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.
I don’t see how this answers my question sorry phoodoo. The children are actually denied choice because they are not given the information that the school is going to collapse. Presumably if they are given that information (or if their parents are) they will make the choice to leave the school before it collapses.
I don’t see why its necessary to define some perfect world (which to you seems to be a world with lots of whipped cream) before one is able to say that something is good or bad.
But in any case my question wasn’t about God. Obviously I would extrapolate your answer. But are you able to answer the question just for yourself? Obviously the answer is “yes” you would warn the children. But why is that you can’t just say that word?
I don’t know what a “whip cream orgasm” is but I’m interested in finding out.
KN,
If phoodoo is into it, I’d suggest caution.
Keiths knows all about it. He dreams about it every night. It is the only theme he ever discusses here. He just is a bit shy to to admit it, so he disguises it in every discussion about how God doesn’t love him enough.
vjtorley:
From the Catechism of Trent:
keiths:
Vincent:
As RoyLT pointed out, that reinforces my point rather than refuting it. The criminal sucked up to Jesus at the last moment and got himself off the hook.
Why not forgive everyone? Why this petulant “Well, if you’re not going to suck up to me, I’m not going to forgive you” attitude?
keiths,
Yea Roy, why not whip cream for all, even those who don’t exist? If you were a loving, omnipotent God, wouldn’t you make infinite souls with infinite pleasure, infinitely? Why have choice?
phoodoo,
Your flailing is just making it worse for you.
But if you insist on flailing, why not tackle one of my questions regarding your goofy “choice” argument? For example:
Flail away.
keiths,
How much money keiths, how much money? Just more, is that it?
Just dropping in to point out that phoodoo is still dodging my questions.
Rumraket,
Hey, what a coincidence! He’s dodging mine, too.
I wonder how many times a day phoodoo thanks god for the pettiest things.
Thank god for dazz.
It was a cross, not a hook. And he didn’t get off it.
There’s no evidence that Jesus said any such thing to the other criminal. You’e making stuff up. Again.
However, Jesus is reported to have said the following:
How does that fit into your narrative?
keiths,
Careful. Trent’s decrees were written in Latin, not English.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
And from Pope John Paul II in 1986:
God is sort of bipolar. He’s all cool and the next thing you know, he loses his shit over a fig tree.
cuz not enough whip … err… figs
keiths,
Augustine was indeed a Christian, but he was a pretty cranky one, with a warped view of human nature. Thankfully his ideas had little influence over Eastern Christianity, and Aquinas forcefully rejected his gloomy view that unbaptized infants go to Hell. And I should add that even though Augustine maintained this position, he nevertheless taught that “the mildest punishment of all will fall upon those who have added no actual sin, to the original sin they brought with them.”
But, you ask, what about the Council of Florence, and its statement that “the souls of those who depart this life in actual mortal sin, or in original sin alone, go down straightaway to hell to be punished, but with unequal pains”? Let me ask you this: are you seriously going to argue that the Council was condemning as heretical Aquinas’ view that unbaptized infants go to Limbo instead? I don’t think so! You need to be careful about the word “hell.” The Apostles’ Creed, for instance, asserts that Jesus descended into hell, but Christians generally interpret this to mean the Limbo of the Fathers – Hades as opposed to Gehenna.
Here’s what Fr. John Echert wrote about the passage you cite from the Council of Florence, back in 2003:
Finally, what about Luther? Here’s what he wrote on the subject:
What about Calvin, then? Here’s an excerpt from John MacArthur’s sermon, The Salvation of Babies Who Die, Part 1
It appears that the belief you ascribe to Christians was never commonly held, but was influential in the Christian West for a few centuries, following Augustine’s death. Anselm and Aquinas sensibly mitigated it, and in the 21st century, it has undergone further mitigation.
Why would he be talking to himself?
Why would Aquinas and Anselm need to mitigate a belief that was never widely held?
Well that’s great for the Calvinists. But what about the Roman Catholics? Have they deemed Aquinas’ limbo-view as heretical?
That would defeat his purposes. He also doesn’t care to understand the use of fire as symbolism. The more that you study “hell” the less it looks like it actually refers to Hell.
Derp.
Has the belief concerning the nature of an omnibenevolent deity also undergone revision over time?
Vincent,
Let me remind you of your claim:
keiths:
Vincent:
As I showed you, it is not “a total travesty of Christianity”, unless you pull the “no true Scotsman” move. Do you expect us to acquiesce as you dismiss what St. Augustine (and others) believed as “a total travesty of Christianity”, as opposed to the one true Torley Christianity?
Please.
You reacted emotionally to my pointed criticism of the Cross and tried to dismiss it out of hand as a misrepresentation. It isn’t.
Now, we can separately discuss whether Torley Christianity, in particular, withstands my criticisms. I doubt it. In the meantime, though, don’t pretend that what I’m criticizing is “a total travesty of Christianity.”
Vincent,
Do you think Paul got it wrong when he wrote the following?
I’m encouraged that you’ve already rejected so much of the Bible, as we discussed in the ‘evil newborns’ thread. Does that also extend to this pronouncement of Paul’s?
You’re becoming less Christian by the day. And that’s a sincere compliment.
Vincent,
Regarding the issue of unbaptized infants who die, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (in which I was raised) says this:
That isn’t merely a historical curiosity. It’s a current Christian belief.
keiths:
Mung:
As if I had made that claim.
Your desperation is showing, Mung.
Vincent,
Do you have any evidence that the following is a mistranslation?
Vincent,
I see no evidence that they were even trying to address Aquinas or Limbo.
Their statement is unambiguous:
Unless you want to claim that this, too, is “a total travesty of Christianity”, you appear to be stuck.
Vincent,
You quoted John Echert on the fate of unbaptized infants who die.
First, note that what you dismissed as “a total travesty of Christianity”, Echert confirms as a Christian belief:
So Christianity is not off the hook, even if you reject that particular belief.
Next, you emphasized this part of his statement…
…as if that would solve the problem.
It doesn’t. It’s still paints God as an ass. Why deprive a child of the Beatific Vision, on a technicality, simply because God chose to kill him or her prematurely?
Mung:
Rumraket:
Mung:
Despite Mung’s mindless dismissal, it’s actually a good question.
The obvious explanation is that Jesus didn’t think he was God, contrary to later Christian dogma.
ETA: It also explains why Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Nothing, I suspect. That’s the problem (if there is one). Intellectual arguments are ineffective against emotional attachments when the alternative is social exclusion. Seems to me what is lacking in the US where Christianity is the centre of cultural life are real alternatives. Ara Norenzayan makes this point strongly in chapter 10 of Big Gods suggesting that without alternative social structures that are secular, the choice to abandon religious belief is not an attractive one.
You make up words and put them in the mouth of Jesus but then can’t say to whom they were spoken. And I’m the one that’s desperate.
The gospel according to keiths.
So? And later Christian dogma doesn’t claim that Jesus is God the Father. But you already knew that. Another keiths #LogicFail.
On my reading list:
“The Trinity: Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound” by Sir Arthur Buzzard et al.
So you’re clearly saying that God and Jesus are different beings, right Mung?
RoyLT:
Not different beings. Different persons. According to orthodox Christian teaching, God the Father is a different person from God the Son, even though they are the same being (God). Jesus is one person (God the Son), in two natures: a Divine nature which knows everything and a human nature which has a limited human mind and a human will which is distinct from, but necessarily in accordance with, the will of God. Jesus’ human will is free to choose between alternative goods, but it is not free to defy God, because Jesus’ human nature does not possess a human personality of its own. God the Son assumed a human nature at the Incarnation, when God became one of us. That’s what a Christian who accepts the decrees of the first seven ecumenical councils (as Catholics, Orthodox and many Anglicans do) would say.
Trinitarians believe that the Father and the Son are distinct persons, so Jesus was not talking to himself. To be sure, the Father and the Son are the same being (God). In modern parlance, one could say that God is a tri-polar being, with the three poles in constant communion with one another, within the one Divine Mind. Pole A (the Father) is the root pole. Pole B (the Son) is continually (or I should say, timelessly) generated from pole A’s thinking about itself. B is A’s expression of itself. Pole C (the Spirit) is generated from the mutual love between pole A and pole B. Human reason cannot prove the Trinity, but there is nothing in the doctrine which is contrary to reason.
Whether you specify the parts of the Trinity as ‘persons’, ‘aspects’, or ‘hypostases’, it still does little to solve the paradox of one ‘being’ asking itself why it has forsaken itself.
Either (a) Jesus has no free will (which the inability to defy God strongly suggests to me), or (b) he did not truly become one of us (since we purportedly have the freedom to defy God – hence the fall), or ( c) God is able to create a state where a ‘person’ can be free while still not choosing anything evil (which leads us back to the dead-horse of the problem of evil).
The Trinity, while a clever way of placing a fig-leaf over completely incompatible assertions within Christian theology, resolves none of these incompatibilities. Jesus is the same as God but different, free to choose but not free to choose evil, and equal to God while being subordinate to God.
We appear to have very different standards for what is consistent with reason. I assert that, were the doctrine of the Trinity utilized as an explanation to you for any phenomenon outside of the faith into which you have been indoctrinated, you would laugh at the teller and call him a fool.
keiths,
You point out that the Council of Florence states:
As I explained in the link to Fr. Echert’s article, the word “hell” is understood broadly here, as any permanent state of exclusion from the Beatific Vision of God. Fr. Brian Harrison (who is pro-Limbo), in a scholarly article on the subject, agrees, pointing out that in the documents of two ecumenical councils, Limbo is at the “border” of Hell, not Heaven. On this definition, the Limbo of Infants would technically be part of Hell, even though infants in Limbo suffer no pain or distress. (Indeed, Aquinas held that these infants would still possess a natural knowledge of God, and a concomitant natural happiness, even though they were excluded from the supernatural beatitude of Heaven. Many of the Fathers at the Council of Florence would have been Thomists, who shared this view.)
You also quote Fr. Echert as writing:
Some of the Western Church Fathers (especially in the first few centuries after Augustine’s death) did indeed hold that unbaptized infants suffered (very mild) physical pains in Hell. That’s a pretty dopey belief, but it was never defined Christian doctrine. In the fourth century, St. Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329 – c. 390) commented in Oration 40, 23 that infants dying without baptism “will neither be admitted by the just judge to the glory of Heaven nor condemned to suffer punishment, since, though unsealed [by baptism], they are not wicked.” This was the common view of the early Church Fathers. St. Augustine’s rigorist view was influential in the West from the fifth century onwards, but Peter Abelard (1079-1142) felt free to contradict it, rejecting material torment (poena sensus) and retaining only the pain of loss (poena damni) as the eternal punishment of unbaptized infants for their original sin. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Limbo, “Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, popularized this view (Sent. II, xxxiii, 5), and it acquired a certain degree of official authority from the letter of Innocent III to the Archbishop of Arles, which soon found its way into the ‘Corpus Juris’.” Aquinas was the first to maintain “what the great majority of later Catholic theologians have expressly taught, that the limbus infantium is a place or state of perfect natural happiness.”
Finally, you ask:
Leaving aside the fact that God doesn’t usually choose to kill infants who die prematurely, your question is a valid one, in my view. I can’t see any sense in God doing that. Recent Popes (Benedict XVI and Francis) have held out the hope that God has some supernatural way of freeing these infants from original sin at the moment of death. Fr. Harrison thinks it’s presumptuous to demand a supernatural intervention from God at the death of every unbaptized infant, and I certainly wouldn’t presume to tell God what He must and must not do. However, I think it’s reasonable to hope that He does indeed bring all of these infants to the joys of Heaven.
It is important to note, however, that even if God did not do that, He would be doing these infants no injustice, as they enjoy perfect natural happiness, forever.
Finally, you ask:
No, I don’t think St. Paul was mistaken. A foolish act by one of your ancestors could have terrible consequences for you. That doesn’t mean you’re guilty of wrongdoing; it just means you suffer because of your ancestor’s mistake. The same logic applies here, with the transgression of our first parents and the Redemption of the human race by Jesus Christ.
RoyLT:
It’s only a paradox because you equate “being” with “self.” Trinitarian Christians don’t.
Option (c) is correct. For all we know, God could have created a race of rational beings lacking the freedom to choose evil, but possessing the freedom to choose between alternative goods. This doesn’t exacerbate the problem of evil, unless you pose this problem as a general question, “Why did God create a world in which innocent sentient and sapient beings suffer?” This is not a good question, because God has no duty whatsoever to create the best of all possible worlds (even if there were one, which there isn’t), or even a world with the least amount of evil. For to whom would such a general duty be owed? Duties can only be towards someone, and prior to God’s creating any world, there is no-one towards whom God has any duties.
But if you were to ask, “Why do innocent sentient and sapient beings suffer in this world, which God created? Why couldn’t God have made us perfect?”, then the answer is that even if God could have made morally perfect rational beings, they wouldn’t be us. They’d be other individuals. Our identity as individuals is dependent on the parents, grandparents etc. that we had. Go far enough back, and none of us would exist, were it not for some act of wickedness on the part of our ancestors. (I assume you, like me, have some Viking blood in your veins.)
Individuals are unique, irreplaceable and of infinite value, and two infinites are no greater than one, if they’re infinites of the same sort. Consequently, a world filled with morally perfect rational beings is not a better world (in terms of total intrinsic value) than a world filled with flawed beings like ourselves.
We don’t know why God chose this particular world to create. But we can say that He did not wrong anyone by doing so.
The trinity was the last nail in the coffin of my deconversion. It doesn’t make any sense at all. Sorry Vincent, but the above sounds like new-agey mumbo jumbo to me. Not contrary to reason?… well, if you say so…
vjtorley:
Paul isn’t merely talking about adverse consequences. He’s talking about condemnation:
Do you think he is wrong to claim that we are condemned on account of original sin?
RoyLT, to vjtorley:
I agree. Though he’s moving in the right direction, Vincent hasn’t gotten to the point where he can judge his faith objectively by the same standards he applies elsewhere.
RoyLT:
Which should be possible, given that God himself is supposedly such a being.
Just a little note – you get given condemnation whether you want it or not but have to ask for accept salvation…
Rich:
Yes. Can’t you feel the love?
vjtorley:
That’s debatable, but in any case it’s clear that God at the very least chooses not to prevent those deaths. As a result, the poor kids are deprived of the Beatific Vision through no fault of their own. And that’s according to the most charitable of the views described by Echert. In the other views, those poor kids actually suffer sensory pain for a sin they didn’t commit, because God both neglected to protect them from an early death and insists, legalistically, that the unbaptized cannot be granted salvation.
It’s good that your conscience recoils from that, as does mine. But remember, those are actual Christian views that we are recoiling from.
And it’s reasonable to conclude that if he doesn’t do that, then his love is deficient.
keiths, is your problem with the cross, or is it with various doctines of atonement?
You might find this book interesting:
The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion
Vincent, to RoyLT:
So? There are countless trillions of possible people who will never exist. If God isn’t doing them a disservice by failing to create them, then what would be wrong with a world in which he only created morally perfect beings?