Claim about the Brutality of God and the Nonexistence of Truth

You wrote:

“People turn against and blame each other for being "godless" and rarely ever question the brutality of the order from on high. In other words, God's obliteration is never questioned because He is asserted to be Just and Good, and since He is the absolute ideal of Goodness, humanity must be always be to blame. And so the human mind gets trapped thinking and blaming atheists or people who aren't "real Christians" for problems instead of ever questioning God or learning to dig beyond the surface level of "crime" and "sin" to discover that these are culturally defined terms and not absolutes. Even the Bible's list of sins has changed from the Old to the New Testament.”

Answer:

First of all, I do think that people blame God for many a thing. And if God would be bad, then of course it would be a bad thing not to do so. But you must know, that we Christians think that even if men are bad, we have grounds to believe that God is in fact good. The reason why a good God can allow bad is that without possibility of doing bad, there is no freedom, and that the possibility of evil is a price worth paying for freedom, and that good God is capable of using bad to make good.

The goodness of God is certainly often questioned, even among devout Christians, but as stated above, regardless of these questionings, we Christians believe that there is more than sufficient grounds to believe.

And about blame I think that Christians are adviced to blame primarily THEMSELVES for the problems, not the humanity in general or even other people. The point about Christian doctrine is not primarily that you or some others are sinful, but that I am, and that my primary task is to tackle the sin in myself. And with the help of God having success in my own life over sin, I am to shine the light. To be a witness of what God can do in my life and so also in other people’s lives in having victory over our wickedness and in healing our brokenness. And truly does seem to me that those who question Him the least are indeed the most victorious over sin. And also blame the others least.

I certainly agree that the scientific inquiries about morality or anything else made by men are far from perfect, but I am not sure if I agree with the proposed causes of it. Certainly an honest and questioning mind is important for scientific progress. But to find the truth one needs to have a believe in the fact that the truth does exist, as Christians do, and Atheists, for example, don't. And I think that a clever mind is best nurtured in a loving environment and I believe that ultimately it is God and belief in God that provide such an environment. As Einstein put it:

“Science without religion is lame.”

And finally a quote about the existence and knowledge laws and sins:

“I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behavior known to all men is unsound, because different civilizations and different ages have had quite different moralities. But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own.”

God and the truth indeed both exist and are good.

Claim about Predetermination

Claim:

“God knows exactly who will and who won't believe in Him, and by extension, He knows exactly who and who will not be redeemed. Which is fair enough, except that He created them. Combining His role as all-knowing and as creator, everything happened according to His plan and so every action one takes, especially in regards to those that determine your relocation to Heaven or Hell, was determined the exact moment God created that individual. He picks the starting point knowing the entire path and the ending point for each individual.

Therefore, one's placement in eternal paradise or eternal torment was determined from the very beginning, as since God's all-knowing and creator, there is not a single action one could ever take that He did not know would be taken and did not plan for it to happen.

Meanwhile, assuming the Bible is truth, He created entire cities (Sodom and Gomorrah) of people doing exactly what He planned for them to do (since they couldn't be engaging in sodomy without Him knowing, having created them knowing it would happen, and by extension having planned for it), just to later destroy them and have people blame the individuals in those cities for being "godless" when it was exactly God that had designed them for precisely that purpose.”

Answer:

He knows, but He does not want it and does not determine it. I know that my friend is addicted to heroin, but so long as he himself does not want to get rid of it, there is very little I or even God can do, if we are to grant him any degree of freedom of choice. Sometimes it might be good to override his freedom of choice, but if we leave him no freedom, then we don’t allow him humanity. And this is exactly what will happen in the end if we don't repent, but nobody and especially God does not want such a thing. He desires our true progress and humanity.

So you think it would have been better not to create? Not to create a person with a degree of freedom of will of his own. Fair enough. But I am sorry to say, but most of humanity disagree with you. Most parents, especially loving parents, have a freedom not to have children, but still they have them and by so doing show that they think that human existence (even as it is) is better than no human existence.

And, as explained below, not everything happened according to His plan. And, the relocation to Heaven or Hell was not determined at the creation. And, again, He knows but does not predetermine. One can know that something happens, without willing it. God didn’t wish anyone to go to Hell, but He did wish man to have the freedom to make a choice to go to Heaven or Hell and this implies that all those who wish to go to Hell, go to Hell. He didn’t design them for that purpose, but as they themselves chose it, He did the best that could be done out the mess we chose to get into.

Claim about the way man was created

Claim:

“So, He creates a situation where He knows humanity not only will be tempted but will give in to the temptation. Then He blames us for the situation that went exactly according to His plan (expulsion from Eden), and forces us to fend for ourselves. We're in a state of rebellion that God created for us to be in.“

Answer:

God did create a situation where He knew humanity not only will be tempted but will give in to the temptation. But that men and women gave in to the temptation was not His will. God knew that man would fall, but didn’t want it. God created man such that man could rebel, but He didn’t want man to rebel. He knew man would rebel, but didn’t want it.

You might have been in a situation where a teacher makes previously compulsory class participation voluntary. The British author and tutor C.S. Lewis had been. He said that what mostly happens as a result is that half of the students stop attending. That was not what the teacher wanted but his will made it possible. God didn’t want us to disobey Him, but He made us such that we could disobey. He didn’t will our disobedience but His will made our disobedience possible. Just as the teacher does not want acts of disobedience, but his will might, if he values student's freedom thus, still make it possible.

He didn’t create us to be in a state of rebellion, but He created us so that, we can choose to be in a state of rebellion if we want.

Comment about circular arguments

Claim:

"Just because people that commit crime and get divorced say that they are Christian doesn't mean that they are TRUE Christians, and we have reason to suspect that they couldn't be, because Christianity makes people good. What a beautiful argument - circles are my favorite shape."

I answer:

As you must know, making statistical inquiries into human morality is no easy matter, but the researchers have made a great effort to avoid such fallacies in studying the impact of Christianity on people's lives. But the point that religiosity can be measured in many ways and is not easy is certainly worth keeping in mind. And I do hope that if we are to make references to scientific studies here, we will be able make use of the best possible of them. And I do hope that we can avoid circular arguments.

Claim about Christians having higher divorce rates

Claim:

"In the US, Christians have higher divorce rates than Atheists."

Answer:

The obvious answer to why this is, is that atheists and agnostics divorce less since they marry less. But among those Christians, Atheists and Agnostics who do marry, Christians divorce much less. In the US the pairs with no religion report by far the least marital stability followed by the Baptist, then Catholic, then moderate Protestant, then conservative Protestant, then liberal Protestant and finally nondenominational Protestant, who seem to be the most faithful.

Claim about goodness

Claim:

“Atheists are good people (at least no worse than average) here where we have stability, moral teachings throughout society, and view change usually with an optimistic tint. It might be different if there was chaos and death, and change almost always meant instability.”

Answer:

I believe that there are good atheists as there are good Christians, but the point is not what they are but what they are becoming to be. I believe that atheism makes people worse and Christianity makes people better. It might well be just because there IS chaos and death. But digging a bit deeper, I believe that it is, because Christian God exists, He is willing to help, He is powerful and He is good.

Claim about the nature of faith

Claim:

“I have long thought that being an atheist is a luxury of having a good life. If I were desperate, I think the lie of a blissful future might give me hope. And hope is a mindset that can only change desperate people for the better. A man falling off a cliff will cling to brittle grass if it’s the only thing around, and rightly so.”

Answer:

In other words you admit that God might actually exist, only, for the time it doesn’t pay to trust in Him. I think that even now you are not an atheist in a strict sense. You admit that there might be something there, even if it only seems to you now like “brittle grass”.

Question about the need for trials

Claim:

”If god is all knowing then why perform any tests since he knows the result?”

Answer:

In the movie “The Invention of Lying” everyone is such that they cannot but tell the truth. Then, suddenly the hero realizes that he has a freedom to either lie or to tell the truth. In other words, he as the first human being develops free will. And only then he becomes fully human. Only then, he becomes capable of faith, hope and love. Without the free will there is no humanity. And without the tests or trials there is no free will.

Another little pointer: Have you ever thought of the fact that the tests are actually primarily for the student and not for the teacher? Teacher might know that you will or will not pass a test, but for you to know it, it is good to have the test. Why? If you pass the test, you will have more confidence, more faith. If you fail, it will still increase your knowledge of yourself and make you more receptive of the assistance that the teacher is trying to offer you.

Claim about the abstinence only education

Claim:

"Abstinence only education is spiking AIDS rates."

Answer:

Being a Protestant, I don't have any theological difficulties to agreeing with you.

Claim about the badness of God

Claim:

”God is the one who punished every living being because some couple ate a fruit that he knew they'd eat. (He's all knowing, isn't he? Or do we just forget that when it's inconvenient?)”

Answer:

The Bible says that every human being has been tempted. And adds: Temptations must come. Adam and Eve were tempted, but that was not their sin, the sin was to give in to that temptation. We are in the same position as Adam and Eve in this sense. We are also tempted and we also ought not to give in. God certainly knew that we would give in. But He also knew that there would be a way out of that state of rebellion. He knew that any fallen man can be redeemed.