Tyler Vela, a Calvinist apologist and an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church in America who converted from atheism to Christianity as a young man, graduated with a Pre-seminary B.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies from the Moody Bible Institute, and was partway through a Masters of Biblical Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary, has announced his deconversion at his Youtube channel, The Freed Thinker. Recently, he was interviewed by Derek Lambert of Mythvision on his reasons for leaving Christianity, several months ago. The interview may be viewed here:
Vela on what finally made him abandon the Christian faith, late in 2022, after wrestling with a mountain of objections to Christianity:
“The problem of Divine hiddenness was the thing that, like, sealed the deal for me. That made me, like, give up even being faithful anymore, because there’s a sense where it’s like, I’m a non-resistant non-believer at this point. I am actually proactively doing everything I can to be faithful, to pray, to read the Bible – not in the [good] works, not in the ‘You, God, you owe me anything’ [sense], but just, like, I’m doing everything I can to have this relationship, and still it’s crickets. I still have NOTHING. And so, if God wanted to have some type of relationship with me, that would have been the easiest time… I’m not asking for miracles, I’m not asking for money, healing, nothing… I remember begging and saying [to God], ‘It could literally be an intrinsic, you know, the Mormons call [it] a burning of the bosom, it could be anything that I could just internally know, that I could never defend to an atheist. I don’t care. I just want something [where] I know that you’re my Heavenly Father, and that you love me. That’s it. Or that you even care. Anything like that.’ That was, like, the final straw.” (12:31)
Vela on why he still respects Reformed Calvinism:
I actually think [that] as far as systematic theology goes, if you’re going to hold … an inerrantist view, a view of the Scripture as a comprehensive message from One Divine Author with human authors writing down… all that kind of stuff, [in accordance] with the Chicago Statement on [Biblical] Inerrancy… I actually think reformed Calvinism is the most consistent way you’re going to do it. (14:17)
Vela on his present theological beliefs:
I’m still a classical theist. I still think God is omnimax. I still think God is simple, a se [i.e. not dependent on any creature for anything], necessary, I still hold to those types of beliefs. (14:58)
Vela on the factors that led him to doubt Christianity in the first place:
There was actually a strong disconnect between that very high view of God and the very national, pagan Yahweh of the Old Testament, and even getting into the New Testament, you know, the way that Jesus looked at God and religion… It was very tribal… As I started reading through a whole bunch of the other myths of the ancient Near East … which honestly made me love the Bible more… I still love the Bible. I think literarily, it’s the master, it is a pinnacle of literary mastery… But at the same time, there were certain things where I was like, not only does this high view [of God] that I think is philosophically defensible – I have a hard time understanding how classical theism wouldn’t be true, because of certain arguments – [but] that just came into conflict with the Bible. And so as I started reading those other myths, those two systems clashed. (15:07)
Vela on open theism:
Like, I always joke – kind of joke – I’m actually being somewhat serious, although in a little snarky way, I actually think open theists, their view of God is like a mega-Zeus… Their view of Yahweh in the Old Testament – I mean, I don’t know how you can get much more pagan of a view within Christian theology [than open theism], because He’s finite, He’s in time, He makes mistakes, He learns, He adapts, He can’t always get His way, He has to do these things in time … It is a Zeus story. It’s just a mega-Zeus, because He’s bigger and more powerful and somehow transcendent and more good… (18:08)
Vela on whether he would ever consider becoming a Christian again:
I will confess, you know, I am… like, if someone could convince me that it was true again,… I’d be totally fine with it. (22:02)
Vela on what caused his gradual drift away from belief in the inerrancy of Scripture: not Genesis 1, but hermeneutics
…I still think that the most likely thing that’s happening in Genesis 1 is that it’s an ancient Near Eastern temple text… It’s not talking about material creation – kind of like a John Walton type of view … mixed with a little bit of a Klinean Framework Theory … but I did a whole series on that. What I think that did was, it trained me to also – that’s where I got a lot of my training in hermeneutics and understanding ancient Near Eastern contexts and backgrounds, all that kind of stuff… So a lot of people will be like, “Oh, well, your view of Genesis 1 is the thing that did you in.” And indirectly, it might have, because it’s the thing where I was like, “Hey, but like, good, historical hermeneutics, dealing with the history, the grammar and the context and backgrounds,” all that kind of stuff, when we start employing that, kind of across the board, … that hermeneutic is the thing that I think started doing me in, not necessarily just my view of Genesis 1… That hermeneutic of reading things within their historical context and seeing the way that the Biblical text is actually interacting with those things, and then carrying that forward into the New Testament, and seeing the way that they’re interacting with the literature of their day… So there’s all these kinds of interactions that are happening, that don’t necessarily … mean that Christianity is false or that the Bible is false… You can, and I did for a long time, I read these as … “That’s the literary genre that they’re doing, and that’s OK,” but those types of things just start to build and build and build and build and balloon, and so there’s so many of them, that it becomes a point that it’s like, OK, there’s so many of these, and it addresses almost everything, that at what point do I think that any of this is actually true anymore? It’s interesting, and it’s fascinating, … but at what point does this now matter for salvation anymore? (24:45)
Vela’s view of Scripture nowadays
I haven’t fully jumped ship or anything, right? So I’m not out here being like, “Oh, you know, the Gospels are … entirely myth, because they get one little detail wrong … Right? You could go like a [Mike] Licona route. You could go down there and you could say, “Well, these are minor discrepancies,” and all that kind of stuff. You could remain a Christian. You could be a progressive, you could be a Randall Rauser and you could say, “They [the Gospels] get the gist right. Overall, they’re still reliable.” I don’t think that my girlfriend, when she doesn’t get the time [right], you know, her and her friends get the time five minutes off, or a day off or something like that, what happened thirty years ago… [that] they’re totally [wrong], it’s all garbage, right? That wouldn’t be the argument that I would make. But what it does is, it says, “OK. What can’t be the case … It’s like, I don’t see how inerrancy can be the case anymore, I don’t see how infallibility can be the case anymore. And when your systematic [theology] is built on that, and when you’re done trying to harmonize it, what happens is those anchor points come loose, right? And so there’s a trickle-down effect… I still look at the Gospels and I’m like, “OK. I think the Gospels are probably generally reliable about what an apocalyptic teacher [named Jesus] thought. I think they’re probably close to what he was teaching his disciples. They probably, they almost certainly theologized like crazy, they almost certainly slanted it towards the theological inclinations of the communities that they’re writing for… there’s all that stuff that’s happened… But … I’m not out there trying to say, … “Well, therefore, … you can throw the entire thing out.” (33:15)
A fallacy in contemporary apologetics
…[T]he reason why I think this is important is, what I find now – and I started to see this when I was still in apologetics, but it’s like, full-force now – there’s a Motte-and-Bailey fallacy that happens a lot in apologetics, where in order to defend, like “minimal facts” Resurrection, or even “maximal facts” Resurrection, or inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, they defend reliability. And they’re like, “Oh, well. They [the Gospels] get this, like, minimal reliability… They get cities and places and geography – except for when they don’t, because like, Quirinius – but like, even, I mean, Josephus gets things wrong. And we’re not like, “To hell with Josephus! Get that guy out of here!”, you know, whatever. But what happens, though, is [that] they say, “See? It’s reliable! Therefore we can trust all these Resurrection stories.” And I’m like, “That’s such a Motte-and-Bailey. You cannot do that… You have so much more spade work, to get from ‘It’s generally reliable’ to ‘Therefore, we can trust what it says about the Resurrection.'” (34:56)
Vela on the fear of Hell as a reason for remaining a Christian
I was never – and maybe this was the problem – I was never afraid of Hell… Maybe that would have kept me in line. But for me, the Pascalian [wager] was more of, like, in a relationship, where it’s like, “Look, I’m not feeling any more of that stuff, but I’m going to stay committed, and you know, I’m going to commit to therapy, and I’m going to commit to doing all the things that I can do to possibly salvage this.” … Because at the time, I was like, “I could be wrong, I could be having a … they talk about dark nights of the soul all the time, for a millennium in Christianity. For years, it could be a dark night of the soul, and then, you know, people have these rapturous experiences afterwards, so … it could be one of those things. I’m going to stay faithful committed. I’m going to try to live out these promises, all that kind of stuff.” But at the end of the day, there was a certain point where I was like, … I started thinking about it in context of, you know, I’m a father to my kids. [God is a] Heavenly Father to His children… And I started thinking about [the verse in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount]: “How do you, if you’re sinful, know to give good things to your children?” And I started thinking about that in the context of, like, love and comfort for my kids. Because sometimes I might do things that my kids don’t like, and [that] are uncomfortable for them, but it’s for their benefit, it’s for their good. But I started to think about, like, if my kids were literally telling me, like, “We don’t think you love us, we don’t know you, we don’t know you’re round, … we don’t feel safe here, we don’t feel comfortable at all,” and all that kind of stuff – if I was a loving father, that would break my heart, and I would do everything I could – like I don’t want to spoil them and give them a Mercedes – but I’m going to make sure that they know that I love them. (40:53)
Would any other kind of Christianity appeal to him, apart from Calvinism?
You [Derek] are exactly right [in insisting that the Bible portrays God as hardening people’s hearts]. And … this is why, when I did [the video], “Part One of my Deconversion,” I said, “You know, well, look!” Because people were like, “Oh, well, you could just become another type of Christian.” And I’m like, I mean, “The only other type of Christian I think I could become is maybe a progressive.” But at that point, I don’t even know why I care about the Bible anymore, because it’s just a wax nose for progressives at that point. Like, if I want to take the Bible seriously, right, I think that Reformed theology and Calvinism is the one that does it, as the most consistent with what the text actually says. Because what happens is, you get all these [texts] – and this is where, you know, when I was a Calvinist and I was debating non-Calvinists, I did a lot of those types of debates. But you know, they would, you know, [defend] the Free Will Theodicy, [and say], “God doesn’t – God allows evil but He doesn’t cause evil.” And I’m like, I mean, “That’s garbage. That’s BS. Like, here are like all these passages in the Bible where God, whatever you want to make of it, however you want to try to gymnastic out of it, like God takes causal credit for it. Whatever you think the metaphysics of how He does it or allows it or whatever, He is taking credit for the outcome, and the outcome is someone sinning, someone being deluded, someone having a false belief, someone being … whatever … So, I have tons of examples of them, and I would use this as a Calvinist, and I would say, when debating non-Calvinists, “You’re like, God just allows the free will decision, blah blah blah blah blah.” And I’d be like, “First of all, you have Biblical texts that directly contradict that, because He takes causal credit for it. It’s by his hand that Pilate and the Jews and Herod crucified Jesus, right? But it literally says, ‘by His hand,’ … by His foreordination, by His hand. In the next verse, His hand is the thing that heals. His hand is always causally active in any Scripture passages, right? You know, He deludes people in [St. Paul’s] second [letter to the] Thessalonians… And in 2 Thessalonians 2, where it says He sends a deluding spirit, and you follow the causal chain, it’s so that they’ll believe what’s false. Why? So that He can judge them, right? So he [St. Paul] literally says that God makes, God intentionally deludes them, so that He can judge them.” Now again, Calvinists will bite that bullet. They’ll go hardline. It’s fine. It takes the text seriously. So I look at these other views, these open theistic views, and I’m like, “If I’m going to take the Bible seriously, that’s just not an option, that’s just not a live option for me.”
Why does Vela think the problem of evil is an insuperable one, even for non-Calvinist Christians?
Yeah, so one more. So, the other thing that happened in responding to non-Calvinists is [that] I’m saying, “Well, God actually does cause, takes causal credit for evil.” But I also say, “Well, let’s imagine your view is right. Let’s imagine that it is allowing all that kind of stuff. And I remember, this was something that also turned the tide. It’s an argument that I used against non-Calvinists. And I said, “Look. Think of the book of Job, right? And imagine for a second that it’s not God, right? Imagine that if I moved into a neighborhood and I knew that there was a psychopathic, sociopathic serial killer next to me. And I went to him, like, “Hey, have you considered my favorite son?” And he’s like, “Yeah, but you protect him.” And I’m like, “OK, but I’m going to leave town, so you can do whatever you want to him. You can kill all of his friends,” because Satan didn’t just kill Job, it was all his friends, they were there, he took out everything by natural causes, took out his friends, killed everyone, killed the whole family, took his wealth, killed his day laborers, everybody. And then, you know, round two he’s like, “Oh, he still hasn’t cursed you.” And God’s like, “OK, well, like, you can do more if you want to, just don’t kill him.” So now he [Satan] gave him boils and all that kind of stuff. And imagine that I did that with the serial killer. “You can do that with my kids, you can kill all his friends, you can kill the rest of my family. You could do all that kind of stuff. You could burn down the house. You can do all that kind of stuff. You can give him leukemia, you can give him boils, you can make him as sick as you can, you just can’t kill him. And it’s OK because at the end of the day, I’m going to give my son back more friends than he had to begin with.” … Like, how many of you would call me good? (48:43)
I shall stop here, and throw the discussion open to readers. What do you think of Tyler Vela’s arguments?
UPDATE ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL:
Over at the Community page on his Youtube blogsite, Tyler Vela posed a tough question in a comment addressed to his readers:
Christian, would you permit, allow, decree, ordain, predestine (whatever your preferred theology) someone to rape and torture and murder your 6 year old child for any of these reasons (with a straight face) AND expect other people to think you were good for doing so:
1. To not violate the freewill is the rapist, or freewill just in principle.
2. For the soul building of other people.
3. That it would make other people more likely to be saints.
4. Because sinners are going to sin and you’ll punish them later for it.
5. So you can show the raping-murderer forgiveness later (if they want it).I really doubt any of you would if you were being truthful. Hopefully that helps you see why many of us just aren’t satisfied with those kinds of responses to the problem of evil when posed to the God of historic Christianity.
When one reader objected, “So God doesn’t exist because bad things happen now? This is a new low for you man,” Vela replied, “Where did I say God doesn’t exist? I’m a THEIST. This isn’t an objection to God’s existence. This is an objection to several of the theodicies proposed by Christian apologists. Try reading to understand before simply reacting.” Later, he added, “I don’t believe YWHW exists. I believe in the God of classical theism very much like the God of the philosophers.”
I’d like to offer my two cents’ worth, in response to Tyler Vela’s question. It’s a very tough one, since it comes straight from the heart.
First, given that a six-year-old child is involved here, given that God’s goodness is in question, and given that Vela rejects (a) the manifestation of God’s character (e.g. His mercy and/or justice), (b) the exercise of human free-will, and (c) long-term benefits to either the child, or the rapist, or other people, as legitimate reasons for a good God permitting the rape of the child, it is pretty hard to see what other possible reasons could legitimate God’s permitting such a horrendous evil. This is important, because it shows that the problem posed by Vela is not just a problem for Christianity. It applies equally well to any religious view which affirms both God’s goodness and the fact of children being raped.
Second, if Vela wants to affirm God’s existence (as he continues to do, given his professed belief in classical theism, despite his recent rejection of Christianity) then it seems to me that the only option he has left is to deny God’s goodness. He could argue, for instance, that “good” is an anthropomorphic term, and that God is beyond good and evil. I don’t know why anybody would want to worship a God of that sort, but one could still believe in such a God.
Third, I can’t help wondering if Hinduism (or something like it) is the religion best equipped to address Vela’s question. The reason why I’m leaning this way is that I’ve recently been watching some Next Level Soul videos on Near Death Experiences, in which various individuals who have had NDEs learn on the other side that they chose the life they lived, with all the evils that they risked being subjected to, before they were born, and that they made this choice as mature spiritual beings, and not as children. On this scenario, the reason why they made this choice was that they wanted to acquire some virtue that would take them to a higher plane of existence, despite the horrendous emotional suffering involved. I freely acknowledge that the above scenario is mind-boggling and that it comes with a fair bit of metaphysical baggage (e.g. pre-existence of souls, and belief in reincarnation), but if a mature spiritual being insists on undergoing an incarnation, knowing the emotional risks involved, then I cannot see any reason why it would be incompatible with the goodness of God for him to accede to their wishes. (However, the critical assumption that I would question here is the claim that there are some virtues that can only be acquired through being raped or tortured. These, it seems to me, are not soul-making evils, but soul-breaking evils.)
Fourth, it strikes me that there’s one thing that Vela’s scenario overlooks. While the six-year-old is indeed God’s child, God is not a human father. Clearly, God has certain responsibilities towards the child, but they are not identical with the responsibilities that a human father has. In some ways, God (as Creator and Sustainer of the universe, and as the Heavenly Father of each and every human individual) is more responsible for the child than any human father could be. In other ways, God is less responsible: He is not the child’s primary caregiver, for instance. What that means is that there may be some situations in everyday life where evil befalls a child, and it’s not God’s responsibility to prevent it. Still, I freely admit that in the scenario described by Vela, the traditional Christian theodicies fail to get God off the hook. Clearly, Christians have a lot of hard thinking to do. And if they don’t come up with a good answer in the next few years, they’re going to lose the next generation of young people in Europe and North and South America to atheism, agnosticism, Deism or maybe Hinduism.
My two cents.
I wonder if your question is intended for our theists here. But one thing he said appealed to me. He spoke about the authenticity of the bible, because it speaks of places and building techniques and such that are known to have existed.
But I read a lot of fiction, and I know that almost all of the content in the novels I read covers ordinary background – the characters may be invented, but the places exist, the events exist, some of the people mentioned exist. There’s no question that the story occurs in a time and place the author is very familiar with. This doesn’t mean the novel isn’t fiction.
On the whole, I think Vela is on the verge of remission. He need only realize that if any gods are omitted from ever existing, the only change is to our beliefs; there’s no change to the outside world. No credible description of reality or history needs to reference any gods, because gods add no explanatory power. There are no demons haunting our world, and they need not haunt his either. He’s still got his head shoved into a pile of religious claptrap, but he seems to be realizing this. I wish him the best.
I’m not sure that one converts from atheism. Atheism is the null hypothesis and religious belief derives overwhelmingly from family and cultural influence. Everyone starts out as an atheist.*
I read Mr Vela as coming late to religious exposure. Lust/love is a powerful emotion.
*added in edit
I’ve wondered about this, and I think the evidence says otherwise. Every culture, every tribe in the jungle, every tribe of Native Americans, cultures as different as American, Japanese, Indian, Mongolian, etc. all have developed what amounts to religions, and nearly all have in common some notion of a “supernatural” being, or force, or pantheon – and of souls, and an afterlife.
To me, this suggests that everyone is born with religious tendencies, the Will To Believe, awaiting only “family and cultural influence” to channel it into already-present grooves their particular society has prepared. To me, this looks very similar to the innate propensity for language itself. Being an atheist is kind of like not speaking any language at all.
I agree to the extent there is an evolutionary advantage for youngsters to accept parental direction without question. “Run!”
“Why? What is that growly, stripy thing? Argh!”
The propensity to accept authority leads to larger social groups and on to civilization. Any religion hugely benefits leaders (and the priesthood) as well as (usually) maintaining order in the group. The choice of religion (as shown by the variety that exists) is arbitrary.
Choice of language depends on what you are immersed in as a child. It too is arbitrary.
Also atheism derives from family and cultural influence. Hardly anyone considers any hypothesis much, null or otherwise. There always were conversions both ways. In my view conversions due to family influence or for political reasons usually indicate hypocrisy. Proper conversion is associated with thorough soul-searching.
Sincere consistent believers are rather few. Also sincere consistent atheists are rather few. For example, Dawkins says on the one hand, “The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” On the other hand he is a passionately militant anti-theist, completely failing to live up to the purposelessness and indifference that nature teaches according to him.
What is Christianity?
If anybody can define it to me, I will transfer him/her/them/other, $50.
Wow, I really did not make myself clear. Religions tend to have certain things in common, and I tried to provide some – the notion of the supernatural, the notion of an afterlife, the notion of some force or being diddling with reality and watching over our lives, the idea of a “higher power”, etc. Not every religion’s doctrines include all of these, but there is a commonality.
I mention language because humans appear to be born with a linguistic sense entirely independent of which language is used. Children learn languages remarkably easily, and invent them all the time. The specific language(s) learned depend on exposure, the ability to learn language(s) is innate.
So I’m trying to say that the human brain comes wired with both facility with language (any language) and the Will To Believe in some religious faith, any religious faith handy during the development window in early childhood when these things “take hold”, so to speak.
The exceptions strike me as quite rare – those raised without exposure to any faith can’t really grasp what a faith is later in life (and can even doubt that the Believers are sincere – who could belive that stuff, seriously?) And Similarly, those raised in an environment where religious faith is the norm, where everyone takes their religion for granted as the One True Religion, might claim to have considered and then rejected religion as silly, but the early brain-wiring isn’t so easily discarded, and those people often relapse into some religion or other.
I think this is a misunderstanding. Just because the universe shows no evidence of design, purpose, or anything but indifference, doesn’t mean WE can’t find such things in our lives. And even if there are no gods, that doesn’t mean people are inconsistent in creating and then believing in gods.
So no, nature doesn’t “teach” purposelessness, it simply has no intrinsic purpose, and we can project onto it any purpose we wish. The universe may not care about us, but we can care about the universe.
I don’t know what you’d consider a definition, but in general a Christian is someone who sees the (possibly mythical, but so what?) character of Jesus Christ as central to their faith, and considers Jesus divine.
There are tens of thousands of somewhat different Christian sects, disputing one another on an equal number of theological details, but the character and centrality of Jesus Christ is common to all of them.
I don’t think we disagree much at all. The propensity for language is indeed innate with evidence going back 30 million years or so in primates.
The propensity to be gullible, I suspect, has roots as deep, being evolutionarily advantageous in family and social groups. I think religions are a later extension that are reinforced by the cultural evolution emerging as human groups become larger preceding and resulting in the development of agriculture, fixed settlements, stored assets, and “civilization”.
Not so sure about religious faith being innate. The propensity to believe what you are told by authority figures, absolutely. I have clear memories as a young child being told all sorts of stories that I initially accepted without question by people I assumed were telling me the truth. My faith in authority was constantly undermined when these stories turned out false.
From the (consistent) atheist point of view, whatever purpose we create individually, such as the gospel of purposelessness a la atheism, is a matter of our individual sphere and should not give cause to evangelise atheism to others. Also there should be no reason to object to whatever different purpose other individuals may have come up with. But from the theist point of view there are god-given purposes that no human should ignore. Very different points of view.
Hi everyone,
I just added an appendix to my post, which I’ll copy and paste here, to get the discussion rolling on the problem of evil.
UPDATE ON THE PROBLEM OF EVIL:
Over at the Community page on his Youtube blogsite, Tyler Vela posed a tough question in a comment addressed to his readers:
When one reader objected, “So God doesn’t exist because bad things happen now? This is a new low for you man,” Vela replied, “Where did I say God doesn’t exist? I’m a THEIST. This isn’t an objection to God’s existence. This is an objection to several of the theodicies proposed by Christian apologists. Try reading to understand before simply reacting.” Later, he added, “I don’t believe YWHW exists. I believe in the God of classical theism very much like the God of the philosophers.”
I’d like to offer my two cents’ worth, in response to Tyler Vela’s question. It’s a very tough one, since it comes straight from the heart.
First, given that a six-year-old child is involved here, given that God’s goodness is in question, and given that Vela rejects (a) the manifestation of God’s character (e.g. His mercy and/or justice), (b) the exercise of human free-will, and (c) long-term benefits to either the child, or the rapist, or other people, as legitimate reasons for a good God permitting the rape of the child, it is pretty hard to see what other possible reasons could legitimate God’s permitting such a horrendous evil. This is important, because it shows that the problem posed by Vela is not just a problem for Christianity. It applies equally well to any religious view which affirms both God’s goodness and the fact of children being raped.
Second, if Vela wants to affirm God’s existence (as he continues to do, given his professed belief in classical theism, despite his recent rejection of Christianity) then it seems to me that the only option he has left is to deny God’s goodness. He could argue, for instance, that “good” is an anthropomorphic term, and that God is beyond good and evil. I don’t know why anybody would want to worship a God of that sort, but one could still believe in such a God.
Third, I can’t help wondering if Hinduism (or something like it) is the religion best equipped to address Vela’s question. The reason why I’m leaning this way is that I’ve recently been watching some Next Level Soul videos on Near Death Experiences, in which various individuals who have had NDEs learn on the other side that they chose the life they lived, with all the evils that they risked being subjected to, before they were born, and that they made this choice as mature spiritual beings, and not as children. On this scenario, the reason why they made this choice was that they wanted to acquire some virtue that would take them to a higher plane of existence, despite the horrendous emotional suffering involved. I freely acknowledge that the above scenario is mind-boggling and that it comes with a fair bit of metaphysical baggage (e.g. pre-existence of souls, and belief in reincarnation), but if a mature spiritual being insists on undergoing an incarnation, knowing the emotional risks involved, then I cannot see any reason why it would be incompatible with the goodness of God for him to accede to their wishes. (However, the critical assumption that I would question here is the claim that there are some virtues that can only be acquired through being raped or tortured. These, it seems to me, are not soul-making evils, but soul-breaking evils.)
Fourth, it strikes me that there’s one thing that Vela’s scenario overlooks. While the six-year-old is indeed God’s child, God is not a human father. Clearly, God has certain responsibilities towards the child, but they are not identical with the responsibilities that a human father has. In some ways, God (as Creator and Sustainer of the universe, and as the Heavenly Father of each and every human individual) is more responsible for the child than any human father could be. In other ways, God is less responsible: He is not the child’s primary caregiver, for instance. What that means is that there may be some situations in everyday life where evil befalls a child, and it’s not God’s responsibility to prevent it. Still, I freely admit that in the scenario described by Vela, the traditional Christian theodicies fail to get God off the hook. Clearly, Christians have a lot of hard thinking to do. And if they don’t come up with a good answer in the next few years, they’re going to lose the next generation of young people in Europe and North and South America to atheism, agnosticism, Deism or maybe Hinduism.
My two cents.
Yes, of course we spend our lives, at least in part, deciding that the authorities we used to believe were untrustworthy, and we can dismiss them. But religious faith as I understand it, is qualitatively different. Consider someone like Kurt Wise
(https://secularhumanism.org/2001/10/sadly-an-honest-creationist/). My observation, limited though it may be, is that if religion has taken hold during the time in childhood when such things get internalized, it is basically permanent. I think that once people have reached the age of reason about religion, they are no longer capable of reasoning about religion.
Consider that from the viewpoint of any one religion, the core tenets of any other are prima facie preposterous. Gods? Afterlives? Reincarnation? You kidding me?
And here we have an example of what I was just trying to describe to Alan. To you, the lack of religious belief, that is, not having any, none at all, has somehow been turned into the “gospel of purposelessness.” The notion of not believing defies your comprehension, therefore atheists MUST believe in something so you decide it must be purposelessness, despite the fact that every atheist has as many purposes in life as anyone else. But as a Believer, you have aged beyond the point where such facts matter – you cannot help but “know better”.
As for “god-given purposes”, this is a specific doctrinal position I do not think is common to all religions. Indeed, belief in one or more gods isn’t common to all religions. You seem to have no problem with the notion that “no human should ignore” your purposes. Disagreements about this has driven schisms in even a single church to the point where there are tens of thousands of sects. Why, there are even Christian sects that don’t believe in evangelizing. Jews, for example, are certainly religious but their religion teaches that they should reject outsiders converting to their faith, if at all possible.
Seems to me that all these “hard questions: you encounter have one thing in common – they all require a single god. Now, there really isn’t any compelling evidence that this is true (and an enourmous amount of indirect evidence that it isn’t). But if we accept it as true because we can’t help ourselves, then we have to try to derive something about our (indoctrinated) god based on what we see around us. And without question, we see around us a great deal that we find evil, or that we strongly object to.
So if our god has no ability to change anything, is it really a god? And if it DOES have the ability to change things, then either it lets bad things happen, or makes bad things happen. If we decide our god does or allows bad things, AND we decide our god is good (according to our own personal morality), we have a contradiction.
The clear solution, of course, is that there are no gods. After all, the whole notion of gods isn’t rational. No scientific explanation of anything involves any gods in any way, and no scientific research involves any gods in the process, unless the research is itself trying to find evidence of gods – at which all such research fails. If we’re to “lose” a generation of people to atheism or agnosticism (though that would be a win, not a loss), a world that actually never had any gods won’t change for either better or worse. Just as always.
Hi Vincent,
Vela’s scenario reminded me of an analogy I drew years ago at TSZ. Here’s how I put it:
You are a child with an absentee father. Your mother and siblings all tell you how wonderful your father is; incredibly powerful, wise, and loving. Webcams and microphones are installed throughout the house. Your mother tells you that your father is constantly monitoring those so that he is aware of everything that happens in your home.
A neighbor comes by periodically and beats you and your siblings with a baseball bat, in full view of the webcams. You cry out to your father, but he doesn’t respond, and despite all his power, he does nothing to prevent the beatings. When your uncle sexually abuses you, the same thing happens; you cry out to your father, but your father does nothing to prevent the abuse. You begin to wonder if your father is loving after all, or whether he is as powerful as your mother claims. You even sometimes wonder if he exists at all. Maybe he’s dead, and your mother is just telling you an elaborate story to make you feel watched over and loved.
You tell your mother about the beatings and the rape, and ask her why your father doesn’t intervene. She says that your father is far more loving and wise than you are, and that if he permits these atrocities, there must be a very good reason that’s beyond your ken. Perhaps he’s teaching you about perseverance in the face of suffering, or maybe it’s just really important to him that your neighbor and uncle be allowed to exercise their free will in beating and raping you.
Would it be rational to accept your mother’s explanation? Is that the best explanation available?
Of course not. It’s a ridiculous explanation, and the alternatives are far better.
I hope it’s obvious how this analogy relates to the problem of evil, and why the theistic responses are so inadequate.
I should add that my analogy considerably understates the problem for the omnitheist. In a more accurate analogy, the father himself would do some of the beating, and some of those beatings would be fatal.
The problem of evil is very real, which is why it is taken seriously in philosophical and theological circles.
Here’s a piece of info to you: I grew up to full adulthood in a country called Soviet Union. I was raised dogmatically atheist. Yet, I never was. So, Alan is wrong in assuming that religiousness is mostly to do with upbringing. There can be religiousness despite harsh social suppression of religiousness. I know from irrefutable personal experience that even atheism does not universally catch on to everyone just by denying religion any space. And I know how destructive and militant atheism can be – not too different from militant Islam.
What am I to think of this when you just demonstrated that you know far less? You cannot help but know far less, so…
All religions have higher purposes. They promise salvation from sin or from suffering, eternal life or happiness in the world to come or in another world. If there is no such promise, then it is not a religion. Buddhism, even though nominally atheist in some way or sense, is a religion, obviously. Also, according to some historians, proselytising was invented by Buddha or one of his immediate disciples.
Now, the funny thing is that Soviet atheism had many of these elements too. Under Stalin there was a strong personality cult of him with its own elaborate rituals. Sure, Russians have a national tendency to worship their strong leaders and this may have something to do with it. The point is, whether Orthodox or atheist, they just keep on worshipping.
Dawkins does not have all the elements of religiousness in place. But he has some: The evangelising of the gospel of atheism and a steadfast anti-theist fervour. When you say that I can’t help but see it this way, it does nothing to change the fact that this is what Dawkins is and this is how he behaves. Yes, I see it this way, but it also is this way.
Atheists often say they are atheists because religion and religiousness does not make sense to them. Yet they fail to see how religious they are about atheism. They are inconsistent atheists, in other words. This applies to Soviet government-mandated atheism, to Dawkins, and to every apologist of atheism, big and small.
Consistency and harmoniously complete world-view is much better.
You are only ratifying what I wrote. There cannot be a “gospel” of LACK of belief. But to a Believer, all opinions must be beliefs, and all expressions of opinions must be gospels. You see Dawkins through your own filter, and you sincerely believe that the distortions your filter introduces are the way it is.
And as you demonstrate once again, you see religion in everything, even in the complete absence of religion!! For you, that absence must also be a religion.
This is nonsense, of course. Sincere lack of belief isn’t some sort of “inconsistent but real belief”. What Dawkins tries to do is explain why he doesn’t believe, and how the tenets of some belief systems have no tether to the real world. This isn’t “being religious about atheism” any more than a math professor is “being religious about math” by simply explaining how math works – UNLESS you can’t help but see religion in everything. But that’s your problem, not the problem with everything.
Logically there cannot be. Dawkins – and all other apologists and evangelists of atheism, big and small – do not care about logic. And you do not care about the fact that apologists and evangelists of atheism exist. And I do not care that you do not care about facts. I have seen this inconsistency all my life.
Dawkins tells believers not to believe. He preaches that religion is bad for people. It is being very religious about atheism and he is not the first one like this. The phenomenon has been around longer than Dawkins so it is not nice of you to pretend that it does not exist. By now, there is quite officially the Church of Atheism (just google it). Less officially, there used to be inquisition of atheism – deadly persecution of religious people in militant atheist totalitarian countries.
Yup, you really do not care about facts. There’s the entire 20th century full of militant atheists with their cults and rituals, there was also the French revolution that immediately started to build its own atheist religion, but all you want to see is “lack of belief” atheists.
And I’m used to your nonsense by now. Dawkins uses nothing but logic, and that’s why you’re so afraid of him. Yes, there are atheists who try to make the case based on facts that religion is based on NO facts, but clearly to the religious, facts and logic either support their superstitions, or they’re not factual or logical.
I agree that religion is bad for people, it warps their minds, and you are Exhibit A for the accuracy of this position. You have been brainwashed into seeing gods, and religious atheists, and other things that aren’t there.
But if you are opposed to political regimes using the power of the state to enforce any sort of belief, then I’m with you. The American tradition is supposed to be that the State neither endorses nor prohibits any religion (as distinct from behaviors illegal for other reasons). I’m as opposed to the State taking my money to support religious schools, as you would be opposed to the State taking your money for anti-religious schools. The State should always be neutral to religion (by itself – some people use religion as a pretext for breaking other laws).
Now, this is potentially tricky. Let’s say, for the sake of discussion, that Dawkins is right and religion warps the mind. Let’s say his characterization of indoctrination of children like you really IS child abuse. Given that, would you expect those like Dawkins to try to do something about it? I suppose you could characterize anyone with a cause, no matter how worthy, as a militant evangelist for that cause. You seem to think that anyone who rejects your beliefs should just shut up and go away, lest you accuse them of being guilty of what they’re rejecting! Heads you win, tails they lose, right?
But of course, understanding that requires logic.
vjtorley:
Denying God’s goodness is one option, and it definitely fits the evidence better than the Christian view of God. Another option is to deny God’s omniscience, or omnipotence, or both. In that case, you would have a God who is either oddly unaware of extreme human suffering, or is aware of it but powerless to prevent it. Needless to say, such a God would bear no resemblance to the Christian God. Another option, which I think is the best one available, is to accept that God doesn’t exist.
Right. The claim that all evil and suffering is “soul-making” is ridiculous. Some years ago I described (at TSZ) a horrifying incident in which a baby was left unattended and the family dog proceeded to eat the baby’s head. What is “soul-making” about having your head eaten before you can even walk? Another example I’ve mentioned is the sickening case of the Jordanian pilot captured by ISIS who was doused with gasoline, put in a cage, and burned to death. (The wonderful folks of ISIS recorded it and sent the horrible video out as propaganda.) What important lesson did the Jordanian pilot learn? That it’s horrible to be burned to death? Whatever lesson he was being taught, could it really only be taught by that degree of suffering? And what about the 200,000+ people who died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami? Did they all need to be taught the same lesson at the same time? And just the people who happened to be in the region at the time? It’s absurd.
vjtorley:
I don’t buy it. If I saw a stranger’s baby whose head was about to be eaten by a dog, I would intervene. I know you would too. Yet neither of us is that baby’s primary caregiver. If you and I would intervene out of concern for a fellow human being, why can’t God do that for his own creatures, whom he supposedly loves boundlessly?
If God exists and is omniscient, he knew that the dog was about to eat the baby’s head. Yet he did nothing. That’s a pretty devastating example of the problem of evil.
Do you really think God thought to himself “I love that child more than his parents ever could, and I know that his head is about to be eaten by that dog, but I’m not going to do anything about it because I’m not the child’s primary caregiver”?
For the sake of discussion, I just expect the discussion partner to be logically consistent. Otherwise there’s no point in discussing.
Dawkins is not logically consistent. On the one hand he says that the universe is pitilessly indifferent (and it follows that he as a random collection of particles of dust in the universe should be pitilessly indifferent also, hence child abuse simply does not exist) but on the other hand he is worried about religious indoctrination of children. If his crusade succeeded, children would be getting squarely mixed signals as a result, just like they are probably getting in religious boarding schools anyway – or any boarding schools for that matter, so he is crusading for zero improvement in children’s situation. All he wants is children to be indoctrinated to his preferred doctrine.
Not even the slightest attempt at consistency, so no point in having a discussion.
You seriously saying that someone who survived USSR – and its collapse – is afraid of someone on the internet just saying stuff? Amazing. USSR did its best to suppress religion and failed. Dawkins’s anti-theist career is already over. He had his best momentum about a decade ago. By now he is just a fireside chat material down the memory lane. I did not fear New Atheism even when it was at its strongest. Those atheists are not able to re-constitute USSR, so there is nothing to be afraid of.
Oh, you were also saying that Dawkins uses logic, even nothing but logic. Another straightforward anti-fact from you.
Erik:
That doesn’t follow. Parts don’t have to share the characteristics of the whole. Dawkins is part of the universe, not the whole of it, so there’s nothing inconsistent about the universe being indifferent while Dawkins himself is not.
No, he doesn’t. He wants children to be able to make up their own minds when they grow up.
It emphatically follows based on consistent atheism. From inconsistent atheism of course either nothing follows or anything whatever you like follows.
Historically, there have always been both religious people and atheists. Dawkins wants to get rid of religious people, even though based on consistent atheism there should be no ground for such desire.
Everybody always made up their own minds when they grew up, as best as they could, after the rebel phase in their teens. In the current Western allegedly free and individualistic and democratic civilisation, far deeper secularised than USSR ever was, one must be severely socially tone-deaf to suddenly perceive religious indoctrination as some sort of a problem.
keiths:
Erik:
Forgive me if I don’t take your word for that. Please explain how it follows, using a reasoned argument.
No, he doesn’t. I’m curious — where do you get your information about Dawkins’s views? Whatever your source is, it isn’t reliable. Dawkins would like to see religion die out, but he emphatically does not want to “get rid of” religious people.
keiths:
Erik:
By which time they’ve already been indoctrinated. Thought experiment: suppose all religious indoctrination stops tomorrow, that kids are taught about all of the major religions, plus atheism, with no proselytizing, and are free and encouraged to make up their minds after they grow up, with full support from friends and relatives and society at large. (We can always dream.) 20 years from now, do you think the Mormon retention rate will still be 60-70%?
Also, try telling a girl growing up under ISIS that she’s free to make up her mind after her nonexistent rebel phase.
I’m not seeing any problems with Dawkins’ logic. It seems that Erik is the one who is having problems with logic.
To be clear, I am not a fan of Dawkins. I disagree with a lot of what Dawkins says about religion. But the problems I have are with his attitude, not with his logic.
No, that does not follow at all. You are jumping to unwarranted conclusions.
No, it doesn’t.
Perhaps it follows from Erikatheism, but it does not follow from atheism. You once again demonstrate that you have a mistaken view of atheism.
Atheism is nothing. Atheism has no required beliefs.
Dawkins is not merely atheist. He is also anti-theist. Criticize him for his anti-theism, not his atheism. They aren’t the same.
Dawkins atheism is based on circular reasoning. “God is just too big of a concept”. Evolutionary theory ( Universal common descent) is based on the circular reasoning of Darwin. From a human standpoint according to Darwin it appears much simpler of an explanation then separate origins.
IMO some people lack imagination for God or a creator even though they have no clue how to explain the origin of the universe we live in. They then assign conspiracy theory to the massive amount of documented evidence that supports the Judea Christian world view. Can we really understand the perspective of the creator of the universe?
We can put down “circular reasoning” as another thing that confused Bill.
Neil Rickert,
Definition:
Dawkins: “God is just too big a concept”. This is the basis of his arguments, and is easily dismissed as assuming his conclusion.
.
colewd:
Where did you get that idea? Are you visiting the same websites as Erik?
keiths,
Hi Keiths
From reading his books. The selfish gene, the blind watchmaker and the God delusion. What do you think his best argument is?
Here is a critique of the God Delusion I found.
Dawkins God Delusion
The origin of the universe we live in of course poses serious questions for cosmologists, because after 13.6 billion years, the evidence is getting kind of old. But Making Stuff Up doesn’t really qualify as an explanation for the origin of the universe either. As for creativity or imagination, I once looked at a origin of the universe “explanations” from a variety of cultures, and some of them were unquestionably imaginative. But equally made up.
I’m not sure (hell, I have no clue) what’s meant by “massive amount of documented evidence that supports the Judea Christian world view.” What sort of evidence might that be? I’m reminded that the harder people tried (and failed) to find evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, the louder and more extreme the claims from Trump about “massive amounts of documented evidence” for what we now know never existed. Which makes me suspicious whenever someone claims the evidence is enormouse but somehow never cites any.
Now, since there is no evidence whatsoever that the universe had a creator, the only way to claim we can’t understand its perspective is to first conjure it up out of nothing. As the leprechaun said to the unicorn, what ARE these human things?
colewd:
keiths:
colewd:
Could you describe what you read in those books that led you to conclude that “God is just too big a concept” is the basis of his arguments?
Nothing in that critique agrees with your characterization of Dawkins’ views.
Bill, your comments reveal that you don’t understand Dawkins, you don’t understand what an argument is, and you don’t understand what it means to assume your conclusion.
“God is just too big a concept” is a statement, not an argument. To turn it into an argument, you’d have to change it to something like “God is too big a concept; therefore God doesn’t exist”, or something like that. I’ve read a fair amount of Dawkins’ work, including the books you list, and I can’t recall him making any argument that depended on the idea that “God is just too big a concept.”
Where did you get that odd idea?
Surely you don’t think Bill has actually read anything Dawkins wrote. I’ve seen claims like Bill’s, and they all come from the sort of religious anti-Dawkins sites one imagines Bill gathers his opinions from. He says he read The God Delusion, but rather than citing that directly, he points you to a Christian critique.
Hi everyone,
I think the horrifying example provided by keiths about the baby eaten by a dog helps sharpen the problem of evil. Instead of posing it in terms of Epicurus’ famous trilemma, I think the point we need to address is this: does God, as the Father of us all (Malachi 2:10), have any responsibilities towards the baby – and in particular, the responsibility to prevent it from suffering such a horrific death? Given that fathers (by definition) have responsibilities towards their children, and that the responsibility in question is one that any competent father could satisfy, the answer would surely seem to be “Yes.” Which leads to the next question: given that God often fails to meet even this very basic standard of responsibility, what could possibly excuse Him from doing so? The only possible answer, as far as I can tell, is: a countervailing responsibility. I’ll say more about that in a future post.
In the meantime, readers might be interested in what philosopher and theologian Andrew Loke has said and written on the problem of evil. Loke is the philosopher who seems to have assumed Craig’s mantle, these days, judging from what he has written (he also studied under Craig at Biola).
A 2015 talk by Loke: Why would God allow suffering? (49 minutes; the last half is more interesting)
An excerpt from Loke’s 2022 book, “Evil, Sin, and Christian Theism” (the first chapter looks interesting). To his credit, Loke appears to have read very widely, although his Fall-based theodicy may strike some as quixotic.
By the way, Bill, thanks for the link to the review of Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.” It’s one of the better ones I’ve read, as it’s both fair-minded and succinct. Although it doesn’t mention the notion of the concept of God being too big, I seem to recall that Dawkins has criticized the theological concept of God as Pure Being in his writings – a concept he regards as vacuous and meaningless. Was this what you were getting at?
Flint:
Like you, I have my suspicions. Wherever it came from, I’m interested in hearing how Bill got his strange idea about Dawkins’ arguments.
Dawkins does build what looks to be a strong case for this position. The contortions you keep going through ought, sooner or later, to suggest a clue. As soon as you posit a god, you’re on real-world (as opposed to theological) thin ice, because the implications of actual gods are both pervasive and vacuous. Once you start attributing personality characteristics, motives, etc. to this god, you fall right through the ice both in the real and the theological world. It’s kind of amusing the entire books trying to square the circle. The entire “problem of evil” derives from arbitrary but inconsistent postulates – that there is a god, that the god is good, that the god has the power to MAKE things good, that plenty of stuff happens that isn’t good. Eliminate the god (and the projection of human personality traits onto it), and all the contradiction goes away.
The fact that people can write whole books trying to weasel around contradictions built into their own assumptions, and never notice that these contradictions arise from their assumptions, says a great deal about the human brain on religion.
Have you read The God Delusion? Just the intro is enough for Dawkins to complain that Christian apologists consistently put words into his mouth that he never said nor implied. He regards sincere believers as masters of both compartmentalization and doublethink.
Hi all,
It is no surprise to me that Tyler Vela saw fit to abandon the Christianity that previously he had been arguing for. I believe that sooner or later the contradictions begin to reveal themselves to anyone who reads sincerely.
As I see it, since the beginning there has always been Christian teachings which have been more guarded than those presented to the masses by orthodox Christianity. In fact the orthodox leaders have done their best to suppress these teachings.
But now in this information age, teachings that have remained below the surface, but never disappeared entirely, are beginning to resurface. i acknowledge that this is churning up a great deal of activity and projects which are shallow and pretentious, but I believe there is a solid core to these teachings.
And so I am suggesting there is an esoteric form of Christianity which nullifies much of the contradictions of orthodoxy. I believe that Tyler Vela has done the right thing and I hope he keeps searching.
Hi VJ
I see many of his arguments as circular reasoning which was also mentioned in the critique I cited. In one of his books he starts his argument with the statement that “God is just too big a concept”. It is simply his opinion. What is circular is he builds on that assertion.
When you say he regards God as a Pure Being in his writings as vacuous and meaningless this again appears to be his unsupported opinion. Have you seen a supported argument regarding this assertion?
Do you have an example of a solid supported argument regarding the disbelief in God that he has made? IMO he has been quite an “unintended supporter” of ID and theism over the years.
Uh, as usual this is backwards. YOU are the one who has made a positive claim, that there are gods at all. It is up to YOU to provide solid supporting arguments for this. It’s not the job of someone else to prove a negative, and then attack them for failure to do so. In the realm of actual evidence and argument, the default position is that there are no gods. If you claim there are gods, you must produce one (and not just produce statements of faith).
Flint,
So there is no positive argument for atheism? Atheism is simply the null hypothesis?
Certainly that is so in my case. Except perhaps the gain in time by not worrying about it. I’m not looking for reasons to be an atheist, it just feels very comfortable.
Pretty much. The null hypothesis for things that don’t exist is that they don’t exist until good evidence indicates otherwise.
However, I’ll go one step further, and point out that IF there were any gods and IF they actually manipulated reality as we know it, and IF they have the sorts of human motivations, personalities, characters, morality as has been attributed to them, the world as we know it would be a drastically different (and inherently unpredictable) place.
For sure, the Christian god and the Hindu gods don’t see eye to eye, so members of both faiths have little choice but to regard the others as deluded! Imagine these incompatible gods duking it out while we mortals are left to guessing what incomprehensible stuff would pop up (or vanish) next! What good would it do mere people to have plans or purposes, if reality were jumping around seemingly at random?
But we don’t even need competing gods, since we have literally trillions of competing prayers. If prayers were answered, a chaotic reality couldn’t help but result.
Since reality seems largely predictable (and science would fail right out the gate otherwise, and it doesn’t), the most consistent faith would be in one or more gods whose task has been to keep reality internally consistent and ensure against true paradoxes. If there were any indication that reality would need this sort of micromanagement, I might believe in a god of consistency myself. But I think it’s more rational to believe internal consistency is a basic property of reality, no gods required.
I take it you are aware of the parable of ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant’
Your faith in the ability of your own perception is on a par with the faith of those who believe scripture to be the infallible literal word of God.
Flint,
And the origin of internal consistency is?
Huh? I said it was an inherent property of reality. Are you asking what “inherent” means?