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| A very polite theist offered this as a rebuttal to my article. Such things are very appreciated because I'm too lazy to read over what I write once it is written, so I get to see the weak areas of my argument. After reading this, I see a few things that I didn't touch on that I should've, and some errors that I can fix in a revision if I ever do one. (I think I would have to write at greater length than I have time for, at the moment) Check back from time to time to see if I ever revise my original article or respond to this rebuttal. If you'd like to write a response to this rebuttal, feel free. I only ask two things: (1) Consider allowing me to post it on my site. (2) Be respectful, he's a nice guy. I only say be respectful, because I've had a few E-mails from theists who've signed the guest book or have something in the hate-mail section, telling me that people have been making fun of them from my site. **Quotes from my argument will be in red.** |
| Reader Response |
| A Rebuttal to the Claim That the Judeo-Christian God is Responsible for Evil and Suffering: by: BDH (shoelessllama@hotmail.com) For the purposes of writing an all-encompassing rebuttal I have decided to write first a point by point refutation and to then move on to the broader issues that this discussion deals with. “Yahweh knew that this free will would ultimately allow man to fall into sin, causing not only the death of the people who committed the crime, but billions who had nothing to do with it who were to follow.” When arguing a subject to do with Judeo-Christian “mythology” you must incorporate all aspects of the belief structure into your argument. The statement that God (from here on out I will simply use the word “God” to refer to the Judeo-Christian higher power) knew that free-will would ultimately result in man’s fall from grace is correct since God is an all-knowing being. The reference to the “crime” damning millions, however, is incorrect. All man is prone to sin and indeed falls into it very early in their lives. Man is damned for their sin; not for “original sin.” Original sin is not needed because all man produces sin of his own to account for and one sin is as damning as the next. I will further explore the concept that this “original sin” is the cause of the death of billions further on in my rebuttal. “The Christian god assured the death of every human and an eternity in hell for most, because he didn’t want us to be programmed to obey?” God did not assure an eternity in hell for most because we are all given a choice. Taking the Christian line of belief there is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the road to salvation. All one must do in order to be saved from damnation is simply believe in Jesus Christ and his works and accept His forgiveness. This directly corresponds to how free-will is a double-edged sword which I will further explore later. Following the Jewish belief structure God gave the Jews a set of atonements for sin that they could “chose” to do in order that they would be saved from damnation. When these facts are taken into account the statement that God condemned most people to hell is a falsehood because he clearly allowed for them to exercise their own “free-will” to escape this damnation. Speaking of what Yahweh wants, this god is supposed to be omnipotent--that is, it has limitless power. Is Yahweh not powerful enough to create a human that is able to both have free will, and also be forever loyal to the Creator? This is GOD, of course he can! It is the belief of many theist philosophers (including myself; though I don’t consider myself a “philosopher”) that God is the ultimate rationality. A being that has free-will and is programmed to obey is a contradiction and if you read over many atheist philosophies contradictions are, in fact, impossible. Also, when using those terms you must realize that you are trying to argue with terms put forth to define the subject itself. Free-will has been given meaning by man in order to create such and argument. In fact, one could argue that God created the concept of free-will by giving it to us, so that if he had not we would not be able to fathom the definition of such a term. We can fathom the idea of loyalty to a creator because we see it exhibited in other things besides our own lives (such as a dog’s loyalty to its master). So when trying to argue that God could have created a being with free-will that was also loyal you ultimately defeat yourself because such a being would not have the definition of free-will as we are arguing it in this context. It would in fact be a new term; one which we cannot rationalize because it does not exist within the confines or creation that God has set up. Again, the reason for God giving us ultimate free-will will be addressed later in this rebuttal. Further, because Yahweh loves us, wants the best for us, one would think that his very love for us would make him want to create a species that would enjoy its gift of life, rather than have to spend it suffering and in the end dying. Again, in making this argument the full context of Judeo-Christian beliefs has failed to be accounted for. Judeo-Christians believe that this life is only temporary and there is an eternal after-life that awaits us after the brief stint in this life. God does in fact want us to enjoy this life, but the next is far more important as this life is (for the most part) merely a crossroads on which we pick the course of eternity. Also, most of the suffering in the world is a result of the direct works of man and his use of free-will. So, this suffering cannot be attributed to God. I am sure that the argument to follow next would be that if God cared so much He would surely intervene to stop the suffering. Again, to intervene to that extent would inevitably deprive man of free-will thus defeating the entire purpose of our creation (which will be discussed later). There is only one place left to turn, Yahweh wanted things to turn out they way they did. Yahweh created a man that was unable to have free will and also remain forever loyal, god chose to send a tempter into the world with innocent people who never had the experience of someone lying to them. They were trusting . . . innocent. To go a step further, why did the Christian god have to put that blasted Tree of Knowledge on the planet in the first place? He wanted to, that’s why. First error in this argument is that God did not send the tempter to earth. The tempter came of his own free-will. I will further prove this point in my broad overview of the issues. The Tree of Knowledge was placed in the garden in order to test man’s obedience to God. That was the price due to the creator. Man simply had to obey one command: Don’t eat from one tree in the entire garden. Man couldn’t even do that. One simple command. After eating the fruit man became aware of sin and, therefore, became accountable for it (accountability for sin in what ultimately damns man-some people never reach an age to which they can be held accountable because there is no distinction between good and evil). Now, about that ability to avoid sin. There is one way and one way only that humans could have ever had the ability to avoid sinning. Humans would have had to have been created perfectly. Human perfection was a must because sinless ness cannot be maintained by an imperfect sentient organism. If, for some reason it is found that Yahweh did not or could |
| not have created humans perfectly, the responsibility of the first sin falls upon him not humans. Dear reader, it is not possible that humans were created perfect. How can I be so bold to make such an assertion? Simple: perfection does not perform imperfection. If something is truly one hundred percent perfect (anything less would be imperfect) it cannot produce negativity. If Yahweh created humans perfect, even with free will, a sinning would not have been an option to Adam nor Eve. The very nature of their perfection would not allow them, as perfection cannot perform an imperfect act. Perfection must be perfect. Perfect is a human term and is defined by our own conceptions of what perfect must be. The only definition of perfect that I can rationalize is God. Now, looking at the beliefs of Judeo-Christians it can be clearly seen that man leads to his own imperfection. Man was created in God’s own image (i.e. perfect), but also given the choice on how he wished to use his perfection. Just as a pure and perfect jar of water can be corrupted and become no longer perfect so is man. Man chose to end his own perfection by choosing sin. One could look at man as starting off perfect and morally neutral. The minute he actively chose to involve himself in sin he adulterated his own perfection and ceased to be perfect. It can be argued endlessly that God erred in giving man free-will because He knew it would lead to his corruption, but that fact remains that creation would have been pointless without free-will. Also, the argument that something that is purely perfect cannot produce negativity is flawed in that: Cannot something be perfectly evil? Cannot something exist that is 100% evil? Cannot something exist that is perfectly good; 100%? And cannot perfection be found in neutrality (man)? You see, perfection is a relative term and simply means lacking flaws. A flaw in evil would be a trace of good. A flaw in good would be a trace of evil. A flaw in neutrality would be a trace of either. Free-will made man perfectly neutral because he could go either way. He had the ability to shift to either side, but the minute he did he lost his perfect neutrality. I will now address the major issues surrounding this discussion. The reasons behind the creation of man and the origins of Lucifer: Man was created by God, in Christian belief, to worship Him. There is little value in worship if it is forced and not chosen by the givers of the worship. In fact, it can be well documented that citizens are more productive when they have the choice of occupation they want and they respect their leaders rather than fear them. That is why capitalism has out lasted communism as an economic strategy. Man was given free-will in order that he could choose to worship God or choose to ignore his entire existence. It is in the chosen worship that the value lies. Angels, such as Lucifer, were created prior to the creation of man. There were created as messengers and servants of God, but they were obviously given some amount of free-will because they could revolt against Him as did His highest angel. The punishment for this revolt is much the same as the punishment is for those who commit the only unforgivable sin (which is not accepting the salvation and forgiveness of God). Some Christian scholars maintain that there is another unforgivable sin, but that is irrelevant to the discussion. At any rate, the one limit to the free-will of angels is that they cannot refuse to believe in God. It is written in the Bible that even Lucifer believes in God and trembles at the sound of His name. Angels cannot deny His existence whereas man can. Man was given ultimate free-will in order that we might choose to worship and believe in God. We alone have that luxury which is why we are the highest of His creations valued even above angels. The concept of hell: There have been many conjectures as to the nature of hell, but there is only one sure thing that hell is certain of consisting of. The real pain of hell is that it is a separation from God’s presence/love. It is argued by atheists and non-believers that that is not a punishment, but yet (according to Judeo-Christian beliefs) we all exist within this presence and realm of His love whether we chose to accept it or not. The punishment of hell does not lie in the fires or other imagery that is associated with it. The punishment lies in this separation. If God loves man why would he sentence him to this separation?: According to Christian belief God would not will that even one of His flock (man) should suffer, but as is established God is a perfectly good being. He cannot be in the presence of his antithesis; which is sin. Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden because they had brought sin into the garden and the garden was God’s paradise that he walked among. Sin could not be allowed to exist in his perfect paradise with Him because it is His antithesis. The Holy Spirit is later shown to be the part of God that is found with man today, but the entity of god himself cannot be in the presence of sin as it is his antithesis. Adam and Eve and all man since then are doomed to eventually die once because they can no longer eat from the Tree of Life which was found in the Garden and will also be found in heaven. In essence, man banished himself from the Garden and sentenced himself to death by making God’s antithesis part of him. Which leads to the reason man can end up in hell. If man refuses to choose the pathway out of sin and accept the forgiveness God provides for it then he has made himself one with this sin. Sin cannot enter heaven as it is God’s antithesis, thus resulting in the damned man being forced, along with His sin, to be separated from the presence of God. What is the origin of sin? and Isn’t God responsible for man’s damnation since he decides what sin is?: There are very few of the commands in the Bible that God gave to his people that cannot be logically arrived at through reason. In fact, many atheistic moralities include the same basic list of things considered to be immoral (i.e. sins). Just to cite a few examples of things God considered sin that have a rational justification: Animals cited by God as being unclean and unfit for consumption are all animals that are prone to carry parasites (such as scale-less fish and pigs), so this command is more of a health concern than anything else. Also, the commandment against adultery can be tied to |
| rational reasons as it prevented the spread of STDs as well as prevents many problems that result from adulterous activity. An example from non-Biblical history is the Trojan War (which was started because of an adulterous wife). It can be clearly seen that very few of the things God deems “sin” are completely arbitrary and those which are can all be linked to acts of obedience to Him, which is a small price to pay for being given life. If God is the ultimate rationality then he would, in a sense, decide what sin is, but as sin is His antithesis then all sin could ultimately be called irrational or at the very least contrary to a good existence and self-destructive in nature. God also leaves a way out of sin, the responsibility for man’s damnation is not in his hands as man has the power to accept this salvation by exercising his free-will. It is clearly seen that free-will is a double-edged sword as it can condemn man, but at the same time can allow man to be saved from his imperfection and sin. God gave man this sword to wield as he wishes. Just as the maker of a match cannot be responsible for its ultimate use, God cannot be responsible for our decision to abuse or improperly use our free-will. |