Religions Don't Make Sense, Part II

This is a series of posts of unorganized thoughts on why religions, specifically Christianity, don't make sense to me. Go to: Part I.

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Here's another thing that doesn't make sense about the Christian religion specifically: why didn't God make Adam so he wouldn't sin? There's two characteristics about God that you cannot get around: omnipotence and omniscience. Let's go with omniscience first. If God created Adam the way he did, he created him to sin as, before he even started creating, he knew Adam would sin. The answers I have seen to this don't make sense either. This is yet another place where they throw out free will. "God couldn't know because he created man with free will." I think this is abandoning the omniscience claim, but we will go ahead and run with it. This answer doesn't make sense either. Again, if you accept the Bible (and as a Christian you must), then you know that it is laden with prophecies. Are you telling me that the men who were pretending to be prophets could see the future whereas a god could not? This just does not make sense. Furthermore, Jesus purportedly foretold the future as well, so for those who think that Jesus was God in a man-costume, this eliminates that whole argument. For those who think that Jesus was simply in fellowship with the Almighty, then you get back to the problem of man knowing and god not.

On to the omnipotence characteristic that doesn't make sense. No matter how he created man (with or without free will), he could have made man better. He could have made a super version of Jesus, if you will. He could have made a near clone of himself. Instead, he created man very inferior hardware and with deficient software. This doesn't make sense to me.

Then to the omnibenevolence characteristic, I find answers to the problem of evil to be lacking sense. What kind of sick god would create evil in man and in nature? The free will canard is often tossed out here as well. "God is perfectly good, he doesn't create evil. God created man with free will and man sinned and creates sin." I've always been perplexed by this sort of answer. God can't create evil, but he can create evil-creating beings?


Religions don't make sense to me... to be continued.

Analogous Absurdity

Last night I spent about an hour typing up some of my thoughts on why religions, starting with Christianity, don't make sense to me in a stream-of-consciousness style, and then spacing them out over several posts. By coincidence, Ray has chosen to write this morning on just one of the many absurdities of Christianity. A reader poses a question:

I would like to ask you a couple of relevant questions pertaining to the 'sacrifice' of Jesus and it's purpose. Please logically explain why an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni benevolent God would need to sacrifice Himself (as Jesus) to Himself (God) in order to forgive man of sins against Him (God)? The entire premise seems totally absurd.

I think Ray's explanation was quite inadequate. He threw out a number of analogies, but they missed the centerpiece of the question: God sacrificing himself to himself in order to forgive man's sins (as defined by him) against him.

Ray begins with an analogy that the atheist in his stupor has been going 80mph while drunk in a 15mph zone and Ray has sold everything he has (including his quarter of a million dollar home) to pay the fine to the police to get the atheist released. I think he could have made a better analogy to address Chuck's question with his later comment about the dog. Observe:

My dog, vastly inferior to me, has just been born as a puppy. I lay down some laws for him. A few of these commandments is that he cannot poop in the house, he can't chew my sneakers, and he can't get in the trash. Furthermore, he cannot even think about it, or else he has committed the crimes "in his heart." Breaking any of these commandments will result in me torture, maim, and beat him for all of his life (this isn't a true comparison, as the punishment should be torture for all eternity). Since the transgression is visited upon the offspring, all of his offspring will be tortured as well.

One day, I decide to cook a steak and throw it into the trash and then set the trash can right in front of him. Then, he thinks about getting into the trash, thus breaking the commandment. I love my dog, though, and I don't want to have to torture him for all eternity. So, I sacrifice myself by having me tortured and then killed, so as to forgive the dog his sins against me for me.

While the analogy is not perfect, as it cannot be, it is much closer than anything Ray offered. One of the big problems about it is that I'm not a god, so I can die. God killed himself to "pay the fine" even though God cannot die. Death as a punishment on God would be like clipping my nails is a punishment of torture on me. Perhaps that would make the analogy truer: to redeem the dog of his thoughtcrime, I have punished myself by clipping the nail off the end of my pinky.


The major problem with all of Ray's analogies concerning Jesus -- not only in this blog post, but in his ministry in general -- is he always uses an example of paying a monetary fine. This is a false analogy as it doesn't resolve the absurdity of vicarious redemption. A truer analogy would be that I have run a red light and have been imposed a fine of continual, unending torture. My sister doesn't want to see me endure that, so she kills herself, thereby redeeming me. It is absurd.


The first commenter to the post writes:

So: an omnipotent omniscient God creates flawed beings that offend him so much, he sacrifices his own son in lieu of payment from the failure of his flawed creation.

Still doesn't make sense, Ray.

To which Ray tells him to go back and reread the concluding line of his post:

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."

Hey, the emperor has nothing on!

Religions Don't Make Sense, Part I

Last night my atheist group put on a free cookout for the campus and it went off quite well. I spent the evening working the room, speaking to almost everyone. I had many interesting conversations with those who showed up. Contrary to how Ray and most Christian leaders portray atheists, we are not this intolerant group of people with their minds made up that there are no gods and that our big gripe is others' beliefs in the existence of some particular god. One of my favorite conversations of the evening was with a deist who wants to join the group.

I have no problem at all with some sort of deistic belief as it is rational in all other regards. Why, though, show up at an atheist group if one believes in the existence of a supreme being? When I send out an email to our mailing list (now swelling at the number of 200), I address it to those "skeptical of religions and religious superstition." This was very much the individual in question. We had a nice conversation on the history of Christianity.

I posted a couple days ago about the history of the name Jesus. Most of the Christians I have met do not know that history. It is not surprising, though, as there's much in the history of their religion that they do not know and is part of the reason this particular religion doesn't make sense to me. Here is just a general, unorganized list of why religions don't make sense to me. They are not religion specific, or rather they are not denomination specific.

I will post this in a series over several posts. Remember, these will be unorganized and general in particular.

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One of my favorite posts from Pvblivs's blog is one where he asks an ethical question. A summary of it is that he is a highly advanced alien who has high expectations of his arrival. He's fully able to communicate his existence and expectations to Earth directly, but instead he has simply provided a sketch of his craft in crayon and some residents of insane asylums are providing instructions to everyone on how to meet his expectations. I agree with Pvblivs that I see this as highly analogous to the Christian Bible...

Why, if the Christian God exists, doesn't he reveal himself to us? If he wants us to believe in him, why not just reveal himself? Why play games? I've heard several answers for it and none of them make sense to me. If you accept the Bible (which you have to if you're Christian), God was revealing himself all throughout the Old Testament. He didn't make a stranger of himself -- although, his presence must have not been all that convincing if every time he turned his back his favorite tribe were off worshiping some other god. Or better yet, he revealed himself through Jesus. Jesus did not make a secret his magic powers. Obviously, he had no problem revealing himself then. He knew godly things, he performed godly magic tricks, he flew around in the air... why not do that now? He obviously didn't have a problem before.

But wait. He has done it again since then. He did it again to Muhammad, yet another example of him playing favorites. For some reason, though, Muhammad's tale is unconvincing to Christians, even though they have even more reason to believe in the Qur'an than the Bible. And let's not forget, he did it again since then with Joseph Smith. Here's a man who lived less than 200 years ago and we have solid proof that he existed. Why do Christians make such ado about the sketchy evidence for the existence of Jesus when there is such solid evidence for the existence of Joseph Smith?

But, let's get back to the question of why he won't reveal himself. Here's a popular response: it would violate our free will. Again, this question makes no sense as he already made a habit of violating our free wills before when he spent centuries supposedly revealing himself. I suspect that this canard is just supposed to be a steak thrown in front of the atheists to get us distracted and off guard. I suspect this doesn't make sense to those who propose it as they pray nonstop and claim that God answers their prayers and interferes in their little lives, thus violating free will. I'll revisit free will later.


Religion makes no sense to me... to be continued.