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The Question of Evil

On October 26, 2009, In Arguments against God, Free Will, Philosophy, By The Armchair Antichrist

I will not be discussing Euthyphro’s dilemma here. Rather I will be discussing whether or not God could have created a world with no evil options while still preserving free will.

Theists will say that we do have free will. We have the choice of doing good things to help people and also evil things to harm people. They believe that the ability to do both good and evil is necessary for free will. So, they will conclude that removing evil options will also eliminate free will.

But, presuming the existence of God will lead you to the opposite answer. If you accept that God created humans in this current form you also have to accept that he has already limited us in some way. Since he is all-powerful he could have endowed us with an infinite amount of options. God could have given us options that we couldn’t even imagine. But, since we do have a limited amount of option it must have been God the creator who set those limits.

So why would further limits destroy free will when his earlier limits do not?

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Tagged with: all powerful • creator • dilemma • euthyphro • Free Will • god

Morality: The Plot Thickens

On October 12, 2009, In Arguments Against Christianity, Philosophy, Religious Arguments, By The Armchair Antichrist

I have heard from theists that I am not within my rights to criticize God because he is the creator of everything and can basically do whatever he pleases. His slaughter of people may seem unfair, but everything God does is good and righteous.

What they fail to realize is that even being able to acknowledge that other people might find some things in the bible objectionable reveals a morality that is apart from God. If there wasn’t this separate morality then you would go through the bible without skipping a beat. But, there are some events in the bible that you are painfully aware of. You don’t just read through all the parts about rape, genocide and slavery with your head nodding while saying “of course, of course…”

This is your innate morality, separate from the bible and not from God, that we all use to analyze what we see. And this is the same morality that you have to come to terms with when you read things in the bible which don’t comply with that morality. To pacify your morality you have to make excuses like “God is the creator of humanity, so he is within his rights to judge humanity as he pleases”. This is not an explanation you read from the bible, it is an excuse to appease your own innate morality.

So remember theists, whenever you make those excuses for God’s actions in the bible you are only appeasing your own conscience.

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Tagged with: bible • conscience • creator • genocide • god • humanity • Morality • rape • righteous • slaughter • slavery • theist

Does Objectivity in Morality Require God?

On October 1, 2009, In Arguments Against Religion, Morality, Philosophy, Religious Arguments, By The Armchair Antichrist

Recently, a commenter made it clear to me that he believes that I cannot say something is objectively wrong without God. This claim makes many assumptions. It is one of those arguments like the Ontological argument which requires you to believe in God in order to convince you to believe in God. It is also known as begging the question. And as you can see this is not logical at all.

One of the assumptions it makes is that the objectivity of any moral statement derives from God. This means that it assumes that God has the authority over all of morality. However, if you accept that God has authority over morality it is a necessary condition that you already believe in his existence. Your belief in God is necessary in order for you to be convinced into believing in God. So, this is just a circular argument.

To further explain my point let’s grant that it is a fact that God exists. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite and the creator of the universe. That’s all great stuff, but it does not mean I am obliged to accept his authority. He may threaten me with death or even eternal suffering in hell, but I do not need to accept his authority. In no way is saying “genocide is wrong” made objective by God giving me the thumbs up. Conversely, saying “genocide is right” is not made objective by God giving me the thumbs down. His input makes no difference because coercion has nothing to do with morality.

In contrast, making God the arbiter of morality degrades its value. I wouldn’t even call it morality anymore if it was derived from God. This is because you are only following commands because you want to avoid eternal suffering and gain salvation. The morality that I know and value is practiced without coercion and is practiced because people are moral in themselves. People know why certain things are wrong because those things hurt others, deceive others, take advantage of others and so on.

What makes morality objective is that it can be determined from simple ethical rationalism. For example, there are principles like the Golden Rule or Ethic of reciprocity which we can understand rationally and by the way wasn’t first invented, discovered, or taught by the bible. We may not all come up with exactly the same moral statements, but we will generally be in the same range. The small flexibility that morality allows does not make it useless, however, it just demonstrates that we have independent minds. We are able to interpret things to be either good or bad because we all have our own moral compass within our minds. Outsourcing this moral compass to God does not solve anything, rather it ends up demoralizing morality.

I also wrote about morality in an earlier post titled The Question of Morality.

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Tagged with: argument • authority • circular • creator • ethical • genocide • golden rule • Morality • ontological • rationalism • salvation

Apologetics is a Dead End

On September 28, 2009, In Arguments Against Religion, Christianity, Religious Arguments, By The Armchair Antichrist

This is an extension to my previous post, What is God?. Let’s say I grant theists that an omniscient, omnipotent and infinite god created the universe. How will you be able to prove that this god is the specific one described in your holy texts? For all you know it could be a deistic god, a god that created the universe and then ignored it and left it to its own course. In that case, there would be no reason for you to worship it and praise it because this is a god that does not care about your existence.

Another option is that this god might be one of the thousands of creator gods that have been described in the past. If that were the case the current god you are worshipping will probably be the wrong one. This god could also be Satan or one that has never been conceived of by man. There is just no way of establishing that this god is your god. An apologists might respond by handing me a list of miracles or fulfilled prophecies attested in their holy texts, but that is also a dead end.

Miracles (if they happen) only show that the physical laws of the universe are not absolute. They are irrelevant and don’t prove anything else. The argument that miracles prove the existence of God is simply invalid. There are many alternate explanations for miracles. It is possible that a trickster deity like Satan, Loki or a evil daemon/genius might be messing with our heads. We might actually go to hell for following the rules in the bible and go to heaven if we completely ignore them. Miracles by themselves are useless. But, then again miracles don’t happen.

With fulfilled prophecies it is the same thing. Theists will often have a very strong confirmation bias when it comes to prophecies. They will argue strongly for the ones that seem to have been fulfilled, but conveniently ignore the ones that have blatantly failed to occur. But, on further examination even the ones that have seemed to be fulfilled are actually really weak prophecies. Most of these are either self-fulfilling prophecies that work to cause themselves to be true or are so vague that many different events could by them.

When all is said and done, theologians who practice apologetics should quit while they are ahead if they want to be intellectually honest. They should stop referring to themselves as “Dr.” and go back to preaching to a flock of sheep where they can impress the simpletons with their big words and fancy speech.

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