You Dumb! What if there is a God?!

Andry, also known as Baygon Ipis Killer, has played a big factor to my switch toward the side of skepticism. For many nights, we would meet in a particular room and talk about many issues surrounding my wobbly theistic beliefs and his grandstanding atheism.

Those days are long over now and, in fact, I rarely see him any longer. The last time I heard of him is that he got his head buried on technical papers he has to organize in line with his studies.

We practically became friends and teammates and together we argued for the side of Atheism in chat rooms and forums.

In one of those calm and respite moment, Andry blurted, "Hey, Joma, what if after all this war of words and urging, we find that there is, in reality, a God?"

I replied, "Oh that is easy. In the face of undeniable facts, all we have to do is accept Him. After all, if there is an omni-all-God, it will then be a gain for humankind. And, you know what?"

"What?" he raised.

I concluded, "I will get my butts early on the Pearly Gates, perhaps much ahead than those bigoted theist!"

There was a long silence. I felt he was unconvinced with my reply, and I established my suspicion when he continued, "Joma, you don’t see the point. Look, if all what has been said by our theists friends is true, then you don’t even have a chance of seeing the Pearly Gates. I mean, you and me will be transported door-to-door to Hell to be welcomed with all its fire, brimstones, gnashing teeth and worms!"

Well, Andry surely got me into a lot of thinking. And, for good reasons, why not? You see, rational thinking is not all about "shrug off the shoulder" and dismisses other reasonable possibilities. Much more, a logical person does not take the "devil will take care of tomorrow" attitude. And so, my quest continues.

Now let us go back to the question, "But what if reason (against faith) is wrong in this case?" Reasons, in many cases, are wrong, as we all know; we are fallible human beings, after all. What if it turns out that there is a Christian god and He's up there and He's going to punish for eternity for disbelieving in Him.

I will present to you my explanations and ways of thinking.

Let's take for granted that you are an atheist. What are the possible expectations and scenarios?
The first possibility is there is no god, then, you're right. In that case, you'll breathe your last breath, that'll be it, you've lost nothing, and you have lived a happy life with the correct position.

The secondly possibility, a god may exist but he may not be concerned with human relationships. We are seeing here an uncaring God. He may be the god of conventional Deism, the same God that Albert Einstein and Anthony Flew believe in. He may have started the universe going and left it to its traditional plans, in which case you will simply die, that is all there is to it, again, and you've lost nothing.

Here is the third possibility. Let's suppose that God exists and He is concerned with human affairs -- He's a personal god -- but that He is a just god. This God is concerned with justice, and being so, He could not possibly punish an honest error of belief where there is no extreme immorality or wickedness or no wrongdoing involved.

If this god is a creator god and He gave us reason as a tool for understanding our world, then He would take pride in the careful and conscientious use of reason the part of His creatures, even if they committed errors from time to time. This is the same way a caring father would take pride in the actions of his daughter, even if the she committed errors from time to time. Therefore, if there is a just God, we have absolutely nothing to fear from such a god. Such a god could not conceivably punish us for an honest error of belief.

Now we came to the last possibility. Suppose there exists an unjust god, specifically the god of Christianity, who doesn't give a damn about justice and who will burn us in Hell, regardless of whether we made honest mistakes or not. Such a god is necessarily unjust; for there is no more heinous injustice we could conceive of, than to punish a person for an honest error of belief, when he has tried to the best of his ability to ascertain the truth. In this case, the Christian thinks he's in a better position.

I wish to point out that he's not in any better position than we are because you have an unjust god. The earmark of injustice is deceitful behavior, behavior that's not conventional. If there's an unjust god and He really gets all this glee out of burning sinners and disbelievers, then what could give him more glee than to tell Christians they would be saved, only to turn around and burn them anyway, for the hell of it, just because he enjoys it? If you've got an unjust god, what worst injustice could there be than that? It's not that far-fetched.

If a god is willing to punish you simply for an honest error of belief, you can't believe He's going to keep his word when He tells you He won't punish you if you don't believe in Him because He's got to have a sadistic streak to begin with. Certainly He would get quite a bit of glee out of this behavior. Even if there exists this unjust god, then admittedly Atheists live in a nightmarish universe, but we're in no worse position than the Christian is.

My Conclusions
Again, if you're going to make the venture, you are to do it based on reason and it tells you, that atheism is correct. You will go that direction because you won't be able to do anything about an unjust god anyway, even if you agree to Christianity.

This venture says that you should, in all cases, put your risk on reason and accept the logical outcome, which in this case is atheism.

If there's no god, you're correct; if there's an indifferent god, you won't suffer; if there's a just god, you have nothing to fear from the honest use of your reason; and if there's an unjust god, you have much to fear but so does the Christian.

Prepared by Joma, on 6 June 2005
(While the accounts of my making contact with Andry is accurate and truthful, my articulations were based on the speech "How to Defend Atheism" delivered by George Smith in 1976. I personalized them to be mine.)

"So, Do You Think Christians are Stupid?"

Six months ago, in an emotionally charge up state, an intimate lady-friend asked me the same question. The query was triggered because elsewhere, I articulated that many Chistians are superstitious for they accept and believe in supernatural occurences as miracles, prayers, demons, talking donkey, people walking up from their graves and other similar circumstances.

I replied to her politely, "No, it never occured to me that Christians are such. In fact, I found many of them to be exceptionally smart and that includes you."

I trust that many Christians have intelligetly investigated claims of their faith. The problem is that their examination technique is questionable.

What exactly do I mean? You see, any 10 year old science student will tell you that (a) hypothesis, (b) fact finding (c) experimentation and (d) conclusion are ways to arrive to a particular knowledge.

Christians, however, starts with the conclusions. They conclude "the Christian God exists" and sometimes, furthermore, "the Bible is the word of God". They already know this things to be true and in their heart they never doubted it. So, therefore, when they investigate they are only searching for evidences which will support what is true to them. If an evidence turn out to be contrary to their position, they will dismiss it immediately since it must likely to be an error. No coaxing can convince them that their core belief on God and Bible are wrong. That is not a scientific method of looking into things.

Oh! By the way, that lady and I remain friends to this day.

"To See Is To Believe"

The Situation
In several encounters in the Yahoo chatroom, I always see an Atheist being confronted by this question:

"If you accept to believe in the existence of entities such as numbers, sense of justice, compassion; how come you cannot accept the existence of God?"

The Rationale Behind
The question, more often than not, is well-intentioned. It argues that if an skeptics has the "to see is to believe" attitude, then how come he can accept abstract entities such as numbers, sets, pairs, emotions and so on, when in fact, he cannot see it? To further, how can he not accept the existence of an unseen God?

On surface, it appear that the skeptics is unfair and bias, much worst, closed-minded!

I have witnessed similar passionate and heated discussions on this subject and most of the time ending in flying of emotions, anger, insult-hurling and ill-feelings.

My Encounter
A chater (Faithful Catholic) posed the same question to me not long time ago. Unfortunately, that time, I was caught off-guard. Why? I had no answer, silly! Well, I cannot recall how I retorted on that spur-of-the-moment situation, but I am sure he was not convinced.

My Reply and Argument
For several days, I wrestled with the question. Indeed, he has a point and somehow I need to addressed as he seem to be a decent person to argue with. Below is my reply:

The idea is that there are basically only two types of things in the world: material and abstract objects. And that's presumed by all (almost) contemporary philosophers.

There is an objection to the statement above. To assume that there are two realm is controversial but if someone thinks there's a third realm, he's got to explain to us what it is. What could be this third reality that a Deity occupies? Are there some more? If one claim that there is then he has to show us. That is his best way to counter-argue.

I doubt that anyone can, unless he appeal to existence of God and in that case, it's not hard to see how arguments for that can be anything but circular.

Setting aside the existence of a third realm, I can now argue in this manner: God is either a material object or an abstract object. God is clearly not material or else He decays. God is timeless, and being not, He decays.

Therefore, God has to be abstract. If God is abstract, then like a number, He has no causal properties. A non-causal entity cannot intervene. An abstract entity contradicts the assumption that he is interventionist (such as answering a prayer).

Hence we have to reject the assumption that God exists.

joma
June 2, 2005

Evil - A View from Afar

Evil – A View from Afar
By Joma (Mar4/05)

Evil is defined as an action or phenomena that which is morally bad or wrong, or that which causes harm, pain, or misery.

If one is familiar with the current discussion between Theist and Nontheist deliberations, he will find out that there are two (2) types of evil, termed as Moral and Natural Evil. To understand better, examples of Moral evil are murder, rape, genocide, wife-beating, torture and other abhorable actions a human can inflict on another human being. On the other hand, Natural evil are earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, birth-defects, sickness such as AIDs and SARS and other observable facts which are beyond man's control.

What Causes Evil?
According to current (Theistic) thoughts, Evil is not a direct action by God. It is caused mainly by, at least, two excuses. The first reason is the claim of abuse and misuse of freewill and second reason, the doing by Fallen Angels.

God, it was claimed, gave us the choice to conduct our life, hence, freewill. God wishes us to perform good and compassionately with our lives. But human is basically weak and an inborn sinner. Because of this man's intrinsic nature, he, in some cases, adversely commits some of the Moral evil mentioned above [1]

Natural evils are the doing of Fallen Angels, namely Satan himself and his cohorts. While it is known that Satan was a creation by God Himself, this seemingly wicked, mischievous and troublesome creature is always at hand to subvert God's benevolent intention. [2]

From the rationale above, Theist claim that evil is not caused by God, but as a matter of fact, man causes moral evil and Satan is the reason for the damaging occurrence which are beyond man's control.

Does God Allow Evil?
God is a universal Father, and is therefore good, benevolent and merciful. As a Father, He does not intend to torture and bring miseries to His children. However, He allow evil in a tolerable quantity. This is the rationale for the pain we suffer during times when we visit our dentists. While we see pain as "evil", this bearable discomfort will bring us an overall wellness in our personality [3]

But how does a Theist reason out for evil done in a massive quantity? W.L. Craig, in one of his famous debates, asserted that the extreme poverty experienced in Honduras has resulted into a surprisingly 30 percent increase in the evangelical faith. And Faith being an important fixture in a man's life is beneficial gain from devastations of poverty.

Another example are earthquakes: if God eliminated all earthquakes, we will have a world where we didn't have any plate tectonics. Plate tectonics are what causes earthquakes. But without plate tectonics, the continents would all erode into the oceans, and there would be literally no life on earth. So these natural laws that cause harm are in many ways essential to our existence.

What Does the Opposition Says?
Some atheists have maintained that the existence of evil makes the existence of God improbable. In particular, atheists assert that theism does not provide an adequate explanations for the existence of seemingly gratuitous evil, such as the suffering of innocent children. Positive atheists counter that justifications for evil in terms of human freewill leave unexplained why, for example, children suffer because of genetic diseases or abuse from adults.

Arguments that God allows pain and suffering to build human character fails, in turn, to explain why there was suffering among animals before human beings evolved and why human character could not be developed with less suffering than it occurs in the world. For an atheist, a better explanation for the presence of evil in the world is thatGod does not exist.

Conclusion
I trust that I have presented to you a balanced viewpoint on the question of Evil. Whether it is God's handywork or not is not the object of this writing. Moreover, whether God exists or not is never the intention of this reply[4]

Sources:
1. Dr WL Craig vs. Dr C Washington Debate, 9 Feb 95, Univ. ofWashington
2. Dr Michael Martin on Atheism, Encarta, 2001
3. Internet Debate, Dr. Fernandes vs. Dr Martin, 1998 (?)

Note:
[1] Taken from my several discussions with (Mr.) this_isit (pdof)
[2] My thanks to Ms. D. Uichanco for her thoughts
[3] Ditto
[4] This article was a reply to a query in a particular forum

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