In a recent thread, I challenged Christians and other believers to explain why their supposedly loving God treats people so poorly. Toward the end of the thread, I commented:
We’re more than 1200 comments into this thread, and still none of the believers can explain why their “loving” God shits all over people, day after day.
If you loved someone, would you purposely trap them under the rubble of a collapsed building? Or drown them? Or drive them from their home and destroy their possessions? [Or stand by, doing nothing, while a maniac mowed them down using automatic weapons?]
Your supposedly loving God does that. Why?
As you’d expect, the Christians struggled to find a good answer. One of their failed attempts was to appeal to the Cross. Fifthmonarchyman, for instance, wrote this:
I just think that the way to understand God’s love is to look at the Cross and not at the latest natural disaster.
That’s fairly typical. Christians do see the Cross as a great symbol of love. Jesus was willing to lay down his life for us, after all. What could be more loving than that?
The problem is that they haven’t thought things through. When you do, the Cross becomes rather appalling. Here’s how I put it in response to FMM:
That’s right. God had the power to forgive Adam and Eve. A loving God would have forgiven them. The Christian God refused to forgive them, banished them from the Garden, made their lives miserable, and then blamed their descendants as if they had anything to do with it.
The Christian God is an unloving asshole. Thank God (so to speak) that he doesn’t exist.
And just to complete the picture, he decides that since Adam and Eve ate a particular fruit — something he knew would happen before he even created them — everyone must be tortured for eternity after they die. (Can’t you feel the love?)
But wait — there’s a way out! This psychotic God is willing to forgive us after all, because he tortured himself to death! He just needed a little more blood and gore in order to forgive us, that’s all. (Can’t you feel the love?)
So FMM comes along and says “ignore the natural disasters, ignore all the ways God torments people, and look to the Cross,” as if the cross were some great symbol of love. It isn’t. It’s the symbol of a creepy God who
a) creates people and sticks them in a Garden;
b) gets the bright idea of putting a tree in the Garden that he doesn’t want them to eat from;
c) blames them for eating from it, even though he knew that would happen before he even created them;
d) blames their descendants, as if they had anything to do with it;
e) decides that everyone must be tortured for eternity, because Adam and Eve ate from a tree that he was stupid enough to put in the Garden;
f) decides that he might be willing to forgive everyone in exchange for more blood and gore;
g) in the ultimate act of self-loathing, tortures himself to death; and
h) with his blood lust satisfied, finally agrees to forgive people;
i) except that even with his bloodlust temporarily satisfied, he’s still an asshole; so
j) he decides that he’s still going to torture for eternity the folks who don’t believe in him at the moment of death, and only forgive the ones who suck up to him.
Can’t you feel the love?
Christians, pause and ask yourselves: What happened to me? How did I end up believing something as stupid and ridiculous as Christianity? Why am I labeling this monstrous God as ‘loving’?
The Holy Spirit is a wondrous thing. It descends on people, making them incredibly stupid. It even makes them forget what love is.
Now, I’m fully aware that Christians don’t all agree on the historicity of the Adam and Eve story or on how atonement works. We can discuss some of those differences in the comments below. But I do think it’s striking that Christians have not come up with a story that makes sense, and that a large number of them unwittingly hold beliefs that paint God as monstrous, not loving, and the Cross as the symbol not of love, but of a petty and ungenerous refusal to forgive until blood is spilled.
The Cross truly is an embarrassment, right at the heart of Christianity.
God does not demand punishment. A person’s higher self, the god within, seeks to compensate for the wrongdoings they are responsible for. So it could be said that we punish ourselves.
Says Charlie. The Bible, and most Christians, disagree.
Including by sending ourselves to hell?
Either way, what was the point of Jesus’s death on the Cross, in your (presumably Steineresque) version of Christianity?
CharlieM:
I’ve said nothing even remotely like that.
The reason we can’t take the “clairvoyant investigations” of Steiner or the “research” of Hubbard seriously isn’t because I haven’t had similar experiences. It’s because they are the unverifiable blitherings of a couple of fatuous gasbags, and they bear the hallmarks of grade A crackpottery.
CharlieM:
But when God does it, it’s A-OK in Charlie’s book.
keiths:
CharlieM:
Then you’ve invalidated your own “because it brings us closer to him” excuse.
CharlieM:
keiths:
CharlieM:
What are you talking about? Suppose God had intervened at the last second to save al-Kasasbeh. Whose free will would he be obstructing? He didn’t stop the ISIS knuckle-draggers from trying to kill al-Kasasbeh — he just prevented them from succeeding. Do you think God has promised to us “Whatever you attempt, you will succeed at”? Obviously not.
So you’d walk up to someone being tortured, who’s begging for the pain to stop, and say to them “Don’t complain. Your ‘higher nature’ signed up for this”? I imagine they’d tell you to take your own ‘higher nature’ and shove it up your ass.
How sick do you have to be to minimize a person’s suffering by saying “Oh, their higher nature is fine with this. It’s all for the best”?
Look at what you’re doing, Charlie: “Evidence show God bad. Me no like. Bad evidence! Me ignore bad evidence! Me want loving God. Me like! Me believe!”
Not sure what the significance of the question is, but I’ll gladly take a stab at it. However, I will also pose a question in return and I expect you to answer it.
Answer: Assuming the existence of souls arguendo, I have no idea how many souls exist or will exist. But I cannot fathom a reason why any of said souls (if they are in fact Created by and dear to a loving God), should be excluded from the eternal paradise in his presence. So while I can’t guess a number, I would say all of them.
Question: Assuming that you believe in the existence of souls and a loving God… what percentage (very roughly estimated) of souls do you think have been sent to the fiery depths for eternal torment?
33 The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. 34 Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”
35 And the Lord struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made. (Exodus, 32)
Kantian Naturalist,
The world has been set up such that choice is shared. It is also set up for probabilistic outcome which is required if decisions are part of the process. The horrific incident is part of the nature of this condition.
RoyLT,
Charlie accepts that humans, not God, are responsible for the Bible’s contents, so he presumably would be unmoved by passages such as the one you quote.
colewd,
The obvious follow-up questions: Why did a supposedly loving God set things up that way, and why doesn’t he intervene to prevent horrific outcomes?
keiths,
-It is horrific from the perspective of the well, maybe not outside it.
-He set things up so we have to make decisions from which we develop. If the outcome is always ok then there is no real decision. Similar to how we raise our children. As loving parents we do not completely insulate them from risk.
colewd,
You come across your daughter being brutally raped. Do you
a) defend your daughter and fight the rapist off; or
b) encourage him to continue, saying to your daughter “This may seem horrific, honey, but we’re just frogs at the bottom of a well. God knows best, and if he’s allowing you to be raped, there must be a good reason for it.”
Your grandchild is about to be burned to death in a cage by her demented captors, and is crying out to you for help. Do you
a) immediately help; or
b) say “Sorry, honey. God is teaching someone an important lesson here. I mustn’t interfere.”
Good grief, Bill.
I had seen that exchange, and I certainly don’t expect anything that I say to move him. Just putting a specific example to your general comment about the Bible and Christians at large disagreeing with his assertion.
I’m completely in favor of people drawing their own understanding from the Bible. Likewise from the Ramayana, the Tao Te Ching, Aesop’s Fables, etc. However, the ad-hoc hermeneutics employed by Apologetics often strain my credulity. When your starting assumption is a literal view of the resurrection of a 3-day old cadaver, I would beg leave to question criteria by which you filter other narratives in the Bible as literal or analogical.
keiths,
Maybe the answers are not important to his argument.
keiths,
Can you now try to paint the scenario where I have 10 billion kids and 7 billion that are currently reside on earth? From this perspective I can at least see the light outside the well.
keiths,
keiths, you are at the hospital getting more medicine for that irritating rash you have had for a while, when you see a husband taking his pregnant wife in for a check-up. Do you:
A). Pull your hand out of your shorts to stop itching, smile, and say, hello.
or
B). Rush up, push the man out of the way, kick the women in the gut as hard as you feel necessary to give her an abortion, because, well, the baby is going to die one day, so why would you want to cause such grieve. Then reprimand them for being so selfish. Then as the husband is coming forward to choke you, do you say, “You could say thank you, you are just digging the hole deeper by insisting you are right. Remember the last time you were wrong in an argument, that didn’t go so well did it? See, here, here, and here…”
?.
colewd:
What are you arguing, Bill? That God is too weak to treat 7 billion people well? That he can’t muster enough love to go around?
RoyLT:
Charlie’s case is particularly interesting, because he doesn’t really seem to trust the Bible and instead gets his Christianity from Steiner, of all people.
Here are some Steiner gems, taken from The Mystery of Golgotha:
And:
And:
Pure horseshit. “Clairvoyant investigation” my ass.
keiths,
Hey, you didn’t answer the question!!
As I say below, our higher ego, the god within, in other word, we ourselves realise that we must compensate for our misdeeds.
IMO after death we go through what Roman Catholics would term purgatory where we experience the consequences of our selfish desires and actions, we feel the pain and suffering that we have inflicted on others. This must be experienced if we are to progress.
At the time when humankind was going through a stage where it was progressing from having an animal like nature to gaining a self-conscious ego it received the temptation. At that time it was not developed enough to resist this temptation. So sin entered humankind through no fault of its own. So in order to compensate for this something had to take place by which humankind could be redeemed. That something was achieved by the actions of Christ uniting himself with earth existence.
Is that Steineresque enough for you?.
When you have read any of his basic works such as The Way of Initiation, and I believe that you have thought about and pondered over what is written therein, then I might take your criticisms seriously.
We are not in any position to judge the suffering of another. All we can do is to help as best we can to alleviate that suffering, that would be the default position.
RoyLT,
It’s not that I don’t trust the Bible, it has more to do with the fact that what I read in the Bible is a translation of original communication in languages that that I do not speak and so in the main I have to rely on second hand sources in which the intended meaning may be lost. I do not believe that the translators always get it right.
CharlieM,
Yea, like when VJ claims the bible says “will” instead of “would”.
Even worse, you come from an entirely different culture than the original author, your knowledge of the world is radically different. And finally the intended meaning was the intention of a divine being as told to a finite being
Which is it? Are you agnostic on suffering or do you feel that suffering is finely tuned to the spiritual needs of the victim?
I’m confused as to your beliefs in this regard. Do you believe that damnation is eternal or do you think that all souls not sent directly to Heaven end up there eventually after an unspecified period of spiritual remediation in a post-life Purgatory?
Moved a post to guano.
What I mean is that if we see someone suffering we should not speculate on why they are suffering we should do what we can to alleviate their suffering. It’s okay to speculate on past suffering but definitely not on suffering that is in the process of happening. There is a time and place for everything.
Maybe it would help if you knew that I believe in reincarnation and karma.
I agree. Consciousness evolves. Do you agree that our modern day ego consciousness is something that at some stage the ancestors of humans did not possess? We are evolving beings and at any stage up to the present it can be assumed that there are no physical beings on earth with an unlimited awareness of reality. Ancient humans did not have a consciousness which was the same as ours but with less knowledge, they had an altogether different consciousness.
Interesting. But by itself, that fact is not particularly helpful. With that statement you have diverged so far from anything recognizable as Christianity that every detail of further discussion would have to be qualified to such an extent as to be highly burdensome.
And you haven’t answered mine:
CharlieM:
Why? You’ve told us that God has reasons for allowing their suffering. Who are you to interfere with God’s plan?
You clearly haven’t thought this through, Charlie. You’re just making it up as you go.
The conclusion — that God is loving — comes first. The rationalizations follow, as necessary. It’s the very opposite of truth-seeking.
Unless it is in the past? Remember that several examples discussed on this thread did in fact occur in the past (e.g. Earthquake in Mexico, Jordanian Pilot).
That does not sound like you are limiting it to the past only. It sounds like a general speculation on the nature of suffering. It appears to me that you are being highly inconsistent.
keiths:
CharlieM:
You’ve quoted this passage from Steiner with approval:
You’re letting Steiner tell you what the supposed real meaning of these contradictory texts is.
Steiner hurks up stuff like the following, and you lap it up:
keiths:
CharlieM:
In other words: “You don’t know Rudy the way I do. If you did, you’d see that he isn’t a crackpot. He’s a misunderstood genius!”
Out of curiosity, Charlie, how long have you been a Steiner acolyte? How many years?
keiths:
CharlieM:
How does “Christ uniting himself with earth existence” entail getting tortured to death on a cross? Couldn’t Christ have found a less bloody way to “unite” himself with us?
That’s okay by me if you don’twant To discuss it further.
Where did I say that suffering was part of God’s plan? Maybe by failing to act I am going against God’s plan. Christ commanded us to love one another. If I saw someone suffering and I saw no reason for their suffering I hope that I would help them if I could.
What if it is not a conclusion but an experience?
RoyLT,
I think this doesn’t quite get my question. Your suggestion was to just skip the experience of life on Earth, because its evil to struggle, so why not just give everyone a Heaven instead. This is also what Rumraket has said, and Keiths, well who knows what he believes. So what I am saying is, if there is no Earth first, which has both good and bad experiences, and instead all you have are souls which never experienced anything but pleasure, then we must forget about choices. We must forget about relationships, we must forget about doing good, and being heroic, about being decent, about every aspect of human existence that we call good, because instead we are just brains in a vat which do nothing. So if you were only always just brains in a vat doing nothing, is there any difference between God only creating one souls ever, and creating an infinite number of souls, since the experience will be the same for all, and all will never have known any different.
So if God created 10 souls, and just made them brains in a vat for eternity, then no one exists to complain why not 20 (if you are just a brain in a vat experiencing 24 hours of only pleasure, when is there time for complaining?). Or why not a billion, or why 5, or why not none. Its all the same.
No choice, no good, not bad, no motivation, no movement, no love, no regrets, no improvement, no ideas, …1 or a billion, its all the same.
So what percentage of souls are in hell? I have no idea, because I don’t believe in hell the way it is described. Maybe hell is just nothingness.
Just like heaven
TSZ is hell.
He’s running.
The conclusion — that God is not loving — comes first. The rationalizations follow, as necessary. It’s the very opposite of truth-seeking. Yet it’s the keiths way.
No, the evidence comes first. This is not difficult, Mung.
keiths:
CharlieM:
A rational person would evaluate the experience. Is it trustworthy? Is it just wish fulfillment? Does it fit with the evidence? Does it make logical sense?
A Steineroid, on the other hand, would just think “Me like! Me believe!”
keiths:
Mung:
But of course he didn’t.
Now’s your chance, Mung.
CharlieM:
keiths:
CharlieM:
Don’t play dumb. You’ve been telling us all along that God allows suffering for a reason.
Maybe by acting you are going against God’s plan. If God is willing to allow their suffering, then why aren’t you? Do you think God is screwing up and that you have to step in to fix God’s mess?
If suffering is a learning experience that the victim’s ‘higher nature’ signed up for, then who are you to deprive their ‘higher nature’ of that experience?
You’re tripping over your own arguments, Charlie.
What’s your motivation for being at TSZ if you’re not interested in having a reasoned argument about what is most likely to be true?
Maybe that is an argument for a good God, we were in hell before we were born and we will be in hell after. Life is just a vacation from nothingness.