Nearly a year ago, I wrote a pair of posts entitled Hard Questions about God (part 1 & part 2). When I was a Christian, I would have avoided reading something that casts doubt about the Bible. And whenever I was presented with difficult questions, I would have usually either looked away out of fear, or simply dismissed the questions with a wave of my hand. I was good at rationalizing answers. Confirmation bias is, after-all, a powerful thing. We humans are profoundly motivated by fear and by the need to protect ourselves. Sometimes, cognitive dissonance can compel us to pursue truth even though fear pushes us to run. I’m truly glad I eventually swallowed the red pill.
While the theme of questions below are not fully original to me, they follow up nicely to my previous posts.
Questions Christians Can’t Answer:
- Do you believe hell is an appropriate and/or justifiable punishment for a simple lack of belief? If that punishment is never-ending (per Jesus in Matt 25:46), do you still believe it justifiable?
- Using only the Bible, can you make a moral case against rape? Or against slavery? And can you do so without disregarding substantial passages found in the Old Testament that discuss property rights of fathers over their daughters and the rights of slave owners over slaves?
- If today, a devote group of Christian men were to enter a neighboring town and slaughter all who lived there because it was reported that the residents were largely populated by those who didn’t worship the Christian God, would that be justified? What if those Christians believed God had commanded them to do so? And what if God’s command included that women, children and infants be slaughtered by the sword? Since such events are recorded in the Old Testament, is it accurate to describe the God of the Old Testament as loving, merciful and good? Is it possible that such written accounts were man-made justifications to overtake another tribe?
- Would you kill babies or children for God if you believed Yahweh asked you to do so? Since such instances are written in the Bible, is it possible that others have murdered their children because “God told them to do so”, and in fact, God actually did tell them to? If you don’t believe God would do that today, why not?
- Would you sacrifice your beloved child if god asked you to?
- Can God tell a lie if he wanted to?
- Is it acceptable to disregard commandments or doctrines in the Bible that you don’t like? If you disregard commands that you disagree with, how do you justify doing so?
- The Bible declares in Genesis that all animals were plant eaters (herbivores) before the flood. Why do we find that dinosaur fossils show an abundance of carnivorous animals which contradicts the Bible?
- If Noah’s flood really took place as described, and if the boat came to rest somewhere in the middle east (as described), how did animals like kangaroos and pandas get from there to other continents which have a huge expanse of ocean between?
- If a dear friend believed that the earth was flat (a “flat-earther“) by claiming that all pictures and videos which show a sphere shaped planet are man-made lies, would you be able to convince them that the earth is a globe?
- Similarly, is there any amount of evidence that would change your view about the validity of the Bible?
good post. IF one believes the bible, then your question “•Can god tell a lie if he wanted to?” is answered by a definitive yes.
Thanks. I’m curious if you could elaborate? I can recall that when the thought of “could god lie?” has been raised in my past, the pat Christian answer was “no, God can’t lie” and that “we are confusing God’s inability to lie with a deficiency that equals a flaw” (or some such double-talk).
Sure. biblegateway.com is my go to for getting bible verses and it has them in many different version of the bible.
There’s a handful of place where God or the prophets are quite happy to say God lies in the OT, 1 kings 22 or 2 Chronicles 18(much the same as what is in 1 kings but for some weird discrepancies) or in Ezekiel 14. My favorite, though, is in the NT 2 thessalonians 2: “11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
This, with the claims of Romans 9, paint this god in a less than favorable light. Add to this Revelation 21 where this god is working hand in hand with his archenemy, and one has to wonder just where the idea that this god is good comes from.
Mr. Clay, you are mistaken about many things concerning God. By the manner you address beliefs in God or in a god, you seem to set yourself above this very God. It appears to me that if this god does not fit your template, then it does not exist. Well… this is where you have gone wrong; because, if there is indeed a God, then all standards are set according to Him. And here is what that would mean in your world: if God say that something is a lie, then it is a lie. If however, God would say that very lie, then it would become true by virtue that He is God and He sets the standards for truth. However, if that God were perfect, then He would be consistent so that lies remain lies and the truth is immutable. I believe that is what we are dealing with because there is a God. His name is YAHWEH, and His word is True. The burden is on you to prove that He can lie. BTW, I could answer every one of your so-called tough questions very reasonably and cognitively if you could keep up a logical argument.
” … if you could keep up a logical argument.”
Your logic, IRonMan, is no more sound that what Clay has put forth. The ONLY reason you feel you are being more “logical” is because you happen to believe in a supernatural entity referred to as God or YAHWEH and thus, you are guided by reasoning based on that belief.
Clay is guided by reason, logic, and reality.
Hey Ironman, long time no chat. Hope you and the kids are well.
In response to your comment, the same logic would apply to any assessment you’ve made of Zeus, Hermes, Vishnu, Shiva, Allah, etc. If you don’t believe they are true or real gods, you have set yourself above them. And if those gods fail to fit your Biblical template, then they don’t exist. But billions of people would disagree with you.
You mentioned that it’s incumbent on me to prove Yahweh can lie. While I think that’s rather illogical for me to prove that a fictional deity can lie, we have examples in the Bible of God fully endorsing deception. In 1 Kings 22, we have the Lord sending a deceiving spirit to accomplish his desires. And in 2 Thes. 2, we have God sending a “powerful delusion” so that unbelievers will continue to believe a lie. In Genesis, we have God declaring that the punishment for eating the forbidden fruit is death (“surely you will die”). Did they? The Christian answer is always, “oh, it’s a symbolic thing — spiritual death occurred”.
Is God outright lying in the above examples? It is debatable but either way it’s embarrassing that the character named Yahweh would resort to vagueness and/or deception.
And I’m happy to hear your logical arguments to any of the other post’s bullet points, if you’d care to offer them.
Great post, Clay. As a pastor, I taught church members to “faith” it when confronting hard theological questions. We had a certain set of beliefs which we believed were absolute truth. When confronted with things that didn’t fit into the approved box, faith was always the solution. In time, I would say, God will make all things clear to us. Until then, we just need to trust him.
Thanks Bruce. That’s an interesting expression too (“faith it”). That reminds me of the story of Billy Graham vs Charles Templeton (or at least the version of the story as told by Strobel). Apparently, when Templeton left the faith and didn’t want to continue preaching with Graham anymore, Templeton attempted to share why he could no longer believe the Bible which put Graham in great distress. But eventually, he decided that although Templeton made a lot of logical sense, he would “faith it” and remain an evangelist. I understood that in Billy’s later years, he perhaps relaxed on some of his previous fundamentalist points? I’m not sure of that, but that all came rushing back to mind.
Love your blog, BTW. I don’t have time to comment often but I read nearly every post).
How does a virgin give birth nearly 2000 years before IVF?
How does a man live inside a whale?
How does Jacob ascend a ladder to heaven?
And actually, how does someone who is dead come back a few days later?
Yes, and how do a bunch of zombies come back to life the same weekend as Jesus and yet it only gets a modest mention in a single gospel (Matthew 27:52-53), with no other historical record for such an incredible event?
Most of these question seem hard to answer because they are based on absurdities.
For example, the question, “Can God lie?” is like asking, “Can pigs fly?”
The first question about hell is absurd because it demands a judgement only God can make.
Saint Thomas Aquinas addressed this sort of sophistry back during the Middle Ages in his tour de force, “The Summa Theologica.”
A person versed in simple, basic philosophy can cut through these questions like a hot knife through butter.
Really SoM. So tell me how a virgin gave birth nearly 2000 years ago before the introduction of IVF?
Rough,
You are asking a question based on faith yet demand something else.
That is an example of the very absurdity I pointed out in my previous comment.
Again, you are demanding an answer from me that only God can answer.
According to the Bible, the Immaculate Conception was powered by the Holy Spirit, who is God.
So basically, what you are telling us is this:
”I, SOM am a ginormous indoctrinated arse-hat who has no farking clue, but if it says in the bible that Yahweh knocked up a fourteen year old Jewess, then he did, because it’s in the bible, and the bible is Truth. Now stop asking silly questions.”
Blah, blah, blah.
It’s interesting that you briefly respond to bullet points 1 and 6 but skip bullet points 2, 3, 4 and 5. It’s easy to be dismissive and claim the questions are based on absurdities without tackling them.
I could respond to them all, but I only picked two for brevity.
In order to be credible, you need to respond to my comments which answer questions you claim Christians can’t answer.
Otherwise, what good would it do for me to go through the whole list when they all possess the same type of error?
However, I really like the question, “Would I kill my child if God asked me too?”
Because to answer that question we have to know who God is and we have to know that it is God who is really asking the question.
Consequently the question is absurd.
That is because, of all the creatures on Earth, man is the only one who has no idea of his human nature.
If man does not know himself, how can he know God?
Also, the question is the result of a supremely flawed understanding the story of Abraham and his son Isaac.
Again, that means the question is based on an absurdity, which is the same type of error found in the other questions I addressed.
Tap tap tap… Dance!
Rata,
Simple reasoning and basic philosophy are not tap dancing.
You seem to have fallen for your own propaganda.
All the questions in this post are examples of simple sophistry, which is authentic tap dancing.
Don’t call me rata.
We have to “know who God is”??
Yes, the character of the old testament is a very distasteful sort. Dawkins puts it right when he says, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
So would that sort of deity ask a man to kill babies and children? Certainly. The fictional accounts show us that.
You dodge the question though as to whether you would kill your own child if God asked you to.
Clay,
I feel it’s safe to say you are a pro-abortionist, correct?
A pro-abortionist? That’s an odd thing to say. I favor family planning.
Pro- choice then?
You see the conundrum then?
That depends on your perspective. If I favored the routine termination of pregnancies, then sure, I’d see your point. I favor giving life a chance when possible and feasible. The greater conundrum is the worship of a baby-killing god. Yahweh is the all time champ here. For those who believe the stories from the OT and NT, you have a god who kills millions of children (and babies) in Genesis 6 by choking out their breath with water. He doesn’t even make it a quick painless kill. It’s an elongated and terrifying event. Yahweh also: kills the first born of Egypt; orders the slaughter of entire tribes or towns; sends two bear to maul 42 young boys; and does nothing when Herod orders the death of all first born. And for those who believe that God is in control, we know that somewhere between 10% – 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage — a termination that the woman is not in control over. Who is? If God is in control (as most fundamentalists believe), He’s terminating potentially billions of fetuses over the course of time. Yahweh: the ultimate baby killer. But even that aside, God’s 150 occurrences of killing his creation in the Bible is grotesque. And thankfully, mostly fiction.