How does one respond to the fairy, leprechaun unicorn, etc. comparisons?

[AntiTheist]

It’s humans’ fault to freely choose to keep their slaves.

To be clear, I’m not saying that slavemasters have no responsibility – I’m saying that the “law” that was supposedly written by the “source of all good” is not good.

The fact that this doesn’t strike you as a serious problem is telling.

For the record, would you be willing to say in public that you think slavery can be good when God says so?

 

[donsnow]

Wow, really. Well, there we have it. You think that in some contexts, it’s ok for one human being to own another.
Look what your religion has you doing – it has you defending the concept of owning people.

Hi, AntiTheist,

I would like to add to your education, a little bit.

I don’t know about now and in other states, but in 1973, the petition to adopt a child in California read like the transfer of property, the child regarded as chattel (property). So, parents do own their children.

Furthermore, from 1961 -1965 I was property of the USofA government, lock, stock and barrel, the four years I served active duty in the USMC. So, people are yet property because our military today do give themselves in bond to (become property of) the USofA government. That’s what the contract they sign that the recruiter gives them does.

Notice, the California state government and the USofA government set the rules for owning children and people as property, not God nor the Church.

Why do people always blame God for what other people or governments do? That’s not God’s fault, how people exercise their freedom of choice nor how governments rule people.

God loves you,
Don

 

[donsnow]

To be clear, I’m not saying that slavemasters have no responsibility – I’m saying that the “law” that was supposedly written by the “source of all good” is not good.

The source of all good did not make slavery. Satan leads people into different kinds of slavery. The source of all good made a few laws, where before there had been none, about how His people are to treat each other and other people, even when they were slaves.

The fact that this doesn’t strike you as a serious problem is telling.

The serious problem was that people had fallen away from God, in prehistoric times. Because of that, there was slavery, idol worship, adultery, killing, pillaging and looting and other abuse that the Ten Commandments rectify, all were common practice and acceptable in the Bronze Age.
And, no, I don’t think any society can do better than our Creator. Government efforts to compete with God have produced some atrocious societies.

For the record, would you be willing to say in public that you think slavery can be good when God says so?

Although God can bless any human evil enterprise and bring good out of it, no He doesn’t make evil good. People have to put evil aside before they can receive the good. That putting aside is repentance, the only human requirement for salvation. Because God Most HIgh the Holy Trinity (not science nor education nor human government, etc) has all that is necessary for our salvation: faith, hope and love. And he offers it to us and to you.

Regards,
Don

 

[PRmerger]

For the record, would you be willing to say in public that you think slavery can be good when God says so?

Here’s the Christian response: (edited by PR)

Could God simply decree that -]torturing babies/-] racial slavery was moral? “No,” the Christian answers, “God would never do that.” It’s not a matter of command. It’s a matter of character.

 

[MarianD]

In response to the original post (I don’t have the time or desire to read the 17 other pages)…

• Existence is characterized by something manifesting itself in a detectable way. Someone mentioned this on the first page.
• God cannot be proven to exist through the use of matter alone because He Himself is not made of matter. Therefore, the only way God manifests Himself is either through our own spiritual experiences
• For this reason, God performs miracles in various forms (Marian apparitions, miraculous cures, etc.). Those miracles are to let us know that He is there, When we believe, then He manifests Himself to us personally through the use of our souls. We can then experience His existence in our souls.
• Since God manifests Himself in these ways, He exists.

Now here’s the huge jump in logic: I’m assuming that miracles DO exists and that the spiritual experiences of a believer is something more than just fantasy. But for the spiritual experiences of a believer, that is personal to each believer and is not something one can prove to someone who rejects the existence of a soul because, just like God, the soul is not made of matter and thus cannot be proved using matter.

In terms of miracles, the burden of proof lies upon the theist to present miracles as facts. This isn’t too hard with the Marian apparitions, medical cures, etc. But the problem is that most (not all) miracles are meant specifically for the person whom the miracle was performed on, and is only meant to be believed by that specific person. Furthermore, “For the believer, no miracle is necessary. For the non-believer, no miracle is possible” or however that quote goes. So we’re at a standstill because the anti-theist refuses to believe in miracles while the theist cannot prove God using matter simply because that’s like trying to prove Planet X exists by using Planet Earth. They’re unrelated.

 

[ddarko]

Ddarko, I’d be interested to read whatever comments you may have on me showing the circularity of your main argument:

Ddarko, you were using this circular argument the entire time. You failed to see the circularity of your position because you failed to consider the consequences of the way you defined “morality”. I tried to point this out to you many times, indicating that your position is circular, “morality” is an invention (which doesn’t diminish it’s importance), and tried to get you to reflect on what you meant by this word which you were throwing around. Instead of answering my questions right away, you arrogantly said “you’re stupid”, when in fact your underlying reasoning, when considering what you meant by “morality” (“Morality is God’s nature”, post 191) was circular all along.

Maybe you didn’t study logic at school but what you are telling me has nothing to do with circular logic in the argument I presented. You have only tried to deny premise 2 of the argument by saying morality is invented. That does not show the moral argument is circular logic

From your last sentence, it appears that you are making the allegation that the word morality might already logically hold the existence of God. But that is the point of deductive logic my dear enlightened one!

Deductive logic does not give you truths from a Vacuum. Deductive logic shows what you already implicitly hold logically from the propositions you already explicitly hold. I am sorry to say this but yes, you are bad… VERY BAD in logic. You got bigger problems with logic than I even thought. You don’t even understand what deductive logic is.

I mention your arrogance because I’m sick of theists saying that people who don’t agree with them (atheists) are arrogant. Sure, many individuals who do believe in a god and many individuals who don’t believe in a god are arrogant. However, it’s an extreme to say, “those who don’t believe in god (who is pro-slavery, pro-infanticide, and in favor of fathers selling their daughters as sex slaves) are arrogant and are going to be tortured forever in hell.”

Well I am sure there are valid cases where the theist is simply as misguided as you are right now and being arrogant. But this is not one such case. You clearly are not good enough in your use of logic and I am not saying it from an arrogant perspective. There are some things that I am not good enough to understand with my level of logic. I admit that and if I was ever arguing such a matter, I will do my best to first prepare.

Now if you don’t believe in God, morality is pointless. IF morality was INVENTED, then it is neither Good nor bad. It’s just an ACCIDENT of Nature. So YES, if there is no God, and morality is NOT from God’s nature, then Infanticide, Genocide, Pedophilia and any criminal act is just as good as love/charity.

NOW, answer my QUESTION, Nazi Germany, thought it was better for it’s society to EXTERMINATE jews. Under your view, why would you object to them? They were simply ‘‘inventing’’ a morality (appending if you will) to serve the GOOD of German society. If morality is an invention, it should be such that it can be changed by societies to better serve them. So Germany was doing what it thought best.

So stop being naive. THINK!!! If morality was invented, there is no reason to adhere to it. If Christianity was just a man-made invention, should you adhere to Christian morals? Just as your answer is NO to that question, the same applies to ‘‘invented morality’’.

AND THIS IS IT. If you don’t present any thing logical next time, I WILL NOT ANSWER. Don’t give me 24 hours, and then take my not-replying as proof the high caliber of your argument. On the contrary, if I don’t reply next time, just know that your argument was probably as illogical as the last one.

I pray that somehow you will have the sense to realize the problems with your logic and start fixing it. You can’t find God, if you are walking around blind to logic.

God Bless

 

[PRmerger]

If morality was invented, there is no reason to adhere to it. If Christianity was just a man-made invention, should you adhere to Christian morals? Just as your answer is NO to that question, the same applies to ‘‘invented morality’’.

'zactly.

It reminds me of times when I’m playing a game with my 7yr old daughter in which she makes all the rules. She’ll tell me, “You can’t walk on the carpet 'cause it’s hot lava”.

Ok. I comply.

Then she starts walking on the carpet and she says, “Well, it’s not hot lava now 'cause I need to get something from over there.”

Okey dokey. She makes up the rules. She’s not bound by them. She can change them ad lib.

It makes no sense to me why someone would want to advocate a world which follows the above paradigm for morality.

 

[TruthSeeker60]

The doctrine of infallibility applies only to questions of faith and morals.

I’d consider the inerrancy of the Bible to fit under faith, since all of christian theology hinges on the veracity of the Bible.

The fact that Jesus said He came to fulfil the Law implies that it was incomplete and imperfect.

First, I wasn’t just talking about the OT. Second, I wasn’t just talking about moral matters, but also facts presented in the gospels. Third, there’s a difference between being incomplete/imperfect and being contradictory.

There are** no** accounts of the birth of a god. God was not born. The Son of God manifested Himself as a human being, born of a woman and crucified by men.

The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus was fully god and fully man. That’s why it is said that Mary is the mother of God.

One could say that the Catholic Church doesn’t teach that God the Father was born though.

Where are the contradictory accounts of **when **Jesus was born?

I covered this a long time ago on this thread (see posts 166 and 177):

I’m an atheist. I reject the Bible as evidence in favor of the existence of a god because it is filled with problems. The Bible is filled with contradictions. For example, Matthew chapter 2, and Luke chapter 2 give contradictory information regarding the nativity. Matthew 2:1 says that Jesus was born in the days of Herod (before 4 BCE), while Luke 2:1-2 indicates that Jesus wasn’t born until the rule of Cryenius (after 6 CE). Luke 2:1-7 says that Jesus and Mary lived in Nazareth, and traveled to Bethlehem because of a census, while Matthew 2:12, 11, 22-23 says that they lived in Bethlehem, and moved to Nazareth after returning from Egypt. There are hundreds of other contradictions that scholars have noted in the Bible. A few of them are potentially reconcilable, but many are not. Here are more contradictions:

youtube.com/user/nonstampcollector?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/18/RB3g6mXLEKk

There are also moral problems with the Bible, including Psalm 137:9 indicating that dashing babies against rocks is a potential source of joy, and Yahweh mandating in Deuteronomy 22:28-29 that virgins who are raped marry the person who raped them. In Deuteronomy 28:53, Yahweh threatened to force people to eat their own children. In 2 King 2:23-23, God had bears kill 42 children because they mocked Elijah for being bald.

On what do you base those principles? And why should you be concerned about everyone if we are just strange freaks of nature who happen to exist for no reason or purpose?

I believe in the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and I am concerned about everyone, because that will make everyone happier.

 

[TruthSeeker60]

Part 1/2

You misinterpret me. I’m saying, if it weren’t for God Most HIgh the Holy Trinity, I would have died shortly after childbirth and several times after that. I weighed 3 1/2 pounds at birth and was in an incubator for three months. If I’d been born a century earlier, I would have died. If I’d been born in this century, I could have been thrown out as too much trouble, and died, the attitude that toward handicapped babies, that’s becoming prevalent nowadays. I believe that God works through people. Too many times in my life I could have died: night cab driver, night watchman and such; but God answering my faith in Him has spared me death several times.

Thanks for clarifying.

I’m glad you’re alive.

…However, I don’t think one is justified in attributing one’s unlikely survival to a god while not considering the unlikely death of other people as evidence that god doesn’t exist.

Often, when someone dies, people say things like “it was his time,” “god will make the best out of this,” and “god brought him to heaven,” while attributing one’s unlikely survival to god. In other words, it seems that whatever happens, the tendency for a theist is generally to give god some credit regardless of what happens, or to give god credit when something good happens while not attributing evil occurrences to him.

I think it’s understandable that you’d attribute your unlikely survival to god, but not justified.

Now, as far as God killing people. I say again, He is the resurrection. When He takes life, he will give it back on Resurrection Day.

Many of those people will rise from the dead to suffer in hell forever. Wouldn’t it just be better to terminate their existence permanently?

Yes, I have developed mental defenses to protect my faith. It’s worth living and dying for. Maybe your faith wasn’t worth that to you, but mine is, to me.

Would your faith still be worth living for if Christian theology was not true?

BTW, I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I was a very devout Catholic. I got my family to go to Mass everyday (my parents still go to Mass daily). I served as an altar boy everyday at Mass. I chose to go to a passionately Catholic college and major in theology. My faith was extremely valuable and important for me, which is why I needed to critically evaluate it to see if my beliefs were justified.

I Peter 3, 15: is a part of a greater exhortation. If you had practiced the whole passage, you would still be Christian. Maybe that’s your problem. Maybe you were a theist, instead of seeking a good relationship with your Creator.

What I said above indicates that I did seek a relationship with god, who at that time I thought existed. I don’t want to get too much into the “no true Scotsman” thing (answers.com/topic/no-true-scotsman, youtube.com/watch?v=_HJrAaGJudw ).

Let me put it this way. If a Muslim became a Christian, you’d probably admire his open-minded search for the truth. To undergo such change, one would need to be critical of one’s religion, and be willing to admit that one’s religion is wrong if that’s what the evidence indicates. One may argue that if he didn’t critically evaluate his own religion, he would probably

Why admire a convert who dropped his former religion in favor of another, while not admiring someone who after critical thinking dropped his former religion and replaced it with nothing?

Skeptics shred their own faith with too many questions. That’s a trap. I don’t let Satan nor his followers lead me into that trap.

An omniscient god wouldn’t allow there to be any reasonable room for questions to destroy belief in his own religion.

I love that butt kicking OT God, because He can slam down Satan and his minions.

By “Satan and his minion” I presume you are referring to all the cities that the Israelites invaded (meaning that Israel was the aggressors). If you’re going to say that those cities were evil because they worshiped false gods, then how would they know any better if Yahweh didn’t reveal himself to them?

I will not do such a foolish thing as deeply insulting Him by saying He doesn’t exist, when I know better.

If god doesn’t provide evidence to reasonably justify belief in his existence, would it really be insulting him to not believe in him?

 

[TruthSeeker60]

Part2/2

I know that Jesus died and rose from the death because I have documentation of anecdotal evidence that He did in both Biblical and secular tomes.

I wouldn’t consider the gospels documentation of the resurrection since they were written decades after Jesus died, we only have copies of copies of the originals that were interpolated, and they contradict one another many times.

Would you mind mentioning the anecdotal evidence?

Have you been subjected to continuous daily inquisitions about your faith?

I assume you are referring to when I was a theist (because atheism is the lack of faith).

I haven’t because I never chose to try to demonstrate the reasonableness of my faith to non-believers online. If you don’t want to continue in this discussion, you’re free to not post on this thread.

No TruthSeeker, I have asked myself the questions necessary for my belief in God Most HIgh the Holy Trinity. I think you have been misled to raise a too high standard of questions, for your belief.

How, in your opinion, is my standard too high? Would my standard be too high for evaluating other religions? What standard would you use to evaluate your religion and other religions?

But, as far as Psalm 137, 9 in the Challoner version of the Douay - Rheims Holy Bible, it’s Psalms 136, 9, where he blesses the one who takes the whore of Babylon’s children and dashes the infants against rocks, those were pure evil babies, through and through, even from their time in the womb.

This made me sick.

How can a baby be evil? How can it be moral in any context to torture any baby by dashing them against rocks?!

In Duet 22, 28 & 29, of a rapist marrying his victim, is in the context of the way things were in the Bronze Age, not our age.

I’m aware of the different context. However, wouldn’t it be better to imprison the offender (if possible) or to put him to death? I mean, in Numbers 15:32-36 Yahweh ordered that a man be stoned for nothing more than picking up sticks on the Sabbath (perhaps forgetting that it was the Sabbath).

Regarding Deuteronomy 28:53, what were the crimes they committed that merited such threatened punishments (which would also punish innocent children)?

In my Challoner Douay-Rheims, the passage of Elisha and the boys and bears is in 4 Kings, 2, 23 and 24.

The books 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings in the Revised Standard Edition Second Catholic Edition and the King James Version are called 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 3 Kings, and 4 Kings in the Douay-Rheims. I forgot why.

It should also be mentioned that the Catholic Church has a slightly different canon than protestants do.

What I see, is a gang of 42 youths badgering a man of God during the Bronze Age. To the best of my knowledge of gangs, Elisha was in peril for his life, from those 42 boys. Just because they taunted him…the first step of working themselves up to kill him.

I think that’s a bit of a stretch to say that taunting someone for being bald is the first step before trying to kill someone in the context of that age. In the RSV2CE, 2 Kings 2:23 says “small boys” taunted him, which indicates to me that these probably weren’t dangerous, antisocial teenagers.

It’s also interesting that in verses 9-12 of the previous chapter, Elisha killed 100 persons.

You have no evidence against my belief.

I don’t have evidence against the existence of fairies (other than lack of evidence for fairies). I wouldn’t believe that fairies exist without sufficient evidence.

I would consider contradictions of any kind in a book as evidence that it was not authored by an omniscient being. I know that clever ways have been invented to get around this (such as attributing all error to the humans, although they were allegedly inspired).

BTW, there’s a difference between slavery and belonging to the USMC by a free contract (if it’s by conscription, than it’s not as different). If anything, one could argue that being in the USMC is somewhat analogous to being an indentured servant.

 

[TruthSeeker60]

“The fires of hell maybe made of the very love of God, experienced as torture by those who hate him: the very light of God’s truth, hated and fled from in vain by those who love darkness. Imagine a man in hell—no, a ghost—endlessly chasing his own shadow, as the light of God shines endlessly behind him. If he would only turn and face the light, he would be saved. But he refuses to—forever.” -Peter Kreeft

God could simply make someone cease to exist as opposed to letting them suffer, but he chooses not to.

BTW, I’ve read a fair amount of what Kreeft has written before. That view on hell was the view that my Bible professor had, which at that time I agreed with. However, by choosing sustain one’s existence (it’s often said that god sustains one’s existence), god is choosing to have someone suffering in hell forever.

 

[TruthSeeker60]

You have only tried to deny premise 2 of the argument by saying morality is invented. That does not show the moral argument is circular logic

No. I demonstrated that premise 2, with how you described what you meant by “morality”, assumed the conclusion (god exists), which is the definition of circular reasoning:

ddarko;7205615:

The moral argument is as follows

1. If God does not exists, objective morality does not exists
2. Objective morality exists
3. Therefore God exists

Now there might be other things that you would want to validly argue about but if you see circular logic here, you get a FAIL in your logic.

This argument wouldn’t work because if morality was “god’s” nature, and god did not exist, number two would be wrong. If something, such as morality (“Morality is God’s nature”, post 191), is defined as the nature of a being that doesn’t exist, than it doesn’t exist.
Thus, number two is only correct if “god” exists. This would be circular logic because the conclusion “god exists” is also a premise, which is the very definition of circular reasoning. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

In other words, I could say:
1 If unicorns don’t exist, “unicorness” doesn’t exist
2 “unicorness” does exist
3 therefore unicorns exist

With how you’ve defined “morality” as “god’s” nature, this “logic” regarding the existence of unicorns is just as logical as what you presented.

Would you agree that if the proposition is assumed in one of the premises, that it’s circular reasoning (as the article said)?

TruthSeeker60;7211539:

Instead of answering my questions right away, you arrogantly said “you’re stupid”, when in fact your underlying reasoning, when considering what you meant by “morality” (“Morality is God’s nature”, post 191) was circular all along.

From your last sentence, it appears that you are making the allegation that the word morality might already logically hold the existence of God.

I’m saying that YOU are presuming the existence of god by how YOU CHOSE to define the word “morality”. I do not define “morality” as you do.

Deductive logic does not give you truths from a Vacuum. Deductive logic shows what you already implicitly hold logically from the propositions you already explicitly hold.

If those presuppositions assume the conclusions, it’s circular reasoning (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning).

Now if you don’t believe in God, morality is pointless. IF morality was INVENTED, then it is neither Good nor bad. It’s just an ACCIDENT of Nature. So YES, if there is no God, and morality is NOT from God’s nature, then Infanticide, Genocide, Pedophilia and any criminal act is just as good as love/charity.

Morality would be no more pointless than civil law. Civil law, as well as government, is a creation of men for the benefit of men. Morality is also a system of ideas of right or wrong conduct that can be for the benefit of man, protecting against infanticide, genocide, and pedophilia for the sake of the harm they do to individuals.

Nazi Germany, thought it was better for it’s society to EXTERMINATE jews. Under your view, why would you object to them?

Under my view that would be wrong because I accept and assume that how people treat each other aught to be centered around the goal of helping ourselves and others to living happy, fulfilling lives. The extermination of the Jews is 100% against that.

So stop being naive. THINK!!! If morality was invented, there is no reason to adhere to it.

If god told you to kill his son (like Abraham), or you were a leader of a country and god told you to exterminate another race (similar to Hitler, and the same as with Joshua killing every person from many places), under your mode of thinking that would be moral. So stop being naïve. THINK!!!

That reminds me, I’m still waiting for you to reply to AntiTheist:

Ddarko, I just wanted to remind you of this post. I would like some clarification on this point – do you think that slavery is a good thing when God endorses it, as he does in Leviticus 25?

If you do, please just respond and say, “I think that slavery is a good thing when God endorses it, as he does in Leviticus 25.” I’d just like your position to be very clear.

If you think that slavery is a bad thing – even when God endorses it – please explain why you think that is. Thanks.

In fact, DON’T RESPOND TO THIS MESSAGE WITHOUT RESPONDING TO THIS QUESTION BY ANTITHEIST.

What’s the difference between what Joshua did in the OT, and doing exactly what Hitler was doing if god commanded you to?

Also, what’s the difference between your thinking that whatever god says is moral is moral, and the thinking that Muslims have that if their god says it’s good to kill others in suicide attacks?

AND THIS IS IT. If you don’t present any thing logical next time, I WILL NOT ANSWER.

Or it might be more accurate to say, “ If you don’t present any thing that I’ll admit is logical…”

 

[TruthSeeker60]

ddarko;7217419:

If morality was invented, there is no reason to adhere to it. If Christianity was just a man-made invention, should you adhere to Christian morals? Just as your answer is NO to that question, the same applies to ‘‘invented morality’’.

'zactly.

It reminds me of times when I’m playing a game with my 7yr old daughter in which she makes all the rules. She’ll tell me, “You can’t walk on the carpet 'cause it’s hot lava”.

What if it were god instead of your daughter making those rules up?

What if god told you to march into a land and kill all (including women, children, and infants), like Yahweh did in the OT?

It makes no sense to me why someone would want to advocate a world which follows the above paradigm for morality.

It makes absolutely no sense to follow the morality of a god that said “thou shall not kill,” but also ordered the deaths of millions of people in the old testament.

It’s like a country deciding to adopt the laws of it’s almighty dictator as opposed to deciding the laws of a republic through the process of having democratically elected officials decide on what the law should be (I know it’s an imperfect analogy, but it’s valid in important ways).

 

[PRmerger]

What if it were god instead of your daughter making those rules up?

God, by nature and definition, could not be bound by arbitrary rules that he “makes up”. Indeed, rules are not “made up” whimsically, as in a game of pretend by God.

 

[Pieman333272]

God could simply make someone cease to exist as opposed to letting them suffer, but he chooses not to.

BTW, I’ve read a fair amount of what Kreeft has written before. That view on hell was the view that my Bible professor had, which at that time I agreed with. However, by choosing sustain one’s existence (it’s often said that god sustains one’s existence), god is choosing to have someone suffering in hell forever.

He could, but that would take out their chance to back out. God knows you can go to heaven or hell, and he knows every possible path you can take to each. Why would an all-knowing, all-loving being wipe somebody off the face of the earth - even destroy their own soul - when he knows it is possible, if not certain, that they will change on their deathbed (if not earlier). Also note he could “push” them towards heaven, sometimes harder than other times.

If you don’t mind me asking, what is your focus in your theology study? Like, OT Scholarship, NT Scholarship, Biblical Archeology, moral theology, Church tradition, comparative religion, etc.?

 

[PRmerger]

It makes absolutely no sense to follow the morality of a god that said “thou shall not kill,” but also ordered the deaths of millions of people in the old testament.

Frankly, TruthSeeker, you need not follow the morality of a god that said “thou shalt not kill” but also commanded the Israelites to kill.

You can be an absolutely moral person without any belief in a god.

The Scriptures attest to this truth. No Catholic ought deny that.

 

[PRmerger]

What if god told you to march into a land and kill all (including women, children, and infants), like Yahweh did in the OT?

Originally posted by Jimmy Akin:
"First, regarding the commands to exterminate particular populations, these are, indeed, horrific from a modern-day point of view. Such commands are incompatible with the Christian age, and anyone today who would claim to have received such commands is wrong. God does not work that way today.

The question is whether he ever worked that way, and the answer to this question must be either yes or no. We will look at both possibilities.

Suppose that the answer to the question is yes: God did at one time command the extermination of whole groups of people. How could we possibly make sense of this?

It would seem that the point of departure for the discussion would be this: All life is a gift from God.

Because all life is a gift from God, it is up to God to determine how much of that gift we receive. Whether he gives us a day or a century, it is his gift to give, and because it is a gift, it is not something we are owed. We therefore cannot claim that God is being unfair if he gives us one amount of this gift rather than another.

In fact, he gives all of us an infinite amount of this gift because, once we are created, we will endure forever. After the resurrection, we will all–every one of us–have an infinite amount of physical life ahead of us. What we are discussing, therefore, is whether some of us receive an infinite amount of physical life plus a varying amount of finite physical life as well.

In some cases, such as a person who dies one day after conception, the person receives an infinite amount of physical life plus one day. In other cases, as with a person who lives for a century, the individual receives an infinite amount of physical life plus a hundred years.

From a mathematical point of view, these two gifts are indistinguishable. Infinity + 1 and infinity + 36,524 (the number of days in a century) are the same. In both cases, a person is given an unlimited (infinite) amount of life.

Further, we are also given non-physical life even in the space between death and resurrection, and that is a gift as well, even if we are not in our bodies at the time.

The question, it seems, is thus not how much life we receive, because (a) it is all a gift from God that we do not have a claim to and (b) it is always an unlimited gift, even if there is a temporary period in which we don’t have the use of our bodies.

Instead, it seems that the question is whether we suffer unjustly in this time.

Here is where the problem of evil comes in, because it is clear that God does allow suffering to exist in the world, including for the innocent. Why he does so is something that we have some theories about (e.g., that he allows it in part in order to allow a certain kind of free will to exist in the world), but much of it remains a mystery.

But the fact that God allows unjust suffering does not strike me as meaning that God himself is unjust. It would mean that he is unjust if he was inflicting it for its own sake. That would be cruel on his part and thus unjust. But it seems to me that God can avoid the charge that he himself is unjust if two things occur.

The first is if he is allowing the unjust suffering for a good cause. We have already mentioned one reason he is thought to allow this–so that he can allow us to have a certain kind of free will–but this explanation may not explain everything–partly because we can’t always be sure of what the good reason is that God is allowing suffering and partly because we ourselves may not be the beneficiary of that good reason.

Suppose, for example, that God allowed this to happen: He allows me to be conceived in my mother and then, one day after conception, he allows me to die. I never have the ability to exercise free will in this life, and so I am not the beneficiary of the reason (or at least the best-known reason) for which God is thought to allow suffering.

That much actually happens in the real world. Some people do die a day after conception. But what happens next?

If it were the case that God allowed me to simply be damned at this point and suffer in eternity as well as in this life then it would indeed be possible to charge God with injustice. I was an innocent, I never got to exercise free will and thus could not choose for or against God, and to automatically be sentenced to eternal suffering when I myself was innocent would be to condemn an innocent person to hell. (I know Calvinists have ways of trying to argue around this, but I don’t think that they are successful). God would be unjust. Nobody should inherit an eternal and thus infinite amount of suffering if he didn’t choose this.

The Church shares this intuition and concludes, therefore, that this is something God does not do. Nobody will suffer in eternity unless they themselves have chosen it.

What are the alternatives, then?

 

[PRmerger]

cont’d

It would seem that there are two:

1. God miraculously allows such a dying infant to choose whether to embrace God’s offer of salvation or to reject it. In this case the child would be in the same state as anybody else. If they end up suffering in eternity, it is because they chose it themselves and thus are not innocent. If they end up in eternal beatitude, it is because they chose it. In neither case would God be unjust toward them, for he enabled them to freely choose what destiny to embrace.
2. God does not miraculously allow the dying infant to exercise free will and instead automatically grants the child a positive destiny in the afterlife. This could be either a positive natural destiny (one which does not include the full glory of heaven but which is nonetheless positive, as the speculative state of limbo is commonly understood) or it could be a positive supernatural destiny (one that does include the full glory of heaven, as in recent speculations about the fate of children dying without baptism). Once again, either way you go, God is not unjust toward the dying infant because his destiny is positive.

It seems, then, that God is not ultimately unjust as long as he makes sure that the innocent do not get a raw deal from the eternal perspective. As long as the innocent person ends up with a positive eternal destiny then God has not been unjust to that person. Further, since all eternal destinies are infinite in duration, a positive eternal destiny means an infinitely positive one. Over the course of eternity, those with such destinies will receive an infinite amount of natural and/or supernatural happiness.

This means, as St. Paul says, that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18).

All of our sufferings in the present are finite and so cannot compare to the infinite beatitude that awaits us.

 

[PRmerger]

cont’d

With these principles in mind, we are able to return to the situation of the populations that God commanded the Israelites to wipe out. What could one make of their situation?

First, in any population of human beings, some of them will not be innocents. Some will be people who genuinely do deserve death (mass murderers, to take an obvious example). Therefore, in the original population of Canaan (i.e., the holy land), some of the Canaanites were not innocents.

I am sure that the reader recognizes this, as his question focuses on the suffering of the innocent Canaanites, and we will discuss these in a moment, but it is proper to note that some Canaanites had committed sins that were worthy of death. Probably more than we realize, given the brutal nature of their cultures.

Further, the Canaanites did have a relationship with God. It isn’t the case that El (the Hebrew equivalent of “God”) was a foreign deity that they had never heard of. There are passages in Scripture that indicate that the Canaanites were already familiar with El and worshipped him. This is the case, for example, with Melchizedek, the king of Jerusalem who was a priest of El, or Balaam at the time of the Exodus, who was a prophet of El.

Archaeology confirms this. We have dug up religious texts written by the Canaanites, and they confirm that the Canaanites did indeed worship El. The problem is that they didn’t recognize him as the one true God. They recognized him as the high god, the chief god of their pantheon, but they also worshipped other gods and goddesses, such as Ba’al and Yam and Ashera and Anat. Since El was the original, true God, this suggests that they had departed from the true faith at some point and become idolaters.

This may shed light on what God told Abraham in Genesis 15:16, which was that he would not give Abraham and his descendants the promised land immediately, because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

In other words, the Canaanite culture had not yet become so thoroughly corrupt (through idolatry or other sins) that God felt a clean start was necessary. He knew that this time would come–since from his perspective outside of time he could see that the Canaanites would become that corrupt–but he was unwilling to have their culture be destroyed before it reached a certain level of corruption.

That level of corruption, incidentally, is one the Israelites themselves brushed up against. Not only did God repeatedly discipline them in order to wean them away from idolatry (an effort that was eventually successful, following the Babylonian Exile), but even at the time of the Exodus itself their corruption reached a point that Scripture says God was willing to let them all die and start over with Moses.

How literally this language is to be understood is open to question, but the point that it makes is that the Israelites were not better or morally superior to the Canaanites. What was different about their situation was that God was determined to fulfill his promise to bless the world through Abraham by creating a body of people who would be vessels capable of conveying his truth to the world and so bringing his light to all mankind.

God therefore allowed calamities to fall upon those who were unwilling to cooperate with his grace and become vessels of light and truth. This happened with the Canaanites. It happened with the Jewish people in all their trials (including most notably the Babylonian Exile). And it has happened to Christians as well. The reason that the Christian community is fragmented and has suffered many setbacks is that many of us have not been willing to cooperate with God’s grace and have turned our back on God’s truth.

And yet, through the drama of the last almost forty centuries (taking us back to the time of Abraham), God has progressively advanced his program to the point that now fully half of mankind (counting Jews, Christians, and Muslims) worships the Creator of the World and the God of Abraham, even if they do not all understand him perfectly. By the standards of the Old Testament, when the world was swallowed in pagan darkness, we are living in an age in which the ancient prophecy has been fulfilled and “the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth like the waters covers the seas.”

This has been with many setbacks and failures, and with the guilty among Canaanites, Jews, Christians, and others suffering the consequences of their actions, but through the sweep of history God has still accomplished his promises of old.

And this sheds light, even if it does not address in particular the question of the innocent who have suffered, on the overall purpose that God is pursuing.

Now let us address the question of the innocent.

It is quite true that not all people in the Canaanite culture were guilty, just as it is true that not all Jews at the time of the Babylonian Exile were guilty and that not all Christians who have suffered are guilty. So what of them?

Let’s look back at God’s plan of the ages for a moment. If we begin with the premise that God wished to create for himself a distinct people that could carry the knowledge of him to the world then it is logical for him to give this people a homeland in which he could purify them from the corrupting influences of the cultures around them. This is what the Old Testament says he was doing with Israel, and it is what history suggests has been accomplished, as illustrated by the vast numbers of humans who now honor the Creator and the God of Abraham.

But if we put ourselves back in time and culture by thirty two or more centuries, taking us to the time of the Exodus, what would have been involved in giving the people of God a homeland in which he could purify them?

 

[PRmerger]

cont’d

It would seem–since there were already humans everywhere (habitable) on earth–that he would need to remove whoever was already living in the homeland that he gave them. Since these people would not want to move, war would result.

War at this time also had a different character than it does now. In the ancient world, when people were organized in a tribal fashion, people’s primary loyalty was to their tribe. It was the tribes and the protection that they gave to their members that allowed society to function. Consequently, when people from one tribe went after those of another, it often meant total war between the two tribes. If a person in one tribe killed a person of another tribe, the tribe of the killer had to be taken on in a general way. It was usually not possible to extract just the guilty party for judgment.This tribal reality shaped the mentality of the people of the day such that they thought in terms of total tribe-on-tribe conflict. They did not have the experience that we do of relying on a strong, central government to carefully investigate matters and punish only those who were personally guilty. For them, since the whole tribe could be counted on to come to the defense of the guilty, the whole tribe was complicit in the offenses of the guilty and it was legitimate to make war on them all.

This is one of the reasons that we today have so much trouble in parts of the world where society is still organized along tribal lines.

And it is one of the reasons why God had so much trouble dealing with the whole of the world thirty or more centuries ago.

In other words: In working with the early Israelites, God was dealing with a blunt instrument. He wasn’t working with a people who had already been broken of their tribal mentality and who were used to distinguishing those who were personally guilty from those who were fellow-members of the guilty party’s tribe.

This may shed light on why God allowed a total tribe-on-tribe warfare situation to result, because this was what the people of the day understood. The development and purification of their ideas about collective versus individual guilt and innocence had not yet taken place.
The fact that God needed to shield the Israelites from idolatry adds a further consideration here. If God allowed remnants of the Canaanite culture to survive then this would tempt the Israelites–even more than they were already tempted–to embrace polytheism and ruin their ability to convey the truth of God to the world.