Picking and Choosing Your Moral Code

I saved the best for last. These two clips are the final in the list I had made to share with my religious friend, and they also happen to be my favorites.



This is episode #503 of the Atheist Experience. The topic is on responding to apologists. The portion of this episode that I want to focus on is in the last fifteen minutes or so, but feel free to watch the entire episode. Go to the 1:14:00 mark to listen to a great conversation between the hosts and a Christian caller.

The discussion here eventually turns to biblical inerrancy and morality. When the host points out some of the deplorable acts of god and his immoral laws in the old testament, the caller claims that those things no longer apply and that those laws were to "train up" the people of ancient times. The host knocks her argument out of the water by making three important points.

• In the bible, god says that he us unchanging and therefore if something was morally correct in the past, it should be morally correct today
  
• Jesus himself in the new testament says that not a single aspect of the old laws will be changed (Matthew 5:18)
  
• The caller believes that the ten commandments are binding today, yet those are written in the old testament

This is a great example of how many believers are guilty of picking and choosing from their religious text. They focus on only the positive parts of their doctrine that make them personally feel good. And they ignore (or choose to remain ignorant) of all of the horrific acts and commands. Here's a nice long list of cruelty and violence found in the Christian bible. It says to kill children, kill those who commit adultery, kill non believers (hey, that's me!), kill homosexuals, cut off the hand of a woman if she touches a man's genitalia, etc. Now why do you think Christians ignore all of those commandments? Probably because they don't want to follow them, because an average human being is much more moral than this psychopathic deity character that so many millions of people worship. It makes no sense to me. But I suppose I would rather have them pick and choose and only focus on the good stuff than try to live out what the bible says word for word. But I still find it really, really annoying when believers pick and choose parts of their doctrine that they like and ignore everything else.







This is another Christian caller and the discussion in these clips focuses on the morality of human beings and god. Moral superiority and inferiority, justification of adequate punishment for misdeeds, biblical portrayal of the nature of god, and thoughts on hell. I don't have much to add here because I think this video needs no commentary. I do share the host's frustration and disappointment with the caller. He seems like a very nice, very decent guy and he just doesn't have the balls to oppose his religious dogma. The last two thirds of the second clip are a passionate rant by the host on the caller's reluctance to be honest with his feelings.




Well, that's it! I finally finished posting all of these clips. I'm going to make another post later that has every single one of these clips embedded to make it easy to reference. I also have a lot of other videos I found related to these discussions that I'll share in another large post. But I'm not going to analyze and discuss each of them like I have done so here. Most of them are long documentaries, but they really taught me a lot and gave me some interesting perspectives on the matter. Thanks for sharing in all this material with me and I hope that you thought about the topics and gained something out of it!

Of Heaven and Hell

I had some interesting discussions with my religious friend a while back about the Christian heaven and hell. After I read several chapters in the bible, I formulated several questions for her. This was a while back so I don't remember her specific answers, but I'll try my best to represent her views accurately.


Question
The book says heaven is perfect bliss and happiness, etc. But it also goes on to suggest that there are different "levels" of admittance into heaven. That depending on your faith and what you've done in your mortal life, you will be either greater in heaven or lesser in heaven. This is illogical. Heaven can not be perfect if there are to be levels of distinction. That implies that there are "less than perfect" parts of heaven, which would imply that these "lesser" heavens are not true heaven at all.

Her response
We can't know what heaven is like and I honestly don't know the answer to this question.

My thoughts
I appreciated the fact that she was willing to admit that she didn't know and can not know. But my question still stands. If the bible can make these claims about having "greater" treasures in heaven and also claim that heaven is perfect bliss, that seems logically incorrect to me. I was joking with my friend that if she and I both made it to heaven, she'd be perfectly happy with the giant golden palace given to her by God and I'd be perfectly happy with the little lump of coal God gave me. :)


Question
What are the absolute requirements for being "admitted" into heaven according to Christian teachings? List them for me because I'm confused.

Her response
1) Accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior*
2) God will judge you when you die and He is the only one that can decide whether you go to heaven or hell

My thoughts
I think I also brought up Jewish people, because obviously they don't accept Jesus. I think she said that they still get to go to heaven because they are bound under the old "agreement" with God. And if God is the ultimate judge, you could follow every single commandment (not just the 10, but the hundreds of commands God gives in the bible) and still not get in because He's an ass. My friend, who is a great person and a devout Christian, could be joining me in hell because she doesn't condemn me for being a non-believer, or she doesn't drag people to the edge of town and stone them to death for being gay/disobedient/etc. Of course everyone would prefer to believe that God is merciful and grants many more people into heaven than he rejects, but we can't know that to be true. He might be a hard-ass and a biblical literalist. After all, he was the one who allegedly wrote those religious texts.


Question
So God sent us Jesus because we couldn't be saved without him. But he didn't send him until 4000 years after he created man. Does that mean that every person prior to Jesus' lifetime went to hell?

Her response
Romans 4:1-3 and Romans 5:12-21

My thoughts
I forgot what she answered personally. I just read those verses she cited for me and I still don't know the answer to the question, but my guess is that the answer is "no".


Question
What about people born into native tribes that never even had the opportunity to read a bible, or meet a Christian, or even know what Christianity was? Are they all sinners that are going to hell? What wrong did they commit?

Her response
She had actually spoken about this with her former pastor and they both agreed that these tribes would get to go to heaven.

My thoughts
She has no basis for her answer other than she thinks it fits God's character. She wants to believe that God is good and thus wants to believe that he wouldn't condemn these people who haven't been exposed to Christianity. With religion, it seems to me that many people are biased in there beliefs because they believe to be true what they wish to be true, which is not a good way to determine what is true and what is not. Wishing for something to be true does not make it so.

Another thought is, what if a Christian minister came to the village and began preaching the word? What if the villagers, cemented in with their pagan beliefs, refused to accept the minister's claims as true? Do they know go to hell for not accepting Jesus? If not, at what point is one "exposed" enough to Christian teachings that their rejection of those teachings merit them eternal damnation? What about myself? Have I been exposed enough that I deserve to go to hell? Maybe I wasn't damned before because I knew so little about Christianity, but am damned now that I have undertaken a serious study of it and rejected these claims as false? If that were the case, wouldn't it be better to not expose anyone to Christianity at all? That way they are guaranteed at having a shot of going to heaven (recall, my friend is convinced that I am guaranteed to go to hell).


Question
What about children who died very young, before they had a chance to become Christian or be baptized? Are they going to hell too? Is it a sin to be born?

Her response
Honestly I can't recall. But I'm pretty dang sure that she said they would go to heaven.

My thoughts
It certainly seems that they would, since "sin" is something that we all inherit from our genealogy. I can't imagine going into a hospital and visiting the newborn area and pointing at all the days-old infants and shouting "Repent, ye evil sinners! Thou shalt be cast into the fires of hell!". Honestly, who on Earth and in their right mind could think that babies are born guilty? That's all Christianity seems to be to me. Its putting everyone on some big guilt trip for being who they are and continually having to ask forgiveness merely for being human and having faults like all other creatures. God was the one who allegedly created you with all your faults, so instead of asking forgiveness from him for being an imperfect sinner why don't you try condemning him for making you an imperfect sinner?


Question
Is heaven a place of eternal happiness, peace, and bliss? Can you really be forever happy there with God when you are up there and know that myself and many other people you've known in your mortal life are in hell, being tortured and burned and mutilated every moment of every day for the rest of eternity? Do you just "forget" about the people you knew in your life that went to hell, or do you just not care for them anymore? How can you be happy by yourself up in heaven knowing that people you once cared for are suffering in hell for all eternity?

Her response
Her answer again was that she can not know what happens when she gets to heaven.

My thoughts
Again I commend her honest response. Personally I think I asked a great question with this though. In heaven, you either lose all empathy with those you knew in life or you forget all of the souls that you once knew who are burning and suffering in hell. Or here's the third option: hell does not exist. Many Christians actually do disbelieve in hell (and for good reasons I might add). And if hell doesn't exist, maybe heaven doesn't exist either? And if heaven doesn't exist, how about going a step further and admitting that your God doesn't exist?

I know one thing for certain. If I was in heaven, I would be unhappy knowing that so many of my friends throughout life were being subjected to never-ending torture, and I would go up to God and tell him to stop it. I'd like to see a Christian agree with me on that, but I doubt many will. For to question or disagree with God is just something that they can't even contemplate doing.

The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Hell

Ah, the problem of evil. One of my personal favorite topics of religion. This clip discusses an e-mail that a theist sent in to the show to provide an answer for the problem. For those too lazy to click the link and read the wikipedia article, the problem can be summarized as this: if God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then why does evil exist in this world? During my studies I learned of a wonderful philosopher of ancient Greece, Epicurus (341 BCE - 270 BCE). Epicurus presented the following conjecture.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?”

I won't comment too much on this clip because I think it pretty much speaks for itself. One of the arguments rhat the theist presents is that God asks us to bear suffering in our lives but the eternity we will spend in heaven (or hell) makes up for it. Don, the guy to the left, then brings up an excellent point. "Isn't that what they told the 9/11 attackers?" Exactly. These terrorists were so convinced of the prospect of this superior afterlife that they were totally willing to end their mortal lives, as well as the lives of thousands of innocents along with them. This is why strong beliefs in unverified theological propositions is dangerous to the believer and dangerous to others. Don't even try and say that its just Muslims either. Christianity has the blood of millions of innocent people on its hands as well, and I imagine many other religions share the same guilt.


Another problem related to the problem of evil is the problem of hell. I like this argument even better. It is very similar to the problem of evil: if God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, why does hell exist? Why did He decide to create hell and to send souls there? Is the idea of hell compatible with a creator that is omnibenevolent? I certainly think it is not. I reject God's omnibenevolence outright. The reason being is the problem of evil, the problem of hell, and all of the atrocious and immoral acts that God commits Himself in the bible, asks others to perform for him in the bible, and such actions of others that he condones in the bible. If God does exist, he is not omnibenevolent. I perceive the Christian God to be much more evil than good. Same with the Jewish God (Yahweh) and the Muslim God (Allah). Sorry other religions, I don't know enough about your god/gods to provide my own opinion on whether or not they are good or evil beings.


I had some interesting discussions with my religious friend about heaven and hell during one of our meetings (this was before our falling out of course). In fact, I think that I will share those in my next post.

Various Topics on the Christian God

I took a bit of a break from blogging this last week. It really takes a lot of time and effort to blog about these topics, look up information, formulate arguments, etc. Plus I think now that the major conflict with my friend is over, I'm a little bit less enthusiastic about this. But I'll continue writing about it for as long as I see fit. At least I promise to finish my collection of videos from the atheist experience.

Which brings me to my next clip which comes in two parts. This one is a little light hearted and poking fun at things, but I have a strong agreement to many of the views that the hosts present in this video. There's not much to comment on for the first 4-5 minutes of this clip, although that's probably the most amusing part of the video. I'll punctuate several points in the video by the time that they occur.

Part 1.



@ 4:45 - What are you going to do when you die and you find out that all of this [God] is true?
I would then believe. Its as simple as that. I'll be surprised then of course, because I think that the evidence strongly suggests that the bible is false in many many different areas. But what I would like to turn around and ask a Christian is "What are you going to die and find out that your religion is not the correct one?". Maybe the Muslims are right. Maybe the Hindus are right. And guess what, you Christians can then join me in whatever version of hell the correct religion may prescribe and we can have a lengthy discussion about it then.

@5:15 - If the God that exists is the one spoken about in the bible, I still would not worship him.
I agree with this statement. If God is all powerful and chooses to exterminate life that is "incorrect" (such as is written in Noah's Ark), I would not worship that God. I would condemn that God for his immoral and unjust acts towards life. I don't care if he "created everything". Life is not something to be toyed with. If I have a child, does that give me the right to stone them to death for being disrespectful to me? Does it give me the right to kill them at my whim? "I created you, and I can end you" is an immoral stance. But for some reason, Christians seem to think that its okay that God can do that. I will not worship something that I do not respect, even if I believe that it exists. And if I find out that God exists someday (the God written in the bible), I will no longer be an atheist, but I also won't be a Christian. I will be a theist who believes in a petty, jealous, unjust, immoral diety.

But that doesn't mean I won't try talking to him. I'll try to convince him that the things he has done and is doing are wrong. I don't care that he's omnipotent or omniscient. If he thinks that he is right and that committing genocide and infanticide and accepting human sacrifices are all good, then he has a lot of explaining to do to me before I'm ready to worship him. He has the power to convince me and he knows how to do it, so don't tell me that its my fault for being a lowly human who can't understand his great plan.

@ 5:25 - You're born guilty because of something your ancestors did.
I reject this as well because it just isn't right. All these infants are born into the world guilty of the crimes of their parents, their grandparents, and so on? If some man or woman ever committed some atrocious wrongdoing to me, for example killing someone I hold close, is it right for me to blame it on their 2 month old infant? That's ridiculous! We are all born innocent, not guilty. I reject such a system where I have to continually apologize to God, the only perfect being, for being imperfect. He made me imperfect as he made all other life imperfect, so shouldn't he be apologizing to me for making me less than perfect and thus making me "guilty"?

@ 7:35 - I'm God and I created everything. Including hell.
This is another item that boggles my mind when trying to understand how Christians can believe that God is good. He created the system of heaven and hell. He decided that he will not provide concrete evidence of his existence because he wants people to believe in him on "faith". And those who look at the evidence, examine arguments, and come to a well-reasoned and rational conclusion that this God probably doesn't exist are to be punished. And by punished he means tortured, burned, mutilated, and put through the most unimaginable suffering for all eternity, with absolutely no hope of forgiveness. Some Christians have probably thought this through themselves because quite a number actually do not believe in hell at all. It probably came down to them having to chose between rejecting the notion that their God is good and rejecting the notion of hell.

Part 2.



@ 0:55 - What will you say to God after you die? I'll say that I was honest in my thinking.
Exactly. If it is a crime for me to be honest about what I think and believe? Belief in something like a God is not so easy as to say "I believe and I accept this as true". I could say that, but the words would be meaningless because I don't actually believe it is true nor do I feel it is true. Is that my fault? Am I wrong to have such high standards in believing in some invisible all-powerful being that created me and loves me and is present with me at all times? Even the 10 commandments say thou shalt not lie, so should I lie and say that I believe in God when I really don't? I could convince everyone that I do, except for God of course because he knows what I really think about him.

@ 2:30 - Would you lock your children up in a basement and torture them forever for not loving you?
Many Christians like to provide the analogy of human is to God as child is to parent. When I say I don't believe in God and don't understand why he would punish me as severely as he said he would for no believing, I often hear the argument "well imagine if you had a child that you loved and they didn't respect you or believe in you, how would that make you feel?" Disappointed at the very least, devastated at the most. But if we're going to go there, how does the act of torturing and burning and raping my non-believing child for eternity justify itself? Especially when I want my child to believe in me, find me, and form a relationship with me but I am absolutely not going to prove my existence to the child? That's a horrible God and I hope that he does not exist.