Monday, August 8, 2016

10 Questions For A Christian



Editor's note: For some reason I wrote this blog post years ago but then apparently never published it. Well, better late than never. Here are 10 (or so) questions I have for any Christian who thinks Christianity is the truth and wants me to agree. Or just 10 questions for Christians in general. Not every question applies to every type of Christian. Some of them are aimed at a more general Christian theology, so if you're a Christian and feel a question doesn't apply to you, just ignore it or offer your alternative view. These also aren't intended to be the most difficult to ask a Christian, some of them are just out of curiosity.


  1. Do you think it's immoral just being an atheist, or being a proponent of atheism?
    • If yes, is being an atheist more immoral than being a murderer or a rapist?
    • Hypothetically speaking, would you rather have your daughter to date or marry an atheist or a god-believing rapist/murderer?
  2. Do you personally think atheists deserve to be tortured in hell forever just by being atheists?
  3. Would you rather live in a universe where atheism is true or where Islam is true? 
  4. Would you rather see a future US population that is mostly secular and atheist or mostly Islamic? What about for Europe and the entire world?
  5. Is there anything about your religion that you feel personally makes no logical sense or is emotionally disturbing or especially cruel, or does everything about your religion make perfect sense to you?
  6. What sufficient reasons exist for why god set things up as he did? Why create an unimaginably large universe so that we could exist on one tiny planet, where god would reveal himself to select people in one region of the earth who were ignorant of science and who lived in cultures permeated with superstition, and whose job god decided it would be to pass on his message through word-of-mouth so that the rest of the world would have to just take it on faith while thousands of alternative faiths would compete with it so that god could eternally punish anyone who didn't accept it? Can this plan be morally justified? (Note here that "eternally punish" doesn't have to be torture, but could mean just the eternal separation of god.)
  7. How does one expect to exist eternally without going mad? In other words, if heaven exists where you will live eternally, what can you possibly do forever to keep you occupied? What would be the point of living? Most people's lives are motivated by searching for truth, or to improve their lives and the lives of others, but if in heaven no one needs help and there are no problems to be solved and no truths to be known, what would motivate a person to live eternally? Is god's love really enough for eternity? It seems to me that the only way this can be plausible would be if we're stripped of our personalities and turned into robots. 
  8. If god's commandments constitute our moral duties and what is right and wrong and you think they are not arbitrarily decided, they must then be in accordance with what positively benefits human beings such as love, compassion, and empathy. If this is so, wouldn't these things also be objectively good in the absence of god? If not, please explain why.
  9. If god is intrinsically perfect and holy why does the biblical god have an extreme jealousy complex? Since jealously is not a characteristic we consider virtuous it would seem incompatible with perfection that god would demand to be worshiped at all, let alone have beings tortured eternally or annihilated for not worshiping him. Can this be morally and logically justified?
  10. Finally, if god does not exist, would you seriously feel that you no longer have a purpose in life or a reason to live or be moral? And can you understand that many of us are capable of living moral and fulfilling lives without god or religion?

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