I was thinking about this issue this morning. Christians think they they have compelling evidence that their religion is true, and they just need to convince us nonbelievers of this evidence and then we’ll start going to church (plus whatever else they expect/want). However, providing actual evidence that their god is real isn’t enough, and I don’t think they grasp that. Let’s say that Christians are able to provide actual good evidence in this area: I would start believing their god is real, but I wouldn’t repent or start worshipping him because their god is a genocidal monster.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if their god is real, because we’d all be under duress to worship him just to avoid an eternity of torture. It’s garbage. I’d rather suffer for eternity than worship a god like theirs. But they only think about the first hand of the problem, and many of them deny that their god is malevolent.
(1) God is omnipotent (that is, all-powerful).
(2) God is omniscient (that is, all-knowing).
(3) God is perfectly good.
(4) Evil exists.
(5) A set of statements is logically inconsistent if and only if: (a) that set includes a direct contradiction of the form “p & not-p”; or (b) a direct contradiction can be deduced from that set.
(6) If God is omnipotent, he would be able to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.
(7) If God is omniscient, he would know about all of the evil and suffering in the world and would know how to eliminate or prevent it.
(8) If God is perfectly good, he would want to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world.
(9) If God knows about all of the evil and suffering in the world, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, is powerful enough to prevent it, and yet does not prevent it, he must not be perfectly good.
(10) If God knows about all of the evil and suffering, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, wants to prevent it, and yet does not do so, he must not be all- powerful.
(11) If God is powerful enough to prevent all of the evil and suffering, wants to do so, and yet does not, he must not know about all of the suffering or know how to eliminate or prevent it—that is, he must not be all-knowing.
(12) If evil and suffering exist, then God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.
(13) God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good.
Christians have been brainwashed into thinking that they owe it to god to worship him because he saved them from hell. My problem with that is he created hell and decided that humans should go there if they don’t believe in him.
I do always find it kind of funny that tract literature is all based on the predication that someone simply hasn’t ever heard of Jesus before.
The idea that someone is familiar with the religion but is a non-believer is an alien concept to them
Critical thinking is in deficit because it’s antithetical to faith.
In fact the test is faith is maintaining faith in the despite critical thinking.
A great deal of mental effort is required to work around the whole problem of the OT God being malevolent, pathologically jealous, controlling, sociopathic, manipulative, and generally abusive.
It all makes sense when you look at the religion from a detached viewpoint in the context of its history. The religion was used as a political tool to unify a bunch of bronze age polytheists. For that to work God had to be jealous of other gods (of the time) while also being the only real god, and he had to be the type to dish out death and destruction if the nation “cheated on him” with another god. Hence, many of the stories are about encouraging (with rewards) or threatening (with death and other horrors) Israelites, as a nation, to only worship the official god of this official state religion.
Clearly this approach (as well as peer pressure and other mechanisms) work very well or this religion would not still be around.
