have some confirmation. Without it, faith is nothing more than empty hope. Here’s the deal: Logic without observation isn’t science — it’s just a mental exercise divorced from the real world (if you believe in such things as a real world). A pope, priest, cultmeister must have some evidence of things not seen beyond just an empty belief.
I will leave you with this to ponder.
At the age of 17 (and having a fairly strong background in science), a highly religious widow lady encouraged me to attend a seminar given with a professor looking bearded guy. He had about 15 attendees. His big thing was that the earth was hollow and that the people that lived there came out of middle earth through the North Pole in their flying saucers. He “proved” the earth did not have a molten core with the mind exercise of posing what would happen if you put a wooden box over a campfire (at the time, I was thinking of volcanoes). At the end, I was headed for the door. He stood directly in my way. “What did you think?” he queried. After a pregnant pause I said, “interesting” and bolted around him to the door to escape. I take it the rest of the nim nulls believed his little fantasy. Of course, a decade or two later I encountered a paperbook at K-Mart that told the tales of a man who visited people on other planets in our solar system and gave their characteristics of how the people of Jupiter were different from the people of Venus.
Give me a break.
The Reader’s Digest was correct: If you leave your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of trash into it.
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@Mikey — Wow! Paul was taught by Jesus in the Arabian desert? That’s a new one on me. Where in the world did that come from? Oh wait. Let me guess …
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Galations 1:12-17
Did you guess correctly, Nan?
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Mikey — The scriptures in Galatians say that Paul “went away at once into Arabia” (no mention of desert) — nothing indicates he was “personally taught” by JC.
While he speaks of a “revelation” of JC, in truth (and based on the scriptures), all he experienced was a blinding light and a phantom voice. Further, all the “voice” instructed him to do was to continue on to Damascus.
Not only that, this whole experience was told by the writer of Acts. Paul himself only comments that he “received a revelation” (Galatians 1:12) and in Corinthians 15:8, he writes that “he appeared to me.” I’ve always wondered why he didn’t go into more detail — especially since he built a religion around the event..
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Well, you know, writing with quill pen on lamb skin (using India Ink?) or even papyrus was slow going. Going into unnecessary detail would have given him eye strain.
Paul was always trying in his epistles (if he wrote them) to establish his authority as one who knew Jesus and as an Apostle — no small feat since he murdered Christians prior to his “conversion”.
There is some skepticism, since Paul never mentioned the virgin birth. You’d think Jesus would have told him. It’s as though he didn’t know. Of course, the “For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ” is claimed by many cultists (who we find out later are less than honorable). It isn’t clear whether Paul was among the charlatans or just gave them a ready made excuse for claiming their own “authority”.
I do understand that by explicitly narrowly accepting only the words and phrases of Galations 1, you could use the passage to shoot down the “personally taught” part of Paul’s epistles, but the hubris speaks for itself, since he claims the authority of apostleship to establish that he speaks for Christ, but if you take the tone of his epistles, there is much less doubt.
Was it necessary for him to create documentation to establish his credibility? That would be arguable. It doesn’t usually come up, but Paul spent over a decade (some say 18 years) before he went on his first evangelistic tour to evangelize the Gentiles (and irritate the Jews — among those irritated, apparently was Peter).
The real question about all this is whether we are quibbling about what the Omega 13 does aboard the Protector in Galaxy Quest or not (trying to settle a squabble about fantasy constructs is a favorite pastime among some).
I am only trying to be helpful (as always), but you seem to have evaded answering my question (or if you did, have done it obliquely).
Snarky answers to sarcastic questions — it’s hard to know who to root for.
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Answer to your question: No, I didn’t “guess” Galatians because I was being sarcastic when I wrote “let me guess …”. 😉
My more detailed response was not really directed so much at you as it was to those (few) readers of this blog that take “the word” literally.
BTW, I really like reading your comments.
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Nan, I will add you to my list of friends. That makes two. One of them is my cat.
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I’m honored.
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And I’m not so sure about my cat….
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I saw Noah yesterday. He was seriously in need of counseling with a mental health professional. The ones left at the end could have all used family counseling.
It did bring up interesting perspectives for the sake of this blog entry: Often people either blame God or make fun of Him because He seems to be Omnimalevalent, but seem to completely forget and ignore the problems they cause.
For example, Jon Stewart on the Daily Show a couple or so years back told us that 30% of the air pollution in San Francisco came from China. It was verified by other news reports. Science is able to ascertain such things. Did we cause global warming? Here’s a thought:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/not-hot-facts-global-warming-150900216.html
Nevertheless, it’s not clear that we can blame most forest fires on God. The Roman Catholic Church was responsible for the Inquisition and, in fact, pretty much the Dark Ages until the earth was moved magically from being the center of the universe. Yes, kill off the cats because they are familiars to witches — not to worry about the plague carried by rats that would have been killed by the cats. Clear cut rain forests and watch the ground go hard pan and the oxygen in the atmosphere diminish (one tree provides, on average, enough oxygen for 4 people).
The movie Noah only touched briefly on the environmental damage done by humans. It would have been fascinating to have gotten more (industrial technology? say what?). But then, if it happened, it certainly didn’t happen that way (racial memory time here).
So is it true? Mankind does a lot more malevolent damage than the Creator ever thought of?
Science surveys say that most people aren’t qualified to answer.
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Yet another science survey:
http://news.yahoo.com/poll-big-bang-big-most-americans-074034813.html
I personally believe in the Big Bank Theory: Very long ago, there was this one huge megabank which then disbursed into a bunch of smaller banks and ended up with the banking system we have today.
I think the Rothschilds were responsible.
Some people say: Beware the Federal Reserve!
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No one’s claiming man is perfect, so while it may be unfortunate, it is not unbelievable when people do bad things or make mistakes.
If god is perfect, then it should be a surprise if he made mistakes, or when he has done bad things, or when he fails/neglects to help people in dire need – especially when we are led to believe that he expects us and will judge us on how well we avoided mistakes, avoided doing bad things and how well we tried to help those around us.
Is there a god? perhaps, but it sure isn’t the god of the bible.
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Relevant: http://adversusapologetica.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/the-evil-god-challenge-applied-to-the-resurrection-of-jesus/
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