Loading...I was recently contacted by a conservative Christian theologian who was interested in doing a public back and forth with me, not necessarily a debate but an exchange of ideas on the issue of theodicy – how to explain evil in a world over which God is sovereign.
What puzzled me was his explanation for suggesting the event. He said he had followed my work for years and had read my books, but was surprised recently to find out that the reason I no longer believed in God not “for historical reasons” but because of the problem of suffering.
I have to say, I found this comment to be completely mystifying. I still do.
Not for the rather obvious reason that, contrary to what he said, he clearly had *not* been following me for many years or read my books. A constant theme of my work (blog, books, interviews) is that I became an agnostic because of the problem of suffering. One of my books, God’s Problem, is devoted specifically to the issue, and it shows up just about anywhere you can find me. I suppose that rather than reading my work he has heard about it from others. That’s fine, but you would think he wouldn’t have to lie about it. Or maybe he just can’t read and listen? More likely, I suppose, he was just being polite.
But, as I say, that’s not what really did and does mystify me about his comment. This person is a professor in an accredited Christian university. That must certainly mean he has a PhD in theology. With that as my assumption, I have to ask: how can
Join the Blog and you can see all the rest of this post — plus all the posts in archives going back ten years! Click here for membership options
Maybe you are right about the Christian theologian. I suspect you are. But sometimes drawing a quick and facile assumption about what a person says does not really get at what he may mean. Maybe you could have asked him what he meant by “historical” and given him a chance to explain.
I did. We had a long discussion.
“The events of history are uniformly accidental, incidental, circumstantial, unpredictable, and uncertain.”
And parochial to boot.
Theodicy is my favorite subject of yours. Wonderful article.
Ah! I finally understand what you mean when you say you’re agnostic/atheist.
It seems to me that your viewpoint is along the lines of Epicurus:
If evil exists in this world because God permits it, then He is malevolent (not all-good). If it exists because He can’t stop it, then He is impotent (not all-powerful).
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that gratuitous (pointless) evil is a good reason to doubt the existence of the Christian God.
Dan Barker (Freedom From Religion Foundation) says that all you have to do is visit the children’s ward in any hospital and see the suffering children and their parents praying for a miracle to know that God does not exist.
Hey Bart, Did you share this post with the academic who requested the debate with you? I am interested in how they would reply, or if they would reply at all.
No, but I talked with him at length about it to show why it was a strange vie to have.
It’s hard for all of us, I think, to think outside the box of the traditions and world views we grew up with (including scholars).
I’m guessing, that it’s because you used to believe in the Christian god, and therefore they assume, that is the only god you would ever believe in. But yes it doesn’t require much imagination, to think other gods would be worth to consider. I used to be mormon and when I found out it couldn’t be true, I tried to first hold on to God and Jesus. Later I tried to hold onto the idea of a god. Now I am an agnostic atheist. Agnostic only because you can’t prove a negative
My experience is that for some people, *thinking* is the ultimate heresy…
I’m assuming you turned down the invitation…did you challenge his assumptions about your reasons for not believing in God? Probably not worth the effort, but I’m curious.
Yup, we had a long talk about it.
I guess they don’t use your text books?
Only for target practice.
The basic issue here seems to one of the definition of ‘g(G)od’. If we define him by his acts as shown in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, then he is very different character from the God of the theologians with attributes inferred from his self description in these very scriptures. In them he claims to be sole creator, with perfect knowledge of past, present and future, with sovereign command of all events in the universe. Add to these the wonderful attributes of love, mercy, justice, patience, goodness, forgiveness and so on. Your theologian ‘friend’ is starting out with a very different definition from yours.
Hi, Dr. Ehrman. How does Jesus get away with saying in Matthew 19:8 that *Moses* allowed divorce because of the hardness of men’s hearts? Isn’t the law Jesus is referring to, Deuteronomy 24:1-4, a law decreed by *God* and Moses is just conveying it and all the other instructions in Deuteronomy to the people as God’s spokesman? Why is Jesus throwing Moses under the bus as if Moses came up with the law on his own? And if that law regarding divorce was from God, isn’t it from Jesus in some sense, too? Is Jesus not aware he is a member of the Trinity?!? Thanks!
Yeah, good question. I guess he means “God speaking through Moses” made this concessoin because you are such awful people…. But no, Jesus would not be aware he was a member of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity developed only centuries later. My view is that Jesus did not think he was himself God in any sense.
Christians would argue that Jesus was aware of his divine status.
I’m not convinced by this post. I think many of us acquired religious beliefs, more or less firmly held, by being exposed to them in our homes, Sunday (or Friday) school, and church (or mosque.) And some of us found a diminishment in these beliefs as we became exposed to critical scholarship, in my case through John Dominic Crossan and Richard Elliott Friedman. It’s a move from one way of thinking, of traditions and texts, to another way of thinking, of critical thought and evaluation.
I don’t think it should make anyone an *atheist* though. It would simply make them a different kind of Christian who didn’t have a fundamentalist view of the Bible.
I still think that’s a little unfair to the fundamentalists 🙂 Sure, if the bible is untrue about the virgin birth, that doesn’t matter too much. But if the bible is untrue about the resurrection, there still may be a Christian god, but there is little reason to think so. My own beliefs faded under the glare of Crossan’s chapter on the resurrection. Beliefs need reasons, not necessarily good reasons, but reasons nonetheless.
I’m not sure I see why the existence of a Christian God rides on the resurrection. I know lots of CHristians who don’t believe in a physical resurrection. ANd logically, Jesus could have revealed who the true God is and stayed dead.
I was recently revisiting your series of posts about Luke 3:22 from way back in August of 2013 and had a couple questions if I may.
1. If the Codex Bezae textual variant is the original reading doesn’t that at least imply that it might have been the original reading of Mark 1:11 as well? I realize we have no surviving textual variant for Mark but Luke uses Mark and “today I have begotten you” would seem to better match Mark’s adoptionist tendencies otherwise.
2. Do any of our sources place Jesus’ adoption as divine son at his baptism besides Mark? I realize we have other adoptionist texts but other than Mark (and Luke following Mark) they seem to place Jesus’ adoption at the resurrection. Do we have any texts other than the canonical gospels Mark and Luke that place Jesus’ adoption at his baptism?
Thanks!
1. No it wouldn’t suggest that, since Luke changed a lot of things in Mark, and Matthew has the form closer to Mark. So there’s nothing really to suggest it. 2. Well, Luke 3:22. And it is often thought that the entire Baptism scne is meant to show that this is when Jesus first reeived the divine favor. But since the baptism scense in the Gospel are our only baptism accounts, that would be where they idea would be found.
“I don’t believe he/she/it exists. I don’t try to persuade other people to agree with me, but it’s what I personally think.”
I understand what you are saying. I could write these same words myself.
You must be aware, however, that there are Christians out there who say that you are “turning Christians into Atheists”. As an example, a Christian Youtuber starts a recent video saying:
“He [Bart Ehrman] may have turned more Christians into Atheists than anybody else alive today.”
Well, Charles Darwin was also not trying to convert or deconvert anybody. So, do you think that you *are* turning Christians into Atheists?
Oh yes, I know that. People believe all sorts of weird things! I myself don’t see how I could turn anyone into *anything*. Wouldn’t they have to decide for themselves? I may help pepole to *think* on occasoin….
I think you have put your finger on it–helping people to think on occasion. That’s exactly what organized religion (Christian, Islam, Jewish) do not want their indoctrinated believers to do–to think for themselves. Such independent thought is considered sinful, i.e., worthy of eternal punishment.
In the young, reading can be a transformative experience. Dr Ehrman’s books are not polemics against belief, but to the fundumentalist, they are doubly dangerous, if belief rests on inerrancy.
Man is NOT the rational animal — man is the animal that rationalizes. Generally, rather than dispassionately evaluating evidence and seeing where it leads us, we decide what we want and then try to justify the decision already made. The degree to which we are convinced that we are not subject to limitations of this kind in our thinking is usually the same degree that we are.
You know, I think this is one of your more important posts. I don’t think I’ve encountered this sort of clarification before, from anyone. Sometimes the “obvious” remains unstated or merely implicit, and needs to be stated VERY clearly and explicitly. Because sometimes smart people still fail to assemble the puzzle. The pieces are there, but the picture isn’t.
I have often wondered why I subscribe to your site. I don’t really have any interest in religion, belief in God or biblical history. I am just an atheist software engineer with a fondness for ancient Greek. But, my goodness Bart, you can write. This is as lucid and entertaining a blog post as i have seen in years. Thanks for working those sentences.
To try to answer: smart people are some of the dumbest folks around. They can spin up some wild connections and then let them calicify as obviously true while they head off to new terrain. WF Buckley’s quote regarding his preference for being governed by the first 2000 people in the Cambridge phone book over the Harvard faculty is on point. Second, I suspect that many theologians feel as though theodicy is settled ever so slightly in the theists’ favor, and that it seems to them like old hat, kind of like chatting about the cosmological argument. There are so many reasons not to believe in God — my main one is just a version of Occam’s razor — that you would need to resort to theodicy even strikes me as a little strange.
Is the logic something like: “if the Bible is true then God exists”? But not: “if God exists then the Bible is true” (or “if the Bible isn’t true then God doesn’t exist”)? The first could be true without implying the second, couldn’t it?
Unless the first statement is circular reasoning, ie, we know God exists because the Bible says so; and we know the Bible is true because God says it is?
And doesn’t history have a bearing on whether Christianity-but not necessarily theism-is tue?
I’m just trying to sort this out in my head. Clearly there could be a God even if Christianity is not true. But if the reason people think God exists is because they think the Bible is true, wouldn’t it be logical that errors in the Bible remove that particular basis for believing God exists?
The fundamentalist reasoning seems confused and imprecise but not irrelevant to whether God exists.
It could be and for most thinking people believe in God, it is! But God could be true without a Bible. History may have a bearing on whether Christianity is true. But doubting many of the hisotircal claims of the Bible in and of itself does not mean that Christainity is false. Jesus could have died for the sins of the world even if almost everything we think about his death is wrong.
Since I first began thinking about it-despite a strong (Catholic) religious upbringing-I believe I’ve always had serious doubts that the traditional Judeo-Christian God exists, specifically that he intervened in the world. Rather than the problem of suffering specifically, I thought that the world should be perfect if God did exist. (If Jesus was God and perfectly loving, why didn’t he cure all the sick people living at the same time as he did?)
Instead of the traditional God, I formulated a belief in a God who was perfect in himself and who served as a goal that the whole of reality was drawn to. I think I got this idea from Aristotle. I think there are still strong elements of this idea in Catholic theology-probably via Thomas Aquinas.
“God as ultimate goal” doesn’t explain where imperfection came from in the first place. But I thought it was enough that there was an ultimate goal out there that we could work toward. From a practical standpoint, there was no reason to worry about how imperfection originated. That’s just the way it was. Perhaps it was original sin, primordial alienation, in some sense.
When some Christian’s realize the Bible is not what they think it is, they lose all faith. He might have been assuming such an experience and not thinking the existence of God is tied into historical events. That would be absurd as you point out. Sloppy wording (conflating theism with Christianity) maybe or the person lives in an echo-chamber. Historical issues caused my spiral from faith into atheism. I believe you described a somewhat similar experience in regards to textual criticism somewhere. A crack in the dam. Took me a long while to get back but the problem of evil is ever present. I have a little theological fabric softener here and there but nothing that is going to explain it.
The cross comforts me in dealing with this problem. I don’t know anything about “blood magic” or penal substitution but the solidarity model of atonement speaks to me. Doesn’t solve evil but God took his own medicine, lowered himself and told us he understands our pain because he has been there. If natural evil is not a necessary component of a free world I have nothing for it.
I wonder if the phenomenon in psychology called “functional fixedness” might in part explain the cognitive dissonance in some people. Having been indoctrinated in fundamentalist Christianity from a very young age, it took me a long time to transcend the entrenchment. I can see how some people never do.
“Is there some other kind of divine force in the universe?” I’ve always liked how Dr. E phrased his answer in some of his talks: “HOW THE HELL WOULD I KNOW?” 🙂
Is it possible he meant to say he was surprised to find that you’re “not Christian” not because of historical reasons, rather than “you don’t believe in God” not because of historical reasons?
I think when you’re a conservative Christian, “not Christian” and “doesn’t believe in God” can sometimes have a Freudian-slip level of interchangeability. Or sometimes saying “doesn’t believe in God” can actually mean “doesn’t believe in the Christian God”.
As a lay person who was born and bred in fundamentalism myself, it was learning about the history of the Bible that led me out of fundamentalism. So in a way, “history” helped me eventually be “not Christian”. But then comes the decision of what to actually believe, which, as you say, is what relies on a variety of other non-historical factors. (Which I didn’t even realize how complex an issue that was until I had my fundamentalist blinders off! Maybe even smart people have a few blinders too. 😉 )
That would certainly make better sense; I’m not sure he separates the two in his head.
Thank you, Dr. Ehrman, for your honesty in clarifying your position. You could easily have said, “I prefer not to say,” just as at one time, people in the US didn’t say who they voted for in an election. Today, people are compelled to tell everyone who they support politically.
Imagination wins over facts every time.
When I mentioned to an evangelical what the life expectancy of a person from “biblical times” was, she said, “Oh no, that isn’t true; there were many people in the Bible who lived to be hundreds of years old.” It was then I realized I had to move on as she would never accept my point.
So facts don’t matter. Thousands of people rot away, get blown up, shot, or hit by drunk drivers, and those facts are pooh-poohed away because we need to not question God’s magnificent plan. People imagine God is good and rationalize there is a good reason for the carnage.
If prayers aren’t answered, there was a reason, and they are being answered in ways beyond our understanding.
It’s a game. It’s called making stuff up using one’s imagination and having faith in that action.
Bart, some characters in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis) living for hundreds of years: is this a metaphor for a long, faithful life rather than literal? What did the authors mean by this?
It was a common trope in ancient writings to claim that people in much earlier times lived much longer. Hundreds of years! I suppose they really thought so. Things were better back in teh golden age!
Now, I am curious about how he justified his logic. You seem to be saying that he just does not attempt to explain his linking of history to agnosticism.
Perhaps, it was just another way to think about theodicy. In history, God doesn’t seem to care. In the whole history of Judaism, the human ideal of the perfect relationship between Israel and God was about 100 years, during reigns of David and Solomon–the united kingdom. (God preferred the pre-monarchy.) And even the united Israel was terrible. God never fulfilled his covenants, but the Bible blames it on the humans. God orders sacrifices and then rejects them. He sends Nabonidus to destroy the country like an abusive parent. Historically speaking, the relationship was pathetic, a bust.
I think suffering is the final nail in the coffin. For me, because I grew up fundamentalist, learning the exodus and conquest did not happen, contradictions in the Bible, errors, etc. Drove me away from the faith and kept me as an agnostic for many years. Evolution was also pretty powerful also. I became an atheist once I was honest with myself and take the plunge.
Did he actually say – explicitly – that not believing the Christian Bible version makes you literally an atheist, or merely an atheist, in effect, from his perspective?
I’ve never heard anybody make the former claim, but I suspect most true believers – of any religion – figuratively think the latter.
When you were 20 and somebody told you, “I don’t believe in the Bible”, what would you have thought – generally – that meant in terms of their theism?
He thought that I became a literal atheist because of my historical studies.
Often Christians don’t clearly articulate the logical structure of their belief system. However there is something you are missing about their belief system, which is not as irrational and non sequitor as you are describing. The line of thought you find mystifying can be summarised as follows:
Premise 1: If the Bible is historically accurate in its entirety, then the Christian God exists.
Premise 2: If the Christian God exists, then God exists.
Premise 3: The Bible is not historically accurate in its entirety.
Conclusion A: Premise 1 and Premise 3 imply the Christian God does not exist.
Conclusion B: Premise 2 in conjunction with Conclusion A implies God does not exist.
Premises 1 & 2 are irrefutable. Christians vigorously defend the belief in the historicity of the Bible e.g. purported claims such as parting of Red Sea, Virgin Birth, Jesus’ miracles, bodily resurrection of Jesus. Now, you are right that both conclusions A and B are making a logical fallacy termed the fallacy of the inverse: “If X then Y. Not X therefore not Y”. Sometimes, Christians present their belief system as if it is based on this fallacy. But these Christians are in fact misrepresenting the logical structure of their own beliefs system.
[continued] When properly presented, their belief system is not illogical but rational. I suggest the true structure is as follows, formulated not just in terms of propositional logic, but also of epistemic logic:
* Premises 1-3 are as before.
* Belief A: I believe the Bible is historically accurate in its entirety.
* Conclusion X: From Belief A, in conjunction with Premise 1, it follows on ground of rationality that I believe that the Christian God exists.
* Conclusion Y: From Conclusion X, in conjunction with Premise 2, it follows that I believe God exists.
Thus far, this line of thought is perfectly cogent. Suppose I, as the Christian believer, have never evaluated other grounds for belief in the Christian God and in generic theism, due to lack of time. Now I am presented with incontrovertible evidence that the parting of the Red Sea, Virgin Birth and the resurrection were not historical, but were legends. Hence Belief A is false. Therefore I – as an individual – no longer have good reasons to believe in conclusions X and Y. Therefore I ought to be epistemically agnostic about Christian theism, and theism in general.
If I may please, and I’m not a logician, but, It appears that the structure of your arguments may require some clarity.
Your arguments should read:
p1 – If the Bible is historically accurate in its entirety
c1 – then the Christian God exists.
p2 – If the Christian God exists
c2 – then God exists.
Given the above, if Dr Ehrman demonstrates that p1 is problematic, c1, p2 and c2 fail.
Also, structurally, depending on the definition of “God,” the argument that comprises p2 and c2 results in a tautology. Generally, the xian “God” is “God.”
In the manner your comment is presented, you have not identified which part of my argument requires clarity. For starter, your p1 and p2 are not grammatically complete sentences, hence they are not premises. One can regard the conditional statement “If the Christian God exists, then God exists” as a tautology. In logic, it is a strength to show a statement is tautologically true. I am not sure what you mean by “…c1, p2 and c2 fail”. Remember “If X then Y. Not-X therefore not-Y” is a fallacy.
I propose the following logical reconstruction of the Christian position:
P1: If X then Y.
P2: If Y then Z.
BeliefA: I believe X.
Conclusion1: P1 in conjunction with BeliefA implies on ground of rationality, I ought to believe Y.
Conclusion2: P2 in conjunction with Conclusion1, implies I ought to believe Z.
P3: I find unconvincing other grounds for beliefs Y and Z.
Now, I am presented with incontrovertible evidence that X is false. Hence P3 implies I no longer have epistemic grounds for holding beliefs Y and Z. Therefore I ought to be epistemically agnostic about Y and Z.
Convince yourself the above reasoning is cogent. Now substitute X=”the Bible is historically accurate in entirety”, Y=”Christian God exists”, Z=”God exists”.
Thanks, acknowledged, and agreed.
My bad: I had not read your original post properly.
Cheers.
If I recall correctly, you have said that the “my God is stronger than your God” argument may have played a part in conversions by early Christians. So isn’t the claim that God was able to restore a crucified human to life an attempt to use history to prove a theological point?
It certainly was used that way, yes. But if God had not done so, and people wrongly said that he had done so — that would have no bearing on whether God exists or not. If someone wrongly says that I did something I didn’t do, I would exist no matter what they said.
This feels a little unfair to me: You ridicule the idea that historical contingencies could *prove there is no God*, but you start off asking how anyone could think historical reasons might lead one to *agnosticism*.
Of course, you are right: history can’t prove that God doesn’t or couldn’t exist.
But at the same time, *if* Christianity were historically true (including its many core, historical claims of supernatural events), then that would have a pretty direct bearing on the question of whether there is a god.
So conversely, if Christianity (including its core historical assertions) is not true, while it wouldn’t (as you well note) prove that there is no god, it might still remove the strongest and most compelling reason that a person had for asserting that there is a god, at least that there is “the traditional God of the Jewish and Christian traditions”. Finding problems in Christianity’s core historical claims might well leave someone an agnostic by default.
That’s pretty much what happened to me, and I am a trained theologian, who until recently taught in accredited universities, and I was very much not a fundamentalist (at least not in any strict sense) prior to my deconversion.
I agree that some people might think that the best proof for Christianity for some people is “historical evidence.” But if Christianity is not true, that has no bearing on whether God exists or not. That’s what I’m saying: to think the existence of God is based on the historical reliability of religions claims OR on the truth claims of any particular religion, is a failure of imagination. Leaving Christianity does not at ALL require leaving a belief in God. The best proof is that there are literally billions people in the world who do not believe Christian truth claims or the truth of Christianity itself, but nonetheless believe in one of more gods. So how can the falsity of Christian truth claims necessarily lead to agnosticism?
Porphyry’s deconversion experience initiated by his finding problems in Christianity’s historical claims,is shared by many American evangelicals-turned-agnostics. They came to believe in God because they were initiated to or grew up in Bible-centred form of Christianity. The Bible permeates throughout evangelical culture and church life. Themes of biblical stories captivated their religious imagination: stories of God creating a good world, choosing a people, deliverance of his people, God becoming man, dying for sins of the world, defeating death and evil. They did not come to faith in two sequential steps involving belief in generic theism (say based on design,cosmological,or ontological arguments), followed by distinctively Christian theism. Instead, they came to believe in the Christian God from the outset. Often, when evangelicals come to acknowledge the core historical claims are problematic, it undercuts their religious worldview, which does not then default to generic theism, but to agnosticism or atheism, because the only form of theism they ever believed in is Christian theism. Logically, undermining Christianity does not undermine Islamic theism. But many Americans just don’t find Islamic culture remotely attractive. An evangelical coming to believe core biblical stories are legendary, is hardly going to fall for belief in an inerrant Quran.
You could call it Christian narcissism – belief in “God” only counts if you believe in the Christian god. There is similar reasoning in “intelligent design” – somehow they think that if some Being created the universe, that proves that Christianity is true.
Now that I think about it, Christians have always been obsessed with “proving” that their view of God is true. Judaism and Islam do not share that obsession. I think it betrays an insecurity which goes back to the beginning, with the Christian attacks on Jews for not agreeing with them about Jesus.
There is no way to prove or disprove that “God” (in the meaning of an intelligence that created the universe) exists. It is possible to convincingly demonstrate that the evidence for the existence of the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, etc, versions of God does not withstand impartial scrutiny.
“Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do.”
Bertrand Russell
“A moment’s thought would have shown him, but a moment is a long time and thinking is a painful process.”
AE Houseman
Two of my favorite thinkers!
I read several of your books cover to cover before I had any idea your chief problem with Christianity was theodicy. And I believe I learned of it not through your books but in a published interview. Calling the guy a “liar” is a bit much.
I don’t believe I called him a “liar” did I? I did say he hadn’t read my books, and that’s true — he clearly hadn’t. I never ever in any of my books say I became an agnostic for historical reasons. But the other point I should stress is that having a problem with Christianity is not at all the same as becoming an agnostic. In fact, that’s what I’m trying to say.
The Holocaust created a multitude of atheists amongst Jews.
There were many theodicies. The orthodox had the worst possible one: Israel had sinned and therefore deserved it.
The one clamoring for attention in such verdict was the God of the Hebrew Bible. Unfathomable, distant, punitive, unforgiving, cruel, one who would look down on a defeated, pained Job. No wonder Ancient Israel was always drifting to other gods, gods of earthly love, fertility, saving rain, life itself.
But of all the theorizing ,the most unacceptable was the breaking of the Covenant. God had promised Israel that in exchange for Israel’s faithfulness, God would protect it.
Even after the miracle of the restoration of Israel in 1948 -by secular, atheist Jews- , Israel’s strength,its ” never again” promise to itself, trusting its earthly power rather than divinity, there was no way back for the vast majority of Jews.
Yet a new meaning of ” miracle” arose: in Israel,to be a realist, you believe in miracles. The Messianic era began with the Redemption brought by the new State.
I should know. I was born on Israel’s Independence Day. My orthodox grandfather named me Redemption, Geula, which is my Hebrew name.
Dr. Ehrman,
“God’s Problem” was the first book of yours I read.
Before “GP,” I thought the only reason belief in God would stop was when the reasons for belief could no longer be justified. But you offered a positive claim: “Belief in God is not tenable because the presence of gratuitous evil in the world.”
You changed my mind. Your other books can be disturbing but, by impact, not even close to “God’s Problem.”
Thank you.
I understand your friend’s lack of understanding – I studied under those professors. Theodicy, to them, is 5-8 minutes in a Theology Proper class, in an air-conditioned room, to students who might not have ever been hungry in their lives. – not much more.
Your struggle with this was not without effect and consequence.
Bart, I am an agnostic who attends a Christian university where probably over 95% of the students adhere to some form of Christianity. All my Professors are Christian, and I always encounter this sort of thinking. One of the reasons I like reading your work is because you are logically sound and a great critical thinker. I do not understand why so many fundamentalist professors appear to have terrible critical thinking skills.
It’s almost like they are so heavily trained in the Bible, yet they do not have solid logic and critical thinking foundation.
THat was my experience as well.
Fundamentalist professors seem to be critical of others views but don’t engage in critical self-reflection.
Better late than never, no response expected.
Have you ever looked into the works of Stephen Myers—THE RETURN OF THE GOD HYPOTHESIS or David Berlinski—THE DEVILS DELUSION. My understanding of their perspective is that suffering has nothing to with this thing we call life. I am convinced there is a god and I am convinced he does not care. We are simply in one of many cycles of exaltation and desolation that this plant will go though in the remaining two billion years the sun has in this cycle.
Well, the sun’s gonna be around for 5 billion years, but who’s counting. I haven’t read their works. I think most people who are suffering feel that it very much has to do with this life….
I understand why this Christian theologian is hung up on the “for historical reasons” idea because I probably view things similar to him. Other people certainly process information differently. I don’t think “smart people not thinking” is a fair characterization. My own path to atheism started with a discussion of the Trinity, which went something like “is there one God or three?” and the response was “it’s a mystery.” That sounded to me like a bulls**t answer, so I stopped believing anything that went along with that answer. Nearly everything we believe or know comes from someone else. If this someone is shown to be wrong, faith in that source is shaken. If someone had told me Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo, and I found out the truth later, my faith in anything this person says would be shaken. Believing the Bible is true, only to find out later about historical errors, can shake faith in the Bible and cast doubt on people who say God exists and the Bible is true. Faith has almost nothing to do with history but everything to do with trusting a source.
But it sounds like you thought about the question of God and realized what you had heard didn’t make any sense. That’s a theological reflection about what makes ultimate sense — it’s not a belief that if certain things didn’t happen in the past as historical events therefore God could not exist. I can totally see the direction you went. But how a thinking person could say — if Jesus never existed, there could be no God — I’m completely puzzled. Just think about it. How would that make sense? History is simply what happened in the past. Trillions of things could have happened that didn’t happen and trillions of things have happened that could have happened differently — whether there is a god or not, right? If the authors of the Bible had never lived, and so had never written the books of the Bible, it would have no bearing on whether there is a superior power in the universe….
I think you and the theolgian has different definitions of “God”, and it is not obvious which definition is the “right” one. “God” could mean, for example:
1. A supernatural being who created Universe and set the laws of nature.
2. The tradtional God of the Jewish and Christian traditions, as you described it in your post.
3. The Fundamentalist God, whose words are written in the Bible, which therefore is 100% literally true.
Since it can be proved by historical science that the Bible is not 100% literally true (for example, there was no world wide flood a few thousand years ago), it is possible to reject belief of the God of the third type by historical reasons. Then, if the theologian defines “God” by no 3, his statement makes perfect sense.
And are you sure that historical science an have no bearing on no 2? If, for example, we can find no historical evidence of divine intervention in eartly matters and of the effect of prayers…?
We both *thought* we were referring to #1; for him that also meant (necessarily)*2; and he appears to have understood it as necessarily *3. That’s my point. Any highly educated thinker who says that if the fundamentalist view of God is not true then there can’t be a God may be educated but she or he ain’t thinking.
And yes, I’m absolutely certain that none of the sciences can have any bearing on either 1 or 2. You will find many, many hardcore sciences in all the disciplines who believe in one or both.
No doubt Christian apologists think you are like Richard Dawkins. But you’re more humble than him Bart!
Thanks. I actually like him a lot, and think he is a brilliant thinker. He can be harsh in public settings on people who spout what he thinks is nonsense. Often they just don’t know any better, but it can be infuriating when people who know almost literally nothing about a topic (say, evolution) expostulate on it (based on what they’ve heard others who know nothing about it say) to someone who is a world-expert on every aspect of it. My sense, though, is that it is better to try to discuss matters with people and help them see your point of view rather.
I do have to admit, though, usually that’s not so successful either.
disabledupes{a78d366ab7f097a9691a8ab19485b786}disabledupes
Human suffering is merely one aspect of history—proceeding through time on a path that is more or less accidental.
Best reason to think there is no supernatural being has nothing to do with suffering, deciphering the meaning of any religious text, etc. It is physics, i.e. that the entire universe is controlled by four forces: Gravity, electro-magnetism, strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force. Period. Quite easy to defend these and their consequences.
Oh boy do I hear you.
Newtonian’s theory of gravity evolved with Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which is now under scrutiny by scientists.
While I agree with you that math and science involve a much more concrete understanding of our world, the laws of physics, however we ultimately understand them, don’t negate a supernatural being behind such laws of physics.
But the laws of physics have little to do with the belief in a God, who supposedly dictates a moral code. Gravity states we should remain firmly planted on earth. But Bernoulli’s principle allows us to counteract the gravitational pull of the earth and fly. When we start manipulating the laws of physics to change the natural course of events, moral issues arises. Climate change for instance.
Given the numerous extinction events in the history of the earth, is climate change really about “saving the planet?” After we kill ourselves off, won’t earth just continue on to the next epoch? But it seems to be a significant moral issue, primarily among atheists. Why?
Bart, Wow, right on the mark. Well done!
👏🏻🙌🏻
I have never heard anyone say anything along the lines of “if the Bible is not literally true, then God doesn’t exist” or “if Jesus never existed, there could be no God.” These are ridiculous statements. I imagine someone saying such a thing is trying to make a theological point rather than stating a belief. On the other hand “for historical reasons” makes perfect sense to me. I look at it this way. We all derive our beliefs from someone else. We do not generate a belief in God on our own. Someone tells us “God created heaven and earth” and all sorts of other religious stories. If this person (or the Bible or whatever) is shown to be wrong in one or more ways, then belief in the main story, that God exists, is also shaken. A non-belief in God becomes possible. By the way, if I was able to get past biblical inaccuracies and maintain a Christian faith, then the problem of suffering probably would not bother me either. I could easily conclude that God is indifferent and maintain a belief in God. That is how I feel. You obviously feel different which I totally respect.
I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing when we use the term “historical reasons.”
After some serious questioning of Christian beliefs, which included reading some of your books, I became an “atheist” as to the Christian God. Not necessarily because of the “problem of evil” but more in the context of Jesus’ sacrifice to “save us from our sins,” which as far as I’m concerned defies logic.
However, I remain convinced that there is “some other kind of divine force in the universe.” Primarily because of the “programming” that I see in the natural world. Cowbirds, sea turtles, etc.
I believe that the “idea” of such a divine force in the universe really is not all that controversial. Rather, the controversy begins when someone ascribes certain characteristics to this divine force. Thus, its seems most atheists, such as yourself, are really not atheists as to ANY god. Just the Christian God.
But to really claim to be a true atheist–disbelief in ANY god–one should develop his or her own concept of a god that they find satisfactory. But then a paradox arises. If one develops a concept of god which they find satisfactory, then they can’t really be a true atheist.
Have I thoroughly confused you?
No, I pretty much agree. Though when you define this being as “divine” and a “force” I suppose you’ve already attributed characteristics to it. And yes, I’m an atheist with respect to any non-material beings in the universe. I do not believe there’s such a thing as the “super” natural. THe natural itself is amazing enough….
Been busy lately, but I wanted to respond to your statement that I’ve already attributed certain characteristics to the “divine force” of the universe. You mention the amazing character of the natural world, which I think pretty much everyone believes has a creative and designing force behind to it: Einstein’s theories of relativity; the Big Bang Theory. A “supernatural” being, as you say, whether material or not, would have a conscious and a will. He or she would, as the willful creative and designing force of the universe, would also have the power to alter the natural course of events in the world. I believe that there are examples of “conscious and willful” design and alteration in the natural world. Sea turtle hatchlings have programmed into them the instinct to move toward light, which leads them into the sea. The FOX2P language gene developed, most prominently in humans, as part of the evolution process. I expect that you consider these two examples as part of the “natural” process. I don’t. I see them as a conscious and willful design.
I understand that your primary objection involves the problem of suffering. I have considerable thoughts as to why, but I think those who find this their major stumbling block, essentially are saying “if I were God, the conscious and willful designer of the universe, I would not have included pain and suffering.” And therein lies the common flaw of most religions, which is equally applicable to atheists—the claim to “know” God. Do we really need to ascribe certain characteristics to God to interact with the natural world as part of God’s conscious and willful design of the world? I’ll use an analogy.
You have a microwave oven without a manual. While you may not “know” the designer and creator of the microwave oven, it’s reasonable to assume someone designed and created it. Do you need to ascribe certain characteristics to the designer and creator of the microwave oven to figure out how to use it? Not really. But there might be certain circumstances where might consider the designer and creators “intent.” When you microwave a wet hamster to dry him out and he explodes, you might consider that was NOT the designer and creator’s intended use.
Yes, that’s an interesting pint, but it is not not what I’m saying. I do think it — that is, I think that if there was a God he would have done a better job of it. But that isn’t my point. My point is that it is very difficult indeed to believe that there *is* an all loving and all powerful God — one who wants the best for people and sometimes provides it and is certainly capable to provide it when ever he chooses — who is in charge of this world, given the massive amount of suffering in extremis that the world has seen since human life appeared. So I simply see no reason to believe that that kind of God exists.
It’s a great, sad example of the reality of fundamentalism, but maybe a doorway to compassion for those still trapped by it? I was there for decades.
A huge part of conservative faith is the falseness of other gods, including the ‘god’ of individualism, wealth etc. that atheists are deemed to serve. As Dawkins is fond of saying, ‘Christians are atheists about every other God; we just go one god further’.
It’s the same reason many think losing faith might turn them into lustful, greedy, self-centred heathens. When you’re convinced every other worldview is seductively false – and dangerous – propping up ‘true faith’ becomes the ultimate task. Anything that comes close to poking a genuine hole in the ‘rock’ has to be perceived as terrifying, devilish temptation to apostasy and nihilism.
Abstract deism will have been discarded years ago, pushed away by immense fear of any other theory of existence (plus nascent inclinations towards critical thinking).
The mind has been funnelled so successfully into narrow paths that all perception and knowledge gets warped. Only pseudo-intelligence & understanding is possible – perhaps also why the theologian misinterpreted your loss of faith.
Bit like trying to describe the rainbow to someone with colour-blindness (also me) !