01 Jul 2012

God, the Hidden Tyrant?

Religious 58 Comments

Just a quick note: A while ago I linked to a 10-minute Christopher Hitchens video, in which he set out to disprove the existence of God. What he actually did was argue why the God of Western monotheism was a tyrant, and why he (Hitchens) was glad such a God didn’t exist. One of the reasons Hitchens gave, was that if the God of the Bible were true, then He would be a worse tyrant than Kim Jong Il–at least you could die if you were stuck in North Korea.

Yet something wasn’t sitting right with me, and today I put my finger on it. It’s very odd that atheists condemn the God of the Bible for being such a tyrant, and they also ask Christians, “If your God exists, then why is He hiding?” That’s an odd sort of tyranny to be exercising, that a lot of people doubt the tyrant exists. I imagine nobody in North Korea had any doubts that there really was a government that would lock them up if they stepped out of line.

Now look, I understand the atheist position: He is saying (a) the stuff that the God of the Bible does, in that fictitious book, is crazy and tyrannical, and (b) thank goodness there is no scientific evidence that such a being actually exists.

But I can just flip it around and ask the atheist to see things from the Christian perspective. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we are right. Then your case falls apart. You can’t accuse God of micromanaging our lives, when you also demand that He show Himself.

Let me put it this way to try to make my point clearer: There are atheists who recoil at horror at the idea that there could be some being in ultimate control of the universe. At the same time, there are atheists who recoil at horror at a being that stands idly by with the power to prevent wars and infant mortality, yet chooses not to. It would make sense if these were different groups of atheists. And yet, I think just about every modern atheist falls into both camps simultaneously. Isn’t that a bit weird?

(Note well, I am using the term atheist quite consciously. If there are people who are really just not sure, OK fair enough. In this post, I am talking about the people who are confident that there is no God, for the types of reasons above.)

What’s really ironic is when libertarian, free-market atheists hold the above positions. One way of describing their views is that they (a) think God should be intervening a lot more to punish evildoers on Earth, but (b) can’t believe that He apparently punishes people in the afterlife for not having the right belief system. So it’s not that they are “for” or “against” intervention; they rather think God should be intervening differently.

Again I ask: Suppose for the sake of argument that there really were a God, who literally knew everything. Isn’t it just possible that there are a few pertinent details escaping our notice, when we have observed one droplet of human existence in an ocean of history, and we have almost no idea of what the future holds? For people who recognize the fatal conceit and the problems of central planning in human affairs, it is funny to hear them second-guessing God and say things like, “Well geez, if humans and other organisms were actually intelligently designed, they would look like XYZ. So clearly they weren’t.”

Last point to deal with an obvious retort: The atheist libertarian can’t just flip this around and say, “Right Bob, you of all people should know the dangers of central planning, so why do you revere the ultimate central planner?” And the answer is, because He’s God. That’s a pretty good response. It’s why we have expressions like, “That’s dangerous because we’d be playing God.” If anyone is allowed to play God, it is…God. Maybe He doesn’t exist, but if He does, then, yes, it’s OK to have an omniscient, omnibenevolent being running the show. In fact it gives immense relief and comfort to know that He is.

58 Responses to “God, the Hidden Tyrant?”

  1. J. W. says:

    “You can’t accuse God of micromanaging our lives, when you also demand that He show Himself.”

    Though some atheists fall into the trap that you describe, I think that others avoid it. Let’s look at the matter from the consistent atheist’s perspective. There are two possibilities: 1) the Bible is a reliable source regarding God, in which case God is revealed to be an evil tyrant; or 2) the Bible is not a reliable source regarding God, in which case God remains hidden. One can avoid accepting the conclusion that God is an evil tyrant by rejecting the premise that the Bible is a reliable source regarding God–so one can then accept the proposition that God remains hidden without having contradicted oneself.

  2. anon says:

    Unless i am misinterpreting this article you are saying that you believe in god(s). If you believe in god(s) than what evidence do you have to support the existence of god(s). If you do not have evidence to support the existence of god(s) than why do you believe in it/them. If your answer is that you chose to believe things that are not supported by evidence than why do you believe in some unsupported claims but not other unsupported claims?

  3. Dirk says:

    Good post though I agree with J.W. that the atheist can leave himself enough wiggle room to get free of your objections.

    One pertinent question that I would like to ask any atheist in these kind of discussions is, “What God don’t you believe in?” A question that N.T. Wright asked his students in Oxford when they admitted to him that they didn’t believe in God. They would usually answer in the same form as Chris Hitchens in that God is a tyrant in the sky, etc.. After letting them give their answer Dr. Wright would answer, “I don’t believe in that God either.” I really like his retort.

    • CP says:

      Well yes, it’s nice to choose what characteristics your God has, but should anyone put any truth value on it?

  4. CP says:

    “So it’s not that they are “for” or “against” intervention; they rather think God should be intervening differently.””

    That sounds like Jeffrey Friedman’s (Critical Review) criticism of libertarianism, (which I don’t find persuasive) — to paraphrase, you can’t say that one society has more coercion than another, they are just defining the private sphere differently.

    Yes, I may very well be arguing that if God exists, he should be intervening differently — it would be better to prevent the most egregious innocent suffering than to require submission/belief in order to be rewarded (or not be punished) in the afterlife. I don’t see why that’s such a problematic position.

  5. Sam says:

    the larger the amount of possible characteristics of god, the lower the probability that any specific permutation exists.

  6. Jonathan M.F. Catalán says:

    Do you need to be a micromanager to be a tyrant? Can God not decide to preside over Earth hands free, except when he gets bored and he turns a couple of villages into stone?

  7. Ken B says:

    Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we are right. Then your case falls apart. You can’t accuse God of micromanaging our lives, when you also demand that He show Himself

    And yet Muslims believe *precisely* this, that Allah micro commands *everything*, that the bullet flies at the quail not because of the laws of motion but because Allah actually wills it, and wills the state of everything, at each moment of its flight (Talk about an aleph nought problem!).

    I thought Bob & Callahan were always proving god exists, in other words that he is constantly showing himself. Bob has come perilously close to arguing that god shows himself when 2 + 2 = 4. He has repeatedly argued, hey He gave you the Book what more you want? (Which of course is precisely what Muslims argue and yet Bob does not convert.)

    It’s the same sleight of hand over and over again. Let’s say Bob can and does prove there is a god, an unmoved mover, the setter of the electron’s charge, the knower of Goldbach’s conjecture. That makes precisely no contribution to proving that Jesus rather than Honi the Circle Drawer is LORD or that the Koran rather than There And Back Again reflect the the wishes of this being. Yet somehow Bob always ends up with the long detailed list of proscriptions from Leviticus and Romans 1.

  8. Daniel Kuehn says:

    re: “It’s very odd that atheists condemn the God of the Bible for being such a tyrant, and they also ask Christians, “If your God exists, then why is He hiding?” That’s an odd sort of tyranny to be exercising, that a lot of people doubt the tyrant exists.”

    This doesn’t really make sense. I don’t think there’s any doubt in atheists minds (well, there’s a high single digits doubt in mine I guess…) that the God of the Bible does not exist. But the point, I think, is that the character discussed in the Bible (who doesn’t exist) is a tyrant.

    I don’t think Sauron or Captain Ahab exist either, and if someone insisted to me they do I would joke with them and ask where they’re hiding. But it seems fairly straightforward to then also argue that the Sauron of The Lord of the Rings and the Captain Ahab of Moby Dick were tyrants.

  9. Daniel Kuehn says:

    Tyrants can also be magnanimous. You hear stories all the time about drug gangs providing social services in Latin America, etc. A tyrant God can watch out for his followers and still be a tyrant that does terrible things.

    After all, that’s how tyrants hold on to power on Earth, isn’t it?

  10. Ken B says:

    Here’s another bit of sleight at hand from Bob:

    It’s very odd that atheists condemn the God of the Bible for being such a tyrant, and they also ask Christians, “If your God exists, then why is He hiding?” That’s an odd sort of tyranny to be exercising, that a lot of people doubt the tyrant exists.

    “Do you see what I did here?” to quote Bob again. Bob has the atheists arguing there is a tyranny. This is trickery. Atheists do not argue godallah isexercising a tyrany because we argue there is no god. We do argue that the usual *conception* of the monotheist god is a *tyrannical conception*. And those in thrall to that conception do believe God shows Himself. Bob himself has told us he believes because God spoke to him. Actual believers do see evidence of God in everything, that He shows Himself all the time.

    • Scott H. says:

      This was going to be my point, too (well the first four sentences).

      That being said, arguing for the side of Atheism I’ve never had much use for the “God as Tyrant” argument. It’s irrelevant and, in the end, a poor understanding of Christianity. It reminds me of the “God as Adulterer” argument in relation to the virgin birth — useless.

      • Ken B says:

        Scott: Not that useless. We are after all not talking about god. We are talking about someone’s *opinion* about god. And believing in a tyrannical god has consequences. Especially when the imagined god wants his acolytes to be enforcers.

        I characterize Hitch’s argument as “there is n o god and it’s a good thing too”. The argument is NOT that if god were real he’s be nasty. The argument is “god as you imagine him does not exist — and a good thing too.”

        • Scott H. says:

          Ken B: Yes, I grudgingly cede your point — a little. Useless may have been too strong a term. The problem with the “God as Tyrant” argument is that it goes straight to the home field advantage of the Christians (or Theists). First, we are now arguing within a context of god existing (see Murphy’s entire post for how that ends up going). Secondly, we are arguing within a context of interpreting the character and nature of the Theist’s god’s relationship with man. One screw up of their world-view and you look like the ignoramus. It’s kind of like getting Christians to talk about science. All-too-often they quickly make fools of themselves in front of those with any real scientific understanding.

          • Ken B says:

            “it goes straight to the home field advantage of the Christians (or Theists).”
            Interesting point. I’d say the ‘home field advantage’ they enjoy — and exploit — is the lack of a proper subjunctive in modern English. If we did this blog in French or German then any statement like ‘God is a tyrant” would be ‘Le Dieu soit tyran’ You can see the contractual in the syntax. . Now English speakers can use a subjunctive, and they clearly can discuss contrafactual or imputed speech, but it’s less clear except in a larger context and easier to play games with. “god is a tyrant’ looks the the same when you snip it out of “God is real and that God is a tyrant’ or ‘Christians preach a single god and that God is a tyrant.’ In French the verb would have a different conjugation. Harder for theists to play games.

            Same for German and other languages still clinging to the subjunctive.

            • Ken B says:

              um,. contrafactual not contractual

            • Ken B says:

              To illustrate. Properly when drawing out an inference from the vision of god adumbrated in Leviticus I should say in conclusion, with the remnants of the English subjunctive marshalled to the cause, “that God should be a tyrant”,

              You see the problem.

              • Scott H. says:

                Damn, you are stubborn.

              • Bob Murphy says:

                I see you are new to these parts.

              • Scott H. says:

                Not an insult, but an observation…

              • Christopher says:

                “God is real and that God is a tyrant’ or ‘Christians preach a single god and that God is a tyrant.’”

                While you are right, in general, that German has more ways to express contra-factual or hypothetical things, I don’t see one in this particular example.

              • Ken B says:

                @Scott H: And here I am basically agreeing with you!

              • Ken B says:

                @Bob: That’s because I change my mind when I hear reasons not when I hear voices.

          • Paul says:

            Scott H.

            Your response highlights a fundamental problem with discourse these days. Too often people become fixated on wining an argument rather than actually finding the truth. This leads people to pick apart the countless bad arguments for things. When one side is proven wrong, it is taken as reinforcement of the other sides views, when, in fact, it could be possible that both sides are wrong and both sides had funamental flaws in their arguments. How do we proceed, I do not know. It would be nice if all bad arguments would cease, but that is unrealistic.

            One thing that we should try to avoid, though, is stereotyping a “side.” There are many types of libertarians, so we shouldn’t judge libertarinism based on one person’s argument. I’m sure there are many types of athiests and judgement, likewise, should not be across the board. There are also many types of Christians with many, many different ideas as to the truth. As an example, I will use myself. I am a Christian, but I also do not reject science that conflicts with faith because of two reasons. First I haven’t seen any science that has conflicted with my faith, and second I don’t think that it is possible for science to conflict with faith. I see science as meerly an explaination of the physical world that was ultimately created by God, so faith and science, at the most fundamental level, converge at the same place. When someone says “silly Christians and your rejection of science” it doesn’t apply to all Christians, just the silly ones.

            Where to go from here I do not know.

            • Scott H. says:

              Please.

              • Joseph Fetz says:

                It’s like arguing which color is the best, there is no answer other than that in which the individual chooses for himself.

              • Joseph Fetz says:

                Sorry, the comment above was meant to appear under the comment just below from here.

            • Joseph Fetz says:

              “Too often people become fixated on wining an argument rather than actually finding the truth.”

              There is no truth to be found in theological debates. It is the most massive waste of time engaged in by people who should certainly know better.

              • Ken B says:

                @Joseph Fetz: I don’t entirely agree. I mean I agree that the only truth to be found in theological debate is that you cannot sensibly defend any specific positive claim. But people make such claims and they burn churches in Somalia on the basis of those claims. It’s worth a little effort to try to shake some of the certainty.

              • Joseph Fetz says:

                Ah, but you would be having an ethical debate with those that would burn churches, not a theological one. Also, I don’t think that you can shake certainty in matters of faith, even if your argument is entirely logical and solid.

                I will debate just about any subject in which I am familiar, save theology. That is why you will rarely see my name appear on Bob’s Sunday posts. Trust me, I have some real strong arguments in favor of atheism, but you’ll never hear them. They are for my own “certainty”.

                As for Hitchens, I didn’t see much of strong argument in the video under discussion. In fact, I never had much of a favorable opinion of any of Hitchens’ work. I personally think that he is an inflated thinker, or that the intellectual world is in such dire straits that he is what some would consider great.

              • Egoist says:

                Joseph Fetz:

                “Trust me, I have some real strong arguments in favor of atheism, but you’ll never hear them. They are for my own “certainty”.”

                I for one would be interested.

              • Ken B says:

                “Ah, but you would be having an ethical debate with those that would burn churches, not a theological one”

                I see your point JF, but I think you are underestimating the corrosive power of logic and looking hard at the books. We see RPM here struggle with his book, as we have seen Christians and Jews struggle with what Higher Criticism (as it is called) has done to our understanding of the Bible. What it does to the Koran is at least as damaging. That *does* have en effect because faith is a continuum, and is more tenuous in most than they or the believers usually admit. We may not be able to convince RPM or Callahan but we can help innoculate others.

              • Joseph Fetz says:

                Egoist, many people would, and I used to engage in such debates. However, I have made a personal promise to myself that I will never again engage in a theological debate. I may pick around the edges, but that’s about it.

  11. Futurity says:

    When an atheist claims that the God of the Bible hides really well, I answer that according to God you are so ashamed that you hide from God and that you do not acknowledge God as God. Then I tell him the good news, that God wants to be close to him and to cleanse him from his iniquities.

    When an atheist claims that God is a tyrant, I reply that God is HOLY. This means, he will not tolerate evil doers for ever and his holiness demands justice. Then I ask them: would you believe in an unjust god?
    Then I tell them that according to God there is no righteous person, that all transgressed against Him. That we all are closer to Stalin, Hitler and such tyrants than to God. Then I tell them the good news that God have sacrificed his only begotten son, a perfect sacrifice that covered our sins.

    • CP says:

      That sounds swell, except for the part about everyone being evil and God demanding justice.

      • Ken B says:

        See! You skeptics object to JUSTICE!!!

        🙂

      • Paul says:

        CP,

        The two opposite ends of the spectrum are perfect and evil. If we are not perfect then we must be evil. Now, I will grant that few people are completely diabolical, but the important part is that nobody is perfect except for God.

        What I understood Futuritiy’s post as saying is that, since we are not perfect, that we need some sort of cleansing of our imperfections in order to spend eternity in the presence of God. This cleansing process is justice. God, being perfect, will only accept perfection in Heaven, therefore if we are not perfect, we need to be made perfect.

        It is all to common for an atheist to recoil at the fact that the Christian will say that nobody is without sin, as if the acknowledgement of sinfulness necessitates judgment and condemnation on our part. Quite the opposite is the case. The point is that we are not perfect, and, instead of sending us all to burn in Hell for eternity, God offers up His son as a sacrifice for our salvation. He is superseding the deserved justice with mercy. Instead of slamming the door in our face because we are dirty, he is offering us a shower so we may be clean.

        I believe the correct Christian doctrine to be not judging, condemning, damning, cursing, or preaching that God is going to burn us all, but rather that God is so loving that he is willing to clean us of our sinfulness for our salvation regardless of whether or not we deserve it.

        That is the opposite of tyranny as I see it. Here we have a God who has every right to punish the undeserving, yet he is quite

        • Paul says:

          …and I realized I didn’t delete that last paragraph like I meant to.

      • Futurity says:

        Of course we are all evil in his eyes and it happened because of Adam’s sin.

        Here are some passages from new and old testament that support this position:
        Romans 3:10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;

        Psalm 14:1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.

        1 John 1:8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

        Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

        1 Kings 8:46 “When they sin against you–for there is no one who does not sin–and you become angry with them and give them over to the enemy, who takes them captive to his own land, far away or near;

        Job 15:14 “What is man, that he could be pure, or one born of woman, that he could be righteous?

        Proverbs 20:9 Who can say, “I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin”?

        Psalm 143:2 Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you.

  12. David K. says:

    “There are atheists who recoil at horror at the idea that there could be some being in ultimate control of the universe.”

    This is even halfway plausible only if we are talking about theistic personalism. To complain that the god of classical theism is a tyrant is like saying “OMG! The laws of logic are so totalitarian. They control all our thoughts!”

    • Tel says:

      The laws of logic are so totalitarian. They control all our thoughts!

      Don’t worry, there’s plenty of people who recoil in horror at the idea that their thoughts should be constrained to be logical.

      Anyhow, Godel already demonstrated the imperfection of logic, using logic itself to do so. So it is perfectly logical to abandon logic (at least under certain circumstances).

  13. Egoist says:

    I think this post is not getting the atheist criticism, because of a tacit assumption that atheists somehow believe in God after all.

    It’s not that atheists believe God to be a micro-managing tyrant and an aloof absentee landlord who lets babies die at the same time.

    The atheist argument you are addressing is one of atheists considering the Christian’s claims for God. The Christian’s thoughts. Remember, atheists believe God is nothing BUT a thought, so you have to understand that everything the atheist says about God, they are addressing the thought of God only.

    They are responding to the Christian’s thought of a benevolent God by asking “Benevolent? Then why are babies dying? Where is your God now? Why is he hiding? How can you believe in something like that?” and they are responding to the Christian’s thought of an all knowing all powerful God by asking “All powerful? That is tyrannical! How can you praise such a thing? How can you believe in something like that?”

    By making these criticisms against the thought of God, the atheists are not implicitly making the positive argument that you think they are making, which is the contradictory claim that God is both a micro-managing tyrant and God is an aloof, callous entity. Since you believe that God exists, you probably mistook the implications of atheist’s arguments against Christian thought to be tacit arguments about what you take to be real, to exist. In your mind, you’re probably thinking “I believe God exists, and yet atheists are telling me contradictory things about Him. First they say God is a micro-managing tyrant, but then they say God is also an absentee bastard who lets babies die! Well which is it? He can’t be both. Atheists are not being consistent here!”

    The problem is that you are deftly reversing the believers and skeptics. Atheists aren’t saying God is both a tyrant AND ishidden, which of course would be a contradiction. No, atheists are responding to the believer’s thoughts about this God concept.

    This is what all atheists and theists have to do when addressing the other side’s arguments. The atheist has to realize that the theist’s criticisms are concerning what exists despite atheist thoughts. The theist has to realize that the atheist’s criticisms are concerning theist thoughts despite what exists.

    ——–

    Let me put it this way to try to make my point clearer: There are atheists who recoil at horror at the idea that there could be some being in ultimate control of the universe. At the same time, there are atheists who recoil at horror at [the idea of] a being that stands idly by with the power to prevent wars and infant mortality, yet chooses not to. It would make sense if these were different groups of atheists. And yet, I think just about every modern atheist falls into both camps simultaneously. Isn’t that a bit weird?

    Notice how the recoil is at an idea.

    Am I not logically permitted to recoil in horror at the idea of a micro-managing tyrant AND the idea of an all powerful entity who lets babies die? Without contradicting myself? I think so. If you say I am not logically permitted to hold both of these two thoughts, that I can only pick one or the other, then what is the logical contradiction?

    ———

    If we REMAIN in the realm of thoughts only, and we don’t ground any of thoughts outside of thought, such as action, then thoughts remain incommensurate and all equally “valid.” It is only by grounding thoughts in action, can we identify contradiction in thoughts. The thought of God is the inevitable result of free thought unconstrained by action.

    ———

    Suppose for the sake of argument that there really were a God, who literally knew everything. Isn’t it just possible that there are a few pertinent details escaping our notice, when we have observed one droplet of human existence in an ocean of history, and we have almost no idea of what the future holds? For people who recognize the fatal conceit and the problems of central planning in human affairs, it is funny to hear them second-guessing God and say things like, “Well geez, if humans and other organisms were actually intelligently designed, they would look like XYZ. So clearly they weren’t.”

    Isn’t it a little interesting for you to be saying that even though you conceive of yourself as a tiny droplet in the ocean of history, you nevertheless consider yourself capable of knowing that an all knowing, all powerful creator exists?

    If you divorce thought from action, and you give freedom to thoughts, and in so doing, you keep “the truth” forever alienated from you, then free thought invariably becomes dominating over you. It becomes your master. Rather than you being the master of your ideas, the idea becomes master over you. Hence God is created. God is your creation. You are the creator.

    In the bible, Pilate asks “What is truth?”

    Truth is the free thought. It is thought that escapes you. It is what is not yours. It is what is not in your power. Just as a freed slave is no longer his master’s property, no longer in his power, so too is the free thought no longer its master’s property, no longer in his power.

    And yet….truth is not independent of you. Truth cannot change, move, and develop on its own. Truth awaits you. It depends on you, for it exists….in your head. You accept the truth is a thought, but you say not every thought is a true one. And by what do you measure and recognize the thought? By your impotence; by the limit of your power, by you no longer being able to make any successful assault on it. When the thought overpowers you, and it inspires you, and it carries you away, then you hold it to be a true thought. Its dominion over you is what certifies to you the badge of truth, and, when it possesses you, and you are possessed by it, then you feel well with it, for then you have found your lord and master.

    For what are you searching for when you search for truth? You are searching for your master! Your Lord! You are searching for the limits of your power. You are not aspiring to your might, but to a Mighty One, and you want to exalt the Mighty One. “Exalt ye the Lord our God!”

    The truth is – the Lord, and all who seek the truth are seeking and praising the Lord. Where does
    the Lord exist? Where else but in your head!

  14. MamMoTh says:

    I imagine nobody in North Korea had any doubts that there really was a government that would lock them up if they stepped out of line.

    You are confusing god with the church, which is very real

  15. Mattheus von Guttenberg says:

    “Maybe He doesn’t exist”

    This is the first time I’ve heard you express an ounce of skepticism. What gives?

    • Dan says:

      He’s made that same statement many times.

  16. Sammy D says:

    [Quote]In fact it gives immense relief and comfort to know that He is.[/Quote]

    I find this to be of great concern given the state of the world. If he has a plan, and that plan includes the world in the state that it is for as long as it has, then I find his plan to be incredibly disconcerting, and hold little hope for the future.

    • Sammy D says:

      In other words, I find his goals to be terrible.

      • Ken B says:

        It’s a little disconcerting to hear an educated intelligent man like Bob assert this *really is* the best of all possible worlds.

        On the plus side now I know what the P stands for. Pangloss. Robert Pangloss Murphy.

        • Bob Murphy says:

          I will say this, Ken B., that you are the biggest source of doubt for me, that this could be the best of all possible worlds.

          (Wait for it…)

          • Ken B says:

            Elegant Bob. Technically that’s amphiboly, and a nice example it is. You’re good writing sentences with no clear meaning.

            (Wait for it …)

        • Egoist says:

          Ken B:

          You mock Murphy for thinking this is the best of all possible worlds, and yet, it must be the best of all of your possible worlds, since the world as it exists is a result of your exercised might. If the world to you is not satisfactory, then it is because you lack the power to change it to make it satisfactory.

          What you are tacitly claiming is possible, namely to actually experience “the best of all possible worlds”, is actually impossible for you as an actor to ever experience.

          Given that the world is going the way it is then, I can surmise that it is the best possible world in accordance with your might. If it is still not satisfactory to you, then you’re no longer talking favorably of what is possible, but of what is impossible. In other words…a reality that is not of this world, yet is still better than this world. Some might call what you tacitly believe is possible a “heaven.”

          Ken B, I think I figured out your problem. You are like a closeted homosexual who spends all day verbally mocking gays, only the subject matter is the spiritual realm instead. You are using Murphy as some sort of conduit out of which to express your self-frustration and self-loathing, for being unable to reconcile the world as it exists, with your thoughts. You can’t name it, but it constantly irks you. It’s a sensitive spot and is highly agitated when someone proposes God as the reason. You say “NO!!! Don’t say God! That is stupid! It is…something else. I can’t say just what right now, so let me ride your coattails every Sunday and use your arguments until I figure it out. Maybe if I constantly try to refute every God argument you make, I’ll finally hit upon the right answer at some point. Since I depend on you in this respect, I subconsciously feel guilty and powerless about it, and so I will manifest my guilt as a series of verbal attacks against you, so as to make myself feel empowered again, the same way a spoiled teenager feels guilty and powerless and then verbally attacks his parents in order to feel empowered.

        • Tel says:

          The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds.

          And the pessimist thinks the optimist is probably right about that.

          May I ask which world you happen to be using as a comparison?

      • Egoist says:

        Sammy D:

        You’re supposed to feel good about putting your ego in God, even if the world contains terrible truths.

        But not owning your own thoughts; by the thought of God owning you, you become poorer, and “blessed are the poor.”

  17. Jsnyd says:

    Clearly, this IS the best of all possible worlds; if it were not, God would never have created THIS particular version of it.

    While I sympathize with our dear Leibniz, it’s virtually fruitless to use logic in matters pertaining to the supernatural. It’s clearly spelled out in the Bible that God hardens the hearts of some and opens the hearts of others. Therefore, the rejection of the gospel is simply a showing of a hardened heart and the acceptance is one of an open heart.

    In the earthly sense, the gospel is pure non-sense. How anyone could believe that a man, born of a virgin, could somehow be a scapegoat for all of mankind as long as you accepted that the event that is proclaimed merely happened, is absurd. It is beyond any logical position to think that this is possible. While I understand that “absence of proof, is not proof of absence” there is no such characteristic in man to show us that this could be HUMANLY possible.

    An atheist does not have to PROVE that God does not exist, the Christian must prove that He does; we all know that the proof is on the positive claim. While I believe that the universe attests to God’s existence, I do not believe that there is sufficient proof to accept such a claim in the earthly sense.

  18. mark says:

    “God is a tyrant” in pig latin, translates to: Odgay isway away yranttay

  19. Scott says:

    “The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel against, the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that the imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a wast of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that the savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”

    ~G.K. Chesterton

  20. Sanguine says:

    I think the proposed evil and tyranny of this being within the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition isn’t one that needs to be out right apparent. Anyone who has taken the time to read up on authors such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, John Stuart Mill or even the older works of Karl Marx concerning philosophy and humanism could understand the concept of hidden tyranny, or systematic tyranny that has become so socialized into one’s perspective that the subtle means of social control no longer seem to be apparent to the subject being controlled.

    The primary issue it would seem is that God is proposed to be the all powerful, all good, and omnipotent entity of perfection, who must be capable of anything at anytime (I’ll even be generous to the theologian and momentarily grant god the ability to contradict himself and undermine “his” perfection). Without resorting to the broken false-dichotomy of “Perfection/Evil” being tossed in I’ll attempt to outline some of the problematic implications of such a belief structure. (Evil is a moral term, perfection is a measure of standard/completeness, the opposite of evil is good not perfection, perfections opposite being something like incompleteness, so the nature of a God could be one that is both perfect from the perspective of the divine and yet in human terms evil and without care). So in asserting that this god is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good one would also have to assert that this world, if it truly is the creation of a divine intelligence, is the best possible world.

    After all, a god who knew Sally would be sexually assaulted coming home from work wouldn’t allow the heinous act to take place right? The three categories that western faith wishes to extend to God are opposed to one another which contextualized within our world where acts of “evil” are occurring every moment. I’ll use the most basic and rudimentary formation of what is known as the “Problem of Evil” to establish my argument.

    The believer contends that God exists.
    This God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
    An omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evil everywhere.
    An omniscient being knows the various ways in which evil can manifest into existence.
    An omnipotent being has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
    A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil for the three categories to be true.
    If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then no evil exists.
    Evil exists so logically this being does not.

    There are responses to this along the nature of Free-Will, but most of these responses are ironically themselves ignorant of what “Will” is, as opposed to existing within a causal chain. Firstly the concept of “Will” must be distinguished as to what it is, for most “Will” is simply the drive or desire of a subject to drive or create something independent of the influence of external forces (Such as God). How could this ever be possible in a world supposedly created by God? Even if after the moment of creation God decided that humans would from that moment on be able to alter and affect the world on via their own decisions how can one ignore what must be the divine creation of hunger, lust, thirst, etc. Do we not act upon the biological necessities imposed upon us? If these are the creation of a god, which they would need to be if humans are then it appears that free-will doesn’t exist so much as shaped will within a scenario designed by God. If all members of the society we function in are acting in response to the creation of a God then the will of those beings is fundementally one that is limited by the space used by the creator, therefore the freedom of the will of any individual within the whole is determined by the entirety of the project itself, and this project is the creation of God.

    Another concerning school of thought is that of Fideism, which commentators on this forum seem to be forced to withdraw to to defend God from the critique of best possible world. This is ironic mainly because it would appear that inorder for someone to actually join a religion they had not been born into then they aren’t capable of using reason to discern the nature of god and actually change faiths. This would mean the whole sale condemnation of a large portion of the human population from access to heaven on the grounds that they aren’t of the chosen faith, and yet they never had an opportunity to even change faith, so much for free will in that scenario. It would also follow that if God created a world with reason and yet made it impossible for the correct path to salvation to be started through such then the nature of reason itself is a flawed creation and would display a certain exclusivity and favoritism by God contrary to the condition of all-good, once again a logical contradiction to perfection.

    Just some thoughts, now lets hope I get an actual response instead of a cookie cutter quote of some turn of the century theologian, some loosely worded scripture thousands of years old which had experienced one of the longest games of telephone ever in its eventual writing into the English language and has had large portions censored out and removed by religious institutions for their own benefit, or worst of all some ad hominem response.

  21. Anonymous says:

    The Christian god is cruel,crazy, and tyrannical. The bible says he predestined the fall of man, yet he predestines people to hell and predestines only a few to be saved. He does all this for his glory. How disgusting!

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