In our last post on this subject, I explained that I’d been challenged by a skeptical friend to describe three of the biggest difficulties the Christian tradition faces and then explain the process I go through to reconcile those problems.  If Christianity is a tenable worldview, then it must rationally overcome the seeming intellectual problems within its teachings.  DaGoodS was interested in what process I use to determine the rationality of this belief, and so in the next few days I’ll be demonstrating my method by addressing three difficult teachings about Christianity, and I’ll describe the process that I have used to square these “difficult” issues with reality.

The first issue that I’ll be adressing is what I’ve termed “The Moral Incongruities of God.”  One of the core tenets of the Chrisitan faith is God’s infinite goodness, but passionate atheist Richard Dawkins points out that on reading of the Old Testament, an unbaised observer would not get the impression that God is all that good at all.  In the above video, Dawkins points out God’s instruction to kill those who would commit adultery or those who worship false gods.  But what about more explicit examples of God’s actual killing of people He was displeased with? Tons of examples pop to mind.  For example, In 2 Kings 2, Elisha curses children for picking on his bald head, and God sends two bears out of the woods to kill all 42 of them.  It is hard to imagine that a good God would find it expedient to kill children whose only crime was poking a little fun at a man with no hair!  In I Samuel 15, God, through the prophet Samuel, instructs Saul to utterly annihilate the Amelikite people, wiping out even the women, children, and imfants.  How could a good God sponsor infanticide? The skeptical Steve Wells claims that the Bible records God’s killings of at least 33,000,000 people, and although he might have fudged the numbers a bit, as I read the Old Testament I am staggered by the number of people that God sees fit to eliminate through floods, famines, and bloodshed.

Many Christians seems to write off these problems by saying, “That’s the God of the Old Testament, now that Jesus has come we have the ability to see that God is indeed loving and ultimately good!”  But that seems insufficient.  According to Scripture, God is immutable, or unchanging, so why should we suddenly see a new side of him with the incarnation of Jesus?  Let’s not forget that even after this life, Christianity’s God sends people who choose not to follow Him to everlasting punishment in Hell.  How is that ultimately good or loving?  Many atheists have stated this case even more passionately than I have, and many Christians stare a bit dumbfoundedly when presented with this “badness” of God.

So, it stands to reason that the God presented in the Bible simply cannot exist, right?  If God were utlimately good, and he were real, he would provide solutions to Israel’s Old Testament problems that did not involve deaths of innocents or pointless child killings by she-bears.  A good God could have found another way, and it seems clear that the writers of the Biblical narratives were simply looking to justify their own genocide by constructing a God that told them to do so.

So, let’s take a look at the atheist’s line of reasoning regarding the absurdity of God’s goodness.  We’ll examine a syllogism representing this argument:

1.If the God of the Bible exists, He must, by definition, be morally perfect.
2.A morally perfect being would not cause the death of innocent people.
3.The Bible records God’s causing the deaths of innocent people.
4.Therefore, the God of the Bible does not exist.

I think, however, that this syllogism is fatally flawed; let’s take apart each premise and see if they hold up to scrutiny.

1.If the God of the Bible exists, He must, by definition, be morally perfect.
This is a point on which I and most atheists who have studied the Bible would agree.   Over and over, the Bible paints the picture of a Lord who should be considered righteous, without moral flaw.  The writers of the Bible want us to believe that the God of the Bible is worthy of worship because He is completely good.

2.A morally perfect being would not cause the deaths of innocent people.
Here is where my agreement with the atheist ends.  On its face, this premise sounds good, but if we can only imagine one good instance in which it would be morally justified to cause the death an innocent person, we must reject this absolute statement.  This happens all of the time in our culture.  When someone is terribly injured in a car accident, but can be kept alive by virtue of machines while being brain dead, we often pull the plug so that this life can end.  It doesn’t matter whether this person was themselves driving the vehicle or not.  As a matter of fact, they may be the victim of someone else’s negligence.  Though they are innocent of any wrongdoing, the most merciful and respectful thing that we can do for them is allow them to die.  It is possible then, that a morally perfect being would in fact be authorized to cause the death of an innocent person without sacrificing his moral perfection.

Note that I am assuming that many people whom God causes to die in the Old Testament narrative are in fact innocents.  I should point out, though, that on the Christian worldview, there are no truly “innocent” people. This assumption, however, is not necessary to point out the fallibility of the argument we are examining.  As I’ve said, we only need to point out a possible situation in which the premise might not be true to invalidate that premise as an absolute statement, which by itself, destroys the conclusion that the claim rests upon.

3.The Bible records God’s causing the deaths of innocent people.
I am certain that we cannot validate or invalidate this point.  Certainly, the Bible records God’s causing of death, but we are simply in no position to judge who was innocent and who was not.  Without God’s vantage point, we have no ability to determine the innocence or guilt of the unnamed people whose deaths He authorizes.  So this statement may be entirely, if not at least partially, untrue  As I’ve pointed out, these are absolute statements, and if an absolute statement is even partially in error, that statement is invalidated.

4.Therefore, the God of the Bible does not exist.
I think that, even if all the premises presented here were true, this last premise would be a bit of a leap.  However, since I’ve demonstrated the insufficency of each of these claims, it becomes clear that the objections to God’s causing innocent deaths in the Bible are more emotional objections than rational ones.  While I’ll note that I’ve not necessarily established that God exists through this line of reasoning, I’ve definitely demonstrated the weakness of this argument.  Since we cannot accept this argument as a legitimate one, it becomes much more likely that the God of Bible does indeed exist, even though we may have a hard time understanding why He does what He does.

I hope that this has been an adequate demonstration of the method that I utilize to examine the claims of theism and atheism, and I am sure that DaGoodS will have a lot to say about my approach and my argument, but for now we’ll leave it at that and allow the discussion to begin!