Category Archives: Apologetics
Questions Theists Can’t Answer, Hell
A question from the Reddit thread of questions we theists supposedly can’t answer (but we really can, but if we do, then we’re full of it because we’re not supposed to have all of the answers, but if we don’t have all of the answers theism is false; atheism makes my head spin–I’m way too consistent in my personal judgments to ever embrace atheism!).
This question concerns hell, and it’s a common one:
How can God’s love be unlimited if there is hell?
Hell is a fate to which humans consign themselves. God is basically the ultimate respecter of persons. He has laid the cards on the table–no matter how deeply we penetrate the black box of existence, it becomes increasingly complex and ordered. No matter how far we probe the cosmos, the evident beginning of everything is found. Ultimately, it all points to a First Cause that is itself an intelligent creator–a person, God the Father.
Jesus, the second person of God–the Son, has revealed the Father to mankind by becoming one of us. The wrath of God against ungodliness has been appeased in the sacrifice of the Son to those who have faith (active faith, faith that does something; different from mere assent to a certain worldview).
From the Father and the Son comes the Holy Spirit, which is the evidence of God’s action in the world. He calls us, convicts us of our sin, and regenerates us in faith to become sons of God and conform to the image of Christ.
The cards are on the table, and they are many and obvious. But no one is coerced to love God. I don’t believe loving God is choice per se; rather, it is a revelation of something already inside you from the start. Being a Christian isn’t something that you do once in an altar call, but a lifelong journey of self-discovery.
If you refuse the free gift of grace, living life apart from God, God doesn’t snuff you out of existence (though we could argue that he would be justified in doing so). Instead, he allows you to remain in tact, living both on earth and into eternity. The soul was created for eternal fellowship with God, to snuff a person out of existence would be to violate the ontology of the soul. Make it something that it isn’t. So, what to do with the soul that rejects God?
Well, heaven with God wouldn’t be nice. If you rebel against and ultimately reject the fellowship of someone (such as divorcing a spouse), you don’t want to spend a solid second with that person ever again–let alone all of eternity! It would be worse torture than, well, hell. Cruel, even.
I’ve heard many an atheist express sentiments like this. Over the course of keeping this blog and venturing into discussion forums with various atheists (such as Theology Web, the Rational Response Squad discussion board, the Why Won’t God Heal Amputees forums, and the Is God Imaginary forums), I’ve heard several times over things like, “I’d rather spend eternity in hell than be in heaven with your God!”
This is predicted in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Lk 16:19-31). In it, a rich man dies and goes to (presumably) hell, while a beggar named Lazarus ascends to (presumably) heaven. When the rich man realizes that he’s lost, does he try to alter his fate? Nope–all he does is ask for a drink of water, something that would satisfy his immediate need only. Then, he wants to warn his family so that they won’t suffer the same fate. Notice: he doesn’t want out of hell!
This is why C.S. Lewis observed, wisely I think, that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. No one is there that doesn’t want to be there.
Hell is perdition and separation. It is, ultimately, what the sinner wants–total separation from God. God is giving him his way. However, for those who submit to God’s way rather than their own, glorification in heaven awaits, and eternal fellowship with God.
Holy Week (Friday): Death of Jesus
After a kangaroo court and an undeserving death sentence, Jesus walks his cross (with some help) to the hill at Calvary:
As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), 34 they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.'” And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the landuntil the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Mt 27:32-54)
He is then buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. It really seems as though this small “cult” around Jesus is doomed. After all, once your leader has been shamed, humiliated, and put to death, what else can you do?
So the disciples secreted away in wait. But they didn’t know for what!
Monica’s Longer Arguments No Better Than the Tweets, part 3
Yesterday, I promised that we would see how shallow the typical atheist seems to read the Bible. I actually learned that long ago with my failed foray into the forums of Why Won’t God Heal Amputees. It didn’t take long for the crew to harp on one of their favorite passages in the Bible, where Jesus says that if we pray for a mountain to move, that it will get up and move (Mt 17:20).
Obviously, if I pray for Mt. Everest to levitate over the ocean and land in the Appalachian Mountains, we know that won’t happen. Which leads to two general conclusions about that passage. Either Jesus was speaking metaphorically, or the Bible is total bull. WWGHA concludes the latter without even considering the former.
If a Christian argues that Jesus was speaking metaphorically, then the whole forum membership throws a collective fit and claims it is impossible to discern metaphors and literary devices in the Bible from the literal parts. Which leads them to believe that the entire Bible is to be taken at 100% face value, no matter what.
The TV series Police Squad! was a straight-laced cop drama that took place in an alternate universe where there is no such thing as figurative language. If someone said that a name “rings a bell,” then a distant bell would ring. A running gag was for Lt. Drebin to offer a witness a cigarette by holding it to them and simply saying it’s name.
“Cigarette?” he would ask.
The witness would make eye contact with Drebin and reply, “Yes, it is!”
This is how the atheists of WWGHA read the Bible–as though it were absent figurative language. This atheist looks at an obvious example of metaphor and says, “Well, the Almighty God said it, he would be clear about it, so it must be true that you can move a mountain as Jesus says here!” They realize that you can’t, because no one can move a mountain like that. So, they force the conclusion that the Bible is completely false, based only upon their erroneous interpretation of the text.
This is an example of the same sort of fallacy. Here, Monica (Twitter user @Monicks) is reading and interpreting a passage correctly. However, she isn’t thinking deeply enough about what the ramifications of it really are. Read the rest of this entry
Monica’s Longer Arguments No Better than the Tweets, part 2
Monica, who goes on Twitter as @Monicks, has thousands of followers. Why? Her arguments are even more vacuous than most. I think I got hooked into this for the same reason I follow @antitheistangie (Angie Jackson)–not for intellectual arguments or deep thinking, but because she’s really, really hot.
That said, let’s examine one of the remaining two commands of the Bible that no one follows. It’s interesting that I mentioned I’m following Angie because she’s super hot, since divorce (Mk 10:8-12) is today’s topic.
I agree that divorce is forbidden; so what? The people that God declares righteous in the Bible: were they perfect and without sin? No! Abraham lied numerous times. Jacob deceived his brother and his father to be the heir of promise. David slept with another man’s wife, then conspired to have the husband killed. Peter denied Jesus three times. Paul killed and tortured Christians to get them to renounce their faith in Jesus.
If we had to come before God with our works, we’d all be screwed. Especially me! I just admitted to a sin in the introduction of this post–looking at a woman besides my wife with lust! The righteous live by faith.
So, at the end of the day, the truth of Christianity doesn’t rise or fall on the actions of its practitioners. If it did, this religion would never have gotten off the ground.
But that’s getting away from the central issue of ignoring divorce. We’ll come back to the idea that the actions of Christians isn’t the arbiter of the truth of Christianity in a moment. First, let’s look at the parallel passage in Matthew 19:9, which reads, “And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery” (emphasis added). This is a twist on our story.
The translation “sexual immorality” really isn’t the best way to capture the Greek word that Matthew used. The NET Bible translates it simply “immorality.” The word is properly understood as separating parts from the whole or destroying the union or fellowship of [something]. I take this to mean that anything that destroys the fellowship of marriage (beating your wife, gazing with lust upon Angie Jackson, creating an unsafe home environment, physically or emotionally abusing your children) should be grounds for divorce. Sexual immorality is only the tip of the iceberg.
So, divorce is permissible if one of the partners destroys the solidarity of the marriage. Other passages confirm this (check 1 Cor 7:10-16).
Do I think that all Christian divorces are taking place because someone broke up the solidarity of the marriage? No! I’m not naive. I know that some Christian divorces occur for the same frivolous reasons as the unbelievers’ divorces: “We’re not compatible anymore;” “I didn’t know he snored that loud!” “She nags me everyday.”
That brings us full circle: the truth of Christianity doesn’t rely on the actions of its practitioners. If it did, this religion wouldn’t have survived for very long, because all of us are sinners–whether we lie about our marital status to save our own skin, deceive our closest family to wrongfully obtain an inheritance, or secretly wish Angie was wearing something skimpier in the latest video.
Tomorrow, we shall show that atheists truly don’t think very deeply about possible meanings of biblical texts. They read what is there and that’s it.
Monica’s Longer Arguments no Better than the Tweets!, part 1
Recently, I posted that Twitter user Monicks made a supremely ignorant statement about God and moral responsibility. In that post, I specifically mention the trouble with arguing via Twitter; namely, you get only 140 characters to make your point.
So I thought that, perhaps, Monica would argue better if she had unlimited characters to work with. And so I checked her blog, and read the most popular post on it.
So much for that idea. All unlimited words did for her was give her more rope with which to hang herself.
So let’s look at these 11 things that the Bible forbids, yet we do anyway. First, Monica intelligently anticipates the main objection that will be raised, to which she unintelligently replies:
As a final note, I know that nine of these 11 cite the Old Testament, which Christianity doesn’t necessarily adhere to as law.
To which I say: If you’re going to ignore the section of Leviticus that bans about tattoos, pork, shellfish, round haircuts, polyester and football, how can you possibly turn around and quote Leviticus 18:22 (“You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.”) as irrefutable law?
But that’s me trying to introduce logic to religious fanaticism (or, at least, trying to counter some mix of ignorance, bigotry and narcissism with logic). And I should probably know better.
Why is this unintelligent? The short answer is in this video from Stand to Reason.
Long answer: Read the rest of this entry
Dumbest Tweet I’ve Read in a While
I’ve complained that arguing via Twitter is a bad idea. The problem is that you get 140 characters to make your point, and that’s it. So reading a tweet that’s truly stupid, but requires more than 140 characters to respond to, creates a dilemma. There’s TwitLonger for some of those cases, or I can link it up to my blog as I’m doing in this case, but there’s no way to know how many people will actually read the reply.
Another issue is, while you might reply to the person that said it, and you include “@” + their Twitter name so they will see it, not everyone who read the tweet will see it. This is complicated by the fact that users can retweet posts that they like, spreading the message (but no replies) far and wide.
And, there are far more atheists using Twitter than theists. Which means that, when an atheist says something that’s plain ignorant but is catchy nonetheless, it is going to get read and retweeted dozens of times. Even if a theist writes a reply, the damage is already done. Few (if any) will see the reply.
Twitter user Monicks (whose real name appears to be Monica), has the ignorant tweet of (perhaps) the year. Maybe not, since we’re only in April (the best month of the year, and yesterday was the best day of the year). But it’s still pretty ignorant. Monica says:
http://twitter.com/#!/Monicks/status/56898751595413504
I’m not subscribed to Monica, so the only reason I saw it is because she was retweeted by ThinkAtheist, who I do subscribe to. Monica has 5,609 subscribers and ThinkAtheist has 8,934 subscribers. That particular tweet was retweeted by at least 12 other users, so it looks like way more people have seen that tweet than will ever see this reply. But I wanted to try anyway. Read the rest of this entry
Questions Theists Can’t Answer: 2 Wise Observations
Belief is, by definition, the consideration of something unsupported by evidence. Because of this, it is inherently unfounded on truth.
Depends on what sort of belief is under consideration. Some beliefs are logical deductions based on other beliefs. These are founded on the truth of the beliefs that come before them. Others are grounding beliefs that have no evidence to support them one way or the other.
The problem with this statement is that it applies to atheists as well. Everyone, whether theist or atheist, starts somewhere in their structure of beliefs. Those presuppositions upon which a worldview is based are really the crux of the debate between atheism and theism. The theist starts with God, while the theist starts with nature.
I’ve also noticed that one atheist commented that one way they can tell that theists are full of “bullshit” is that we can answer every question. The scientist, it is reasoned, admits his limitation and is happy to say, “I don’t know” when he doesn’t know the answer. Theists, on the other hand, answer every question that the atheist proposes. Since we never seem to admit that we don’t know the answer, that means that we’re full of it.
So, basically, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Let me illustrate why.
The existence of a list such as this indicates that the atheist believes that we can’t answer every question proposed. That might be true. A few months after I started my main blog, I was forced to admit that I didn’t know the answer to the proposed dilemma:
So which is stronger, manfluence or Godfluence? Well, Hasic posits that man put the belief about God in the heads of children, and that the kids are responding to that belief, not to God. But this overlooks the fact that God determined the situation in which these kids were placed, not man. If they grow up Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim, He wanted that to happen for a reason known only to Him and that increases His glory somehow.
I don’t know why and there isn’t any way to find out (Job 37:5). (source, emphasis added)
There really are somethings that humans don’t know the answers to, and I’ve tried to be forthright about that. Now, usually when I do, the atheist in the argument immediately claims victory: “Ha! I found a question you don’t know the answer to! I win!”
Can’t have it both ways, guys. Either you want me to answer everything, or you want me to admit that I occasionally don’t have an answer. But you can’t claim victory when I have all of the answers, and also claim victory if I don’t have all the answers. We call that “stacking the deck.”
Insomina Pays Off!
Because I couldn’t sleep, I wrote the answer to proof #11 in my newly updated response to God is Imaginary, that case study in inconsistency, incoherence, and special pleading. Insomnia has finally paid off. Enjoy!
Questions Theists Can’t Answer, the Atonement
I was recently directed to a Reddit thread where the atheists were proposing questions that theists can’t answer. Surprise, surprise, we can answer them, and in many cases have answered them (just not the satisfaction of the atheist). Of course, personal satisfaction isn’t a prerequisite for truth.
That said, what follows are questions from that thread that center on the Atonement. Read the rest of this entry
What Type of Evidence is Required to Believe Extraordinary Claims?
How many of us have said, “I’ve been meaning to do [something], but [this] got in the way.” I’ve been guilty of that many times, especially around the house. I keep “meaning to,” but something else happens.
Wives are pretty forgiving here–or at least mine is. Provided that [this] is reasonable, and not, “I just had to beat my high score at Yahtzee, and after 10 hours of rolling those dice, I finally did it!”
Supervisors at work are much less forgiving, even if [this] is extremely reasonable. “I meant to get that paperwork faxed over, but four people called off for lunch rush and of the people that showed up, no one knew how to run the drive-thru register except for me!” Those who have worked in fast food know that what I just said is a very legitimate reason for missing office work, but they also know that no district manager would actually accept that excuse.
In the world of blogging, “I’ve been meaning to write a post on [something], but [this] got in the way” has far less severe consequences than it does in the corporate world. Usually, another blogger ends up writing the post, generally making the exact points that you would have raised. Then comes the inevitable internal groan, “Why didn’t I just write the post sooner?”
Today, as I read over the usual blogs, I discover that the post I’ve been meaning to write on the so-stupid-it-burns talking point that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” has already been written by Dr. Randal Rauser. Although I’ve disagreed with Dr. Rauser in the past, in this particular post he is 110% spot on. This paragraph sums up my own points to people about this claim:
The problem starts with this: who decides what is “extraordinary”? Without an absolute, objective standard this principle collapses into “Anything that appears really implausible to me requires extraordinary evidence” and that in turn collapses into “No evidence will be good enough to convince me of something I find really implausible”. In other words, this is a recipe for an irrational dismissal of any evidence counter to what one already accepts.
Literally, all the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” talking point ever does is allow the atheist to dismiss with a simple hand wave anything that he doesn’t want to believe–the existence of God, the Resurrection, any miracle in the Bible, or whatever else they don’t want in their worldview. All they need to do is class whatever their opponent says as “extraordinary,” and whatever evidence or argument offered in support as “not extraordinary.” BAM! Case dismissed faster than a pothead’s lawsuit on Judge Judy.
All that is required to believe any claim, extraordinary or not, is sufficient evidence. Period.
Back Rome Again 