Friday, April 26, 2013

Does God Have Morally Sufficient Reasons For Doing What He Does?


We hear a lot of times theists making the case that god must have morally sufficient reasons for doing something the way he does but that we don’t know or cannot know those reasons. Well this is essentially tantamount to those two old adages, “The lord works in mysterious ways” and “Who can know the mind of god?” When I was a kid and was debating about god with my grandmother, who was a devout Catholic, whenever she came to a tough answer that she didn't know, she’d always resort to that old saying. But if your line of reasoning concludes with basically admitting that it doesn't make sense and that you don’t know how to answer it, then when I place this up against the naturalistic explanation and compare the two – naturalism vs. the lord works in mysterious ways – then to me it seems perfectly reasonable and logical to conclude with the naturalistic explanation over the theistic admittance of ignorance.

Why is it that we need to rely on “sophisticated theologians” to give us “reasonable” answers to religion’s toughest questions? Why aren't the answers obvious or at least more easily knowable if they indeed are true? For example, if your evidence that Jesus rose from the dead is based on what you think most New Testament scholars say, then it’s true that most people over the past two thousand years have not been able to have access to what any scholars have had to say on whether or not Jesus existed or rose from the dead. Most people over the past two thousand years were illiterate and completely uneducated. They were forced to believe in god and Jesus’ divinity, purely on faith. So if god wanted us to have evidence to know he’s real and that Jesus is his son (or himself), why is it that this “evidence” was unavailable to billions of people throughout history? And even then, the evidence is speculative at best in many areas, just as the Christian justifications for the problem of evil are.


2 comments:

  1. Just to continue your train of thought:

    theologians assert that god knows the future and therefore is able to act on a higher understanding of what is best for us...the problem is god is obviously not consistent. He kills, lies and does illogical things for our own benefit but only sometimes?

    IF this were true it would be fair to ask then what about Hitler? the black Plague?
    histories biggest criminals could have been snuffed out long before they did they nasty deeds that caused massive human suffering. It's a conundrum that backs 'em into a corner where they ultimately say that god allows suffering in hopes that the suffering will cause people to believe in him or trust in him. OR, that the eternal perspective makes all suffering a mute point.

    the problem with that is - is that the only way god can get people to follow him?

    My arrogant side wants to say: If I were god, I would do something REALLY good
    I mean really really good like say wiping out all cancer and disease.

    if it was morally sufficient to send his people on genocide missions and orchestrate violent natural disasters then his morals are "anything goes" I guess.

    What we observe in reality is that god does not appear to interact with humanity at all which is more consistent with the "not exists" conclusion. The percentage of believers who die or suffer is the same as unbelievers. The divorce rate among
    Christians is the same as non christian.

    So the question appears to be flawed in that we have no real evidence that a god has done anything in the first place for us to question but I understand where you are coming from in terms of debunking god according to his own bible.

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    1. Christians of course would say we're sinners - and therefore deserve all the bad shit that happens to us. That opens up a can of worms. Namely, if we didn't sin, could a perfect world actually be possible? No, and they know it. There cannot be a perfect world, which is why heaven makes no sense. So right from the start this explanation is bullshit.

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