reasonable dissent

You may have heard this form of terrible argument as the latest Facebook wall posting or as the answer to one of a myriad of Christian theological questions.  It usually goes something like this:

“Although prayer does not change God’s will, he just wants to see how faithful you really are.”

or

“God puts us through trials and suffering to see if we will reject him in the hard times or continue to recognize him for his continued blessings.”

Once again, I can’t be the only one to see the fallacy of these statements.  

Christians define God as omniscient, so if something is omniscient, it never has to see if anything.  Period.  It knows all things.  All outcomes.  All possibilities and probabilities.  Matter of fact, there are no probabilities, because obviously if you know X, and you happen to be omniscient, only X can ever happen (but that’s another blog post).

If God has to wait to see if ‘Y’, then he’s not omniscient, since he doesn’t know what you’re going to do yet.  You can’t have it both ways.

Just as an FYI, many Christians will unknowingly use the Divine Command Theory to defend some of the parts of the Bible that are harder to swallow from omni-benevolent creator.

In short, this theory states that things are morally good or bad, or morally obligatory, permissible, or prohibited, solely because of God’s will or commands.

So, if God tells us to give to charity, then great!  No problem there since most of us believe giving to charity is a morally good thing anyway.  No cognitive dissonance to deal with.  But, if God commanded you to help commit genocide (Ex 34:11-14)(Lev 26:7-9) or dash a baby against some rocks (Psalms 137:9), then through this theory you are morally obligated to oblige, since doing anything other than God’s command would be morally reprehensible.

This is, of course, where the cognitive dissonance comes into play since most of us wouldn’t have this action fall into the good section of our moral-o-meters. 

Now no matter what religion one adheres to, it’s not hard to see the horrible implications from this type of mindset, nor to see what type of actions could follow if someone were truly to believe that they are acting on God’s behalf.  As a matter of fact, we don’t have to imagine since most of us know can name at least five atrocities off the top of our heads that were committed for God.

As you can see in one of my older posts I quote Voltaire in where he states:

“Men that will believe absudities, will commit atrocities.”

I speak to some of my Christian friends from time to time regarding theology and the validity of the Christian faith.  These conversations can actually remain enjoyable as long as everyone is respectful and understands that the point in having these discussions is always to get a better understanding for another’s perspective. 

In discussing the Divine Command Theory (which I’ll post about seperately), one friend in particular used this particular theory to defend many of the morally questionable portions of the Bible.  They even brought this to modern terms stating that if they were personally commanded by the verifiable God of the Bible to do some of these biblical acts like dash a baby against the rocks (Psalm 137:9), then they would reluctantly comply.  They argue that God clearly has some better meaning for this action that we simply can’t perceive yet, but since God is omni-benevolent, killing said baby couldn’t be wrong or morally questionable.

I clearly can’t be the only one that sees something wrong with this.

When I responded that they sounded like a physically abused wife that is always defending her husband’s loving intent, instead of truthfully facing his obviously hurtful actions, he actually agreed with me.  This still did nothing to change his mind about dashing the baby though.

I rest my case.

I’ve noticed an alarming trend when it comes to talking about actually why people believe what they do.  Many Christians attempt to defend their faith through misappropriated arguments, circular reasoning, or red herring. 

Then once this is pointed out to said Christian, they usually just end with, “well that’s what I’ve been taught”. 

That’s definitely not a surprise, given that almost all of us come to our faith through our parents/societial teachings.  What does surprise me is that people are actually OK with that conclusion.

If you are aware that what you believe to be the “ultimate truth” and the only path to salvation and eternal life is not of your own choosing, but rather a system that was force fed to you; along with the fact that there are competing beliefs across the globe, which are also claiming the same things; why are you comfortable w/ the highly improbable bet that the religion that was taught to you just so happens to be the correct one?

I really need to be enlightened.