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!

Related Articles:

The Essentiality of God’s Goodness

What Do I Mean by Good?

I know that I’d promised DagoodS a lively discussion about God’s incongruities, but something else has come up that I feel I should address.

I received word that a young man with whom I have been having an ongoing conversation regarding Christianity has recently committed suicide.  This young man was a passionate and committed atheist, and he and I sparred over many Christian teachings, from the existence of God to the deity of Christ.  I’m still gathering information about the whole thing, but according to the reports that I’ve heard, this young man took his life on December 26th.

What I won’t do.   I refuse to resort to a tactic that so many of us would utilize in our evangelism; this man’s death does not defeat atheist claims or reinforce Christian claims. There was more going on in this man’s life than an abandonment of God, and although this factor may have made him unhappy, the reality is probably more complicated than his worldview.  Many atheists live long and seemingly happy lives, and I am not going to jump on the opportunity as a way to anecdotally prove that the atheist worldview is futile and its only logical outworking is suicide.  At an emotional time like this, those words would just plain oppose the Christian Gospel.

Christians commit suicide all the time as well, and for me to suggest that this means that the Christian worldview is false is equally illogical.

What I will do.  I will suggest to you that each of us can experience true and satisfying happiness in the person of Jesus Christ.  No one is obligated to die this way; there is no level of unhappiness that the light of Christ cannot dispel.  Perhaps you are entertaining thoughts of suicide.  Let’s lay aside all the intellectual arguments for a moment.  I’ve dealt with suicidal thoughts and mind-shattering bitterness, and I can tell you that the only lasting peace that I have found lies within a relationship with the God of the universe through His son Jesus Christ.  While this is not an argument for God’s existence, to me this is how I have experienced God in my own life, and I have witnessed no sufficient argument to lead me to conclude that I shouldn’t trust my experience.

God is waiting to be experienced, and I am confident that if you will honestly and earnestly cry out to Him, He will delvier you from whatever oppression you are being placed under.

DaGoodS has recently challenged me to write a post about some of the difficulties that Christian worldview faces.  If Christianity is valid, the arguments for it must make it more probably true than the arguments against it.  DaGoodS rightly claims that most Christians operate on the assumption that information contrary to the Christian Gospel is patently false, and therefore doesn’t deserve careful scrutiny.  When many of us are presented with the “problems” of Christianity, we stubbornly refuse to give them a hearing and think through their implications.

From what I have read over at his blog, DaGoodS was raised as a Christian but later “deconverted” after exploring the philosophical and scientific foundations of the Christian faith.  He beleives that the evidence for non-theism is stronger than the evidence for Christian theism, and he claims that he has “never had a Christian provide me with a method for objective determination of many claims–a method that would even provide rejection of those claims.”  I’m not sure exactly what he means by this statement, but I conclude that he thinks Christianity balks at any result of the Scientific Method that seems to be contrary to the claims made in the Scripture.

So, DaGoodS has invited me to write a post about some of the difficult teachings of the Christian faith and explain how I have objectively come to terms with the Christian approach to each of these teachings.  I think (and I am not at all suggesting the DaGoodS is sinister or malevolent) that he intends to demonstrate that my handling of these claims is irrational or somehow not objective because it is ultimately faith-based.

Over the next few days I’ll be dealing with specific hurdles that I have had to overcome to accept the Christian worldview as most reliable, but before I establish these claims, I feel that I should share my background.  To be fair, there are presuppositions that all of us have based upon our upbringing and evironment, and I’d like to toss mine on the table before we begin our discussion.  I hope that DaGoodS and I can have a congenial discussion about these issues, and maybe if we know one another on a bit more personal level, we can embark on this little journey with a positive result.

So, here’s my story.  I was raised in a devoutly religious home, the son of a conservative Independant Baptist minister, and I can count on one hand the number of times that I missed a church service during those years.  I attended private Christian school through both my elementary and high school years, and my senior year of high school I chose to become a “born again” believer.  I went off to an equally conservative Christian college, the kind that teaches that the King James translation of the Bible is the only authoritative word of God.  By the end of my junior year of school, I had come to the conclustion, through a series of personal experiences and difficulties, that the Gospel this college presented did not square with the “real world.”  During that time of my life, were I pressed, I would tell people that I was agnostic.  I didn’t know what I believed anymore.  So the search for the truth began.

I dug into philosophy and science, looking for the answers to the “big questions.”  I read everything from Ovid to Kant, and just when I had given up hope of knowing any of the truth, I stumbled upon Orthodoxy by Chesterton.  Chesterton’s rationale and rhetoric appealed to me in a very artistic way, and Orthodoxy helped me to see that rational people could indeed believe the claims of Christianity. From there, I moved to more philosophical thinkers, like Alvin Plantinga and Norman Geisler, and these men’s writings further strengthened my Christian perspective.

I currently hold an earned Master’s Degree in Theatre and I am enrolled in a prominent doctoral program at a respected state University where I study Aesthetics with an emphasis in comparative religion and philosophy, so these academic endeavors have served to challenge and strengthen my faith in Jesus as presented in the Bible.

That’s where I am, and where I am going-who knows?  But I’ve set the context for our next discussion.  Tune in next time for my discussion of the Incongruity of God in the Old and New Testaments as one of Christianity’s problems that need sorting out.

Sometimes I am frustrated when sharing the Gospel with skeptical people, because I honestly believe that I have really solid reasons to believe in the truth of the Christian message.  I’ve got teleological, ontological, cosmological, historical, and aesthetic arguments, well-constructed and rational, that seem to be ineffective to militant agnosticism and atheism.  It seems that my skeptical audience simply will not hear the truth, regardless of how iron-clad my reasoning is.  A skeptic is constantly looking for a loophole, because they are convinced that the truth cannot possibly contain supernatural elements.

Most militant atheists and agnostics that I come across are in fact biased while wearing the cloak of skepticism. Their particular bias states that supernatural things simply cannot occur, and they will do all kinds of mental gymnastics to try to explain everything that defies naturalistic explanation.

Here’s the thing, though, I am biased, too.  We all have a “skeptical dial,” as William Lane Craig calls it, regarding what we think conforms to reality, and for things that we find irrational, we crank the dial way up, so that proof is almost impossible to find.  Most of us find denial of the Holocaust absurd, so when a Holocaust denier presents incompatibilities in the accounts and the realities of the events, we dismiss him out of hand, without really considering the weight of the evidence (I am not a Holocaust denier btw!).

We cannot escape our biases; it is impossible! A rational person, however, will recognize that they are biased, and will give opposing arguments a legitimate hearing, instead of dismissing the argument because we don’t want it to be true, we should examine the tenets of the argument for logical fallacy and truth.  So, as you share the truth of the Christian faith with skeptical people, perhaps you should be as willing to consider the validity of their arguments as you would like them to be about yours.

One of the coolest things about being back in an higher education setting is the opportunity that I have to get to talk to skeptical people about the Gospel.  Typically, outside of academia, non-believers in Jesus aren’t so agressive as to call themselves atheist or agnostic, and ministry to them is very difficult because they don’t know what they believe.  However, at a university I run into real atheist and agnostic thinkers that are bold enough to dialogue about the issues.  I’ve had several great talks since I’ve moved here with people who are honestly skeptical about the claims of the Gospel.  This is forcing me to hone my message and my thinking to try to meet their questions.

Recently, I was having one such conversation, and after I presented my standard shpeel about teleology and cosmology and the historicity of the resurrection, the young atheist I was talking with turned to a line of reasoning that I have heard leveled against Christian apologetics a lot lately.  His line of reasoning basically accused me of believing a “God of the gaps.”  His accusation basically accused me of using evidence that we don’t understand from science as verification of Christianity.  His argument was that as science continues to learn more about the nature of the universe, those gaps will be shored up, and my arguments will fall into obscurity.

He gave this example:

“Suppose,” he said, “that I were to ask you to multiply 249850189 x 1783245, but I wouldn’t allow you to use a calculator or a piece of paper to figure it out.  I then immediately told you that the answer was 2.  You would object, even though you couldn’t actually figure out the real answer.  You would have a sense that this wasn’t the right answer, but you couldn’t prove me wrong.”

He went on to say, “This is what your evidence for God’s existence is like.  You appeal to things we don’t yet understand about science as proof that God is there, and although I have a sense that your answer is not the best explanation of these events, I have an inability to prove you wrong because there is still a lot that science can’t tell us.  I contend that you have not proven your point by appealing to unknowable facts as evidence.”

So that was the gist of his argument, and on its face it was pretty effective.  Let me ask you.  How would you have responded to this?  There is a tremendous logical fallacy within it; can you spot it?