The night Dr. Z became an agnostic
Dr. Z, an OBGYN, was working with Doctors Without Borders in the Congo. Dr. Z had decided he simply had to go because he felt it was his calling as a Christian to help alleviate some of the enormous suffering in the world. For months Dr. Z labored tirelessly in a makeshift camp, desperately attempting to help the young girls and women who had been raped and mutilated by the interminable civil war of the region, a war fueled in part by the West’s insatiable demand for coltan and other precious metals from the region (got to get the materials to run our PlayStations and replace our cell phones every six months from somewhere, don’t we?).
For some reason, it was the eight year old that did it. When she was brought in her legs had been amputated and somebody had rammed a large blade up her vagina. As Dr. Z cradled her head in his knees it was clear that they could do nothing for her but deliver her a dose of morphine to help alleviate the pain. Perhaps it was because she was eight, the same age as his own daughter. Perhaps it was the look of anguish in her eyes. Perhaps it was the unforgettable screams of her desperate mother. But through it all he felt his faith splintering.
Later that night he sat up with a colleague drinking a glass of brandy. Suddenly the tears started rolling down his cheeks. He turned to the other man, a GP and a fellow Christian. And with his face wet with tears he whispered hoarsely, “I don’t know if there is a god.”
In that moment Dr. Z did not believe the proposition “There is a God.” According to some people, Paul makes claims in Romans 1 which are sufficient to say that Dr. Z is, in that moment, wickedly suppressing the natural revelation that calls out to him. From where exactly? The killing fields of the Congo?
Tags: agnosticism, atheism, general revelation, natural theology, Romans 1, theism
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[...] to illustrate how unbelief cannot be necessarily sinful, Randal formulated a story about “Dr Z” (presumably a different fellow to the rather callous fellow in Borderlands) who loses his faith [...]
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David Parker says:
Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 8:27pm
Powerful stuff.
What is your take on Romans 8:20-22?
20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
randal says:
Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 9:31pm
That passage speaks quite clearly to the redemption of all creation. Thus when we read elsewhere about a “new heaven and new earth” we should understand that to mean “old heaven and earth renewed” (just like resurrection body is old body renewed). Thus when it comes to the doctrine of creation we need a focus on resurrection and repletion, not replacement. And certainly not souls flittering off to a Philadelphia Cream Cheese heaven.
David Parker says:
Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 9:41pm
Right! This helps me with the problem of evil, because there is an element of “this must to be redeemed!” in creation. We weep about gratuitous suffering because it violates our most basic sense of justice, but Romans 8 looks to be weeping right along with us, pointing us to the ultimate redemption.
I suppose Loftus would counter with “well why was all this necessary anyways, why not just create the new heaven to begin with?” But that’s another can of worms.
Shawn says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 7:39am
Can of worms or difficult question?
David Parker says:
Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 9:43pm
*new heaven and earth…old habits die hard
Pastor Dustin S. Segers says:
Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 11:37pm
Hi Randall,
Introducing real or hypothetical tearjerkers in an attempt to illustrate a range of contradictory positions is often an effective device used to distract from the real issues.
However, the obvious underlying problem with this tearjerker is that, in a godless world, there’s nothing wrong with committing what most people commonly recognize as “atrocities”.
In a godless universe, if some of us find it abhorrent, then that just reflects our social conditioning and the evolutionary programming present in our DNA. And, of course, the perpetrators have their own social conditioning and evolutionary programming to the contrary.
In a godless universe, the victim and the victimizer are just molecules in motion; nothing more, nothing less. They are like Diet 7-Up and Diet Dr. Pepper sitting on top of the counter fizzing at different rates simply because their chemical compositions are different. One bag of molecules “fizzes” the idea of ramming a blade up a smaller bag of molecules’ crotch. So what? They’re only molecules in motion that evolved from primordial pond-scum without any ultimate design or purpose.
Moreover, in a godless world, human beings are just data-processing meat-machines, with a natural expiration date. In a godless world, some expire sooner than others. Thus, when one meat machine overpowers the other and rams a knife up the crotch of another meat machine, it’s just natural selection acting upon two mere meat-machines. So, in a godless world, who cares?
**Only in a universe governed by a personal God can we ground morality.**
This is *part* of what I was getting at when you balked at this statement of mine: “If you are logically consistent and want to have a worldview that can ground rationality and provide an indubitable moral basis to be rational, then there is only one worldview that you can adhere to in the end: Biblical Christianity.”
Thus, the immoral action this man used as an excuse to reject God is the very thing that betrays his denial thereof since nothing can be *cosmically* evil unless this man implicitly affirms a standard by which to judge such actions as evil. In other words, even in his pronouncement of agnosticism, the image of God within him pokes out as his heart rages against such evil. Without a personal God, there is no evil. Without a personal God, there is no good. Without a personal God, there are only bags of molecules doing thing to other bags of molecules.
The impersonal, unitarian god of Islam can’t answer this, for it condones it, and it doesn’t provide the philosophical cash-value needed to make sense out of personal accountability since you can’t derive personal accountability from impersonality. So, it goes with the rest of the world religions for one reason or another (of which I don’t have time to get into at this point).
Thus, without the personal God of the Christian Scriptures, this agnostic can’t account for the immorality which led to his supposed agnosticism and as such, this is a classic example of suppressing the truth of the knowledge of God within him in that he can’t act as a follower of God outwardly now because he’s disgusted with the prospect of the existence of the Christian God in light of such evil, but the very immorality that crushes him can only be accounted for by the very God that he’s rejecting.
As you well know, there are plenty of examples of people doing things that are more wicked than what the perpetrators did to the little girl in your narrative. The idolatrous Israelites *willingly* passed their children through the fires of Molech in order to appease that idol made of bronze. I know missionaries who have had their children *beaten* to death in front of their very eyes with clubs while the child screamed out to the parent not to deny the faith. Just as the prophets didn’t lose their faith when they heard the screams of the children being passed through the fire alive but preached harder, so these missionaries’ faith and zeal for the gospel grew stronger and stronger. The difference between those who lose their faith in such circumstances and those who keep it has nothing to do with them, but with God’s preserving power (Phil. 2:13).
Yes, there are people who lose their faith in God due to evil. This just shows that their faith was no true faith, but only temporary (cf. Matt. 13:21). God has varying means by which He exposes spurious faith, and rancid evil is one of them.
Dustin S. Segers
randal says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 12:03am
Dustin,
You said a number of things that are false. For instance, you seem to assume that all non-theistic views of the human person are Democritean. That’s simply not true. Nor is it true that there is no objective morality if God does not exist. An atheistic platonic realist or Aristotelean realist would rightly take great umbrage at that assumption. I fear that you are merely dealing with strawmen.
But that is all really beside the point. You mercifully answer my question at the very end of your statement: “This just shows that their faith was no true faith, but only temporary (cf. Matt. 13:21). God has varying means by which He exposes spurious faith, and rancid evil is one of them.”
If I understand you correctly you are affirming that a moment’s doubt is indeed sinful and that it would reveal the fact that Dr. Z never was a Christian to begin with. Wow. Well, I can’t fault you for consistency.
Shawn says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 1:21am
So Dustin, in your “God filled” universe, how much better off is that 8 year old girl?
Or is she just better off dead?
I am atheist, and now so is Dr Z. Neither of us find the actions perpetrated on that little girl as moral.
We didn’t need a silent and invisible God (or a book of Middle Eastern writings) to arrive at that conclusion.
I just proved your no morals without God argument false.
Meatbags we may be, but meatbags with self awareness, intelligence and capacity for compassion. None of which needs a supernatural explanation.
If you need a God to tell you what’s morally acceptable or not that’s your problem, but in mine and Dr Z’s view, you’d be better off with one that didn’t create abhorrent evil, didn’t kill every living thing on earth with a flood, and who doesn’t condemn people to unimaginable suffering in hell for eternity, but that’s just based on my “evil” atheist morality.
TPM says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 1:28am
“Introducing real or hypothetical tearjerkers in an attempt to illustrate a range of contradictory positions is often an effective device used to distract from the real issues.”
So is the generic response, repeated ad nauseum by some Christians when confronted with intellectual challenges to the faith, that only their particular version of Christianity secures the cognitive and moral resources needed to articulate the challenge in the first place.
“Moreover, in a godless world, human beings are just data-processing meat-machines, with a natural expiration date. In a godless world, some expire sooner than others. Thus, when one meat machine overpowers the other and rams a knife up the crotch of another meat machine, it’s just natural selection acting upon two mere meat-machines. So, in a godless world, who cares?”
You’re completely missing the point. In a godless world these things happen, and you’re right that there’s nothing objectively wrong with them. BUT these things should not be expected to happen with such frequency and banality in a theistic universe. The challenge comes from within the Christian worldview itself, and threatens to render it internally inconsistent.
It doesn’t really matter whether the act is objectively right or wrong. What matters is that it is the kind of thing we wouldn’t expect to happen if there is a personal, loving, providential God behind the scenes. Such acts do not need to be seen as objectively immoral in order to count against the Christian worldview.
“The impersonal, unitarian god of Islam can’t answer this, for it condones it, and it doesn’t provide the philosophical cash-value needed to make sense out of personal accountability since you can’t derive personal accountability from impersonality.”
I hope you see the contradiction between this criticism and the following:
“The difference between those who lose their faith in such circumstances and those who keep it has nothing to do with them, but with God’s preserving power.”
You berate Islam for lacking grounding for personal accountability, and then insist that people’s loss of faith has nothing to do with them.
Not only is that logically incoherent, but it makes your God out to be even more monstrous than the one who lets small children get metal blades rammed up their genitals: not only does he let such things happen, but he uses them as an instrument to strip some of His followers of their faith, thereby condemning them to hell. So first they are emotionally and psychologically and spiritually devastated, through no fault of their own (remember, you said it: their loss of faith has nothing to do with them), and then are consigned to hellfire for their culpable abandonment of belief in God.
PM says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 12:50am
So Dr. Z became a Platonist!? Btw, how does one get obligations and duties on Platonism? Anyway, what we want to know is whether Dr.Z’s change was rational, or are you only arguing for the ethical nature of unbelief? If so, are you on record as admitting that God will not judge unbelief as a sin? And what do you make of the verse that says God “commands now all men everywhere to repent.”? When God asks why they did not repent, can’t they just say that that presupposes they believe, and if that is not a sin, how can not repenting be a sin?
Shawn says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 1:10am
Nice of all you supernaturalists to avoid dealing with the fundamental question of why Dr Z “lost” his belief/faith.
It’s because it no longer makes any sense to Dr Z (and other rational humans) that your silent and invisible friend doesn’t think chopping off little girls legs and horrifically injuring them is worth his time and effort to prevent.
He is either:
1. Non-existent (pretty plausible explanation).
2. Condoning “evil” and innocent suffering
3. Treating us like a great big ant farm down here.
4. Lazy
5. Working in such a “mysterious way” as to be completely divorced from any moral rationale Dr Z finds acceptable.
Either way Dr Z doesn’t see any logical reason to keep the faith with such a useless and/or immoral silent and invisible entity.
If God wants to argue the case for his behavior, he should do a better job of it than Romans blah blah.
Doesn’t convince Dr Z, nor millions of others.
Pastor Dustin S. Segers says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 4:04am
Randall,
1. To begin with, I was dealing with the standard default atheistic alternative to Christianity, viz. physicalism. Sure, one could discuss more esoteric alternatives, but I decided to attack the default “New Atheist” position since the average atheist is not a substance dualist or Platonist.
2. Moreover, as “PM” pointed out above, simply positing Platonic realism fails to explain moral realism. How would abstract *impersonal* universals, in and of themselves, oblige us to behave in a certain way? What are they to us? That would be like claiming that Pi imposes moral obligations on us; which is ridiculous. In an impersonal, Platonic realm of ideals, there is no way to tell exactly *how* we are suitably related to said abstract universals nor that we have any moral obligations to them. In Platonism, these forms simply exist. But as Hume showed us so eloquently, what is the case doesn’t necessarily tell us what *ought* be the case; Sam Harris’ views notwithstanding. This is one reason why men need a revelational epistemology grounded in the Bible. God not only supplies the metaphysical grounding for such things, but an ethical grounding as well. This is something that Platonism in any form cannot do, simply because it provides no personal God by which the moral forms are imposed upon mankind. If you ask 10 different Platonists what they think the two most important moral maxims are, you might get 10 completely different answers. This is because an immaterial realm of ideals without a personal, divine Administrator of said ideals is a whore; she’ll sell out to the highest philosophical bidder. This is why the most consistent forms of postmodernism have rejected it for the philosophical whore that it is.
That’s entirely different from the relationship between God and men, and you are well aware of that.
3. Also, a Christian, by virtue of being a Christian, doesn’t believe that atheistic alternatives are true. So even if, for the sake of argument, one could dream up a hypothetical alternative to Christian anthropology or Christian ethics, so what?
As long as you claim to be a Christian, you must regard all these atheistic alternatives as false. The real world is not a godless world with platonic abstracta.
You asked,
“If I understand you correctly you are affirming that a moment’s doubt is indeed sinful and that it would reveal the fact that Dr. Z never was a Christian to begin with. Wow. Well, I can’t fault you for consistency.”
Doubt is sinful regardless of who commits it (Matt. 6:25-34). This is why a true believer is a “repenting-repenter” and why sanctification is progressive (Heb. 10:14). Contrary to what some may suggest, Calvinists do *not* teach that people cannot have a “dark night of the soul” In fact, both the WCF and the 1689 LBCF sections 17:3 both affirm as much. The difference is that the elect of God don’t stay there, but by God’s preserving grace will come through the traumatic experience with their faith intact. I could tell you story after story of this very thing from over 10 years of pastoral experience, including examples from my own life, but time fails me. Thanks for your consideration and interaction.
Dustin S. Segers
D Bnonn Tennant says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 4:23am
Randal, like PM, I’m curious to know:
1. Do you deny that we have an obligation to believe in God?
For example, do you deny that the gospel is a command as well as an invitation; that disobeying God’s commands is sinful; or that God will judge unbelief as sin?
2. Do you deny that it is “the fool” who says in his heart, “There is no God”?
3b. Do you deny that a considered disbelief in God is immoral and irrational?
You seem to be implicitly making these denials by taking the position which you are. In essence, you seem to be saying that provided one has what he thinks is a good excuse for rejecting the source of goodness and rationality, one is not rejecting goodness and rationality (ie, one is not being evil and irrational). That seems like an obvious contradiction. If God is indeed the source of these things, how could there even be a good reason for rejecting him?
Pastor Dustin S. Segers says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 4:42am
TPM,
You said,
“You’re completely missing the point. In a godless world these things happen, and you’re right that there’s nothing objectively wrong with them. BUT these things should not be expected to happen with such frequency and banality in a theistic universe. The challenge comes from within the Christian worldview itself, and threatens to render it internally inconsistent.”
“It doesn’t really matter whether the act is objectively right or wrong. What matters is that it is the kind of thing we wouldn’t expect to happen if there is a personal, loving, providential God behind the scenes. Such acts do not need to be seen as objectively immoral in order to count against the Christian worldview.”
1. For starters, this concedes more to me than Randall did. Indeed, it concedes the fundamental argument, then changes the subject.
2. To the contrary, I thoroughly *expect* atrocities like this to occur in the ancient and modern world because they occur in the Bible. People are sinful, totally depraved, and commit various acts of wickedness to one degree or another. I expect such wickedness and even more coming from sinners who live like they are their own little gods. Please hear me well: To a Bible-believing Christian, there is nothing surprising about atrocities. For Bible history is littered with atrocities that result from sin. Though this is a popular objection to Christianity, ironically enough, it’s entirely consistent with Christian expectations since the Bible predicts that wicked men will do horrible things because we live in a fallen, sin-cursed world, and guess what, that’s exactly what they do! It’s called “Total Depravity”. It’s only by God’s common grace that men aren’t worse!
You go on to say,
“You berate Islam for lacking grounding for personal accountability, and then insist that people’s loss of faith has nothing to do with them.”
I simply suggested that people’s perseverance in faith *ultimately* has nothing to do with them, since it is rooted in God’s power and not man’s gumption to keep his faith through mere human efforts. Because the subject of this blog post is not a discussion about the perseverance of the saints, I was appropriately short in my response in this regard. I hardly see how your assertion undermines the Christian doctrine of the perseverance of the saints or Christian theism in toto; for the damnation that an apostate receives is not solely based on their temporary faith, but on so much more. You aren’t going to appreciate this next statement, but I have no control over what you appreciate: God raises up some men for certain evil purposes and then condemns them for the wicked intention of their hearts in the very thing that He raised them up to do (cf. Isaiah 10; Proverbs 16:4; Rom. 9:22-25). The most famous example of this is found in Acts 4:27-28, where Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Jews, and the Gentiles were predestined to do what they did to Jesus, yet had such not taken place, there would be no salvation. So, you might want to rethink your implication regarding God’s supposed “injustice” against sinners as it pertains to His eternal decree. For without it, you wouldn’t be alive right now (1 Sam. 2:6).
Re: the perseverance of the saints, God is a God of means, and the true Christian’s faith will ultimately be strengthened through those God-ordained means, whether it be through prayer and Bible study, or the butchering of their entire family right in front of their eyes. I can personally speak from both circumstances since I have witnessed Christians grow through both joy and atrocity.
“Not only is that logically incoherent, but it makes your God out to be even more monstrous than the one who lets small children get metal blades rammed up their genitals: not only does he let such things happen, but he uses them as an instrument to strip some of His followers of their faith, thereby condemning them to hell. So first they are emotionally and psychologically and spiritually devastated, through no fault of their own (remember, you said it: their loss of faith has nothing to do with them), and then are consigned to hellfire for their culpable abandonment of belief in God.”
You are the same person that wrote this at the beginning of your response to me right?:
“It doesn’t really matter whether the act is objectively right or wrong. . . . Such acts do not need to be seen as objectively immoral in order to count against the Christian worldview.”
It is hypocritical of you to chastise my God for His supposed wrongdoing *if* you don’t even profess to believe in moral realism to begin with.
Also, the fact that you are engaging in logical argumentation in the first place shows that you believe that both you, I, and every other human being has a *moral obligation* to be rational. But why? Where did that obligation come from? Why am I morally obligated to answer your supposed Biblical contradictions and be consistent when I’m just molecules banging around? Whence cometh moral realism in a world where we’re all just part of the impersonal void? This shows that you are caught between the rational/irrational dialectic, where you shuffle back and forth between rationality (You ought be rational Dustin and not believe Christian theism because its internally contradictory) and irrationality (“some acts don’t need to be seen as objectively immoral”). So which is it TPM? I’m I to be rational, or irrational? The fact that you can’t even account for your own arguments against my supposed irrationality shows that you are, as I said earlier, suppressing the truth of God that He placed within you, namely, that you are a rational being, you recognize moral obligations that are binding upon all people, and you have a desire to see people change their minds to think more consistently with reality.
None of that makes sense on atheism; but it makes perfect sense given the teachings of the Bible. You have demonstrated what I’ve said all along, that unbelievers are “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20).
Dustin S. Segers
Pastor Dustin S. Segers says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 5:22am
Shawn,
You said,
“Nice of all you supernaturalists to avoid dealing with the fundamental question of why Dr Z “lost” his belief/faith.”
We have dealt with this to some degree, but if you like, we can provide more details from Scripture as to why one person loses their faith yet the other doesn’t even though they both suffered the same or a similar tragic event. See my response to TPM above for more detail.
“It’s because it no longer makes any sense to Dr Z (and other rational humans) that your silent and invisible friend doesn’t think chopping off little girls legs and horrifically injuring them is worth his time and effort to prevent.”
I will seek to demonstrate that *nothing* makes sense (including atrocities) without God. Please kindly hear me out:
1. You noted the importance of being rational. I agree that people ought to be rational, I just don’t know why you as an atheist do. After all, on your view, since we are all just bags of matter, why *ought* I be rational? Why not foam at the mouth, pee freely in the streets, and run around naked like an idiot shouting “Randall Rauser for emperor!”? What *morally obligates* me to follow the laws of logic when there is no ultimate, Transcendent law-giver?
2. How do you know that God isn’t preventing atrocities now? (2 Thess. 2:6-7) How do you know that God has never prevented an atrocity? (Gen. 20:6) Who is to say that in the entire history of the world, God has never stopped an atrocity? To say, “I have no empirical evidence that God has stopped an atrocity; therefore, no atrocity has ever been stopped in the history of the world, therefore, no God exists” is akin to saying “I have no empirical evidence that rabbits live in my yard; therefore, no rabbit has ever lived on this ground in the history of the world, therefore, no rabbits exist.” It’s a conclusion that simply cannot be drawn from the premises. Besides, you have the historical record from Scripture of God doing the very things that you suggest He hasn’t done. I tell you this, if God did *not* restrain wicked men right now, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation because one of us would probably be dead.
3. You assume that if the Christian God exists then His goodness and love require Him to stop all atrocities and no atrocities could ever have happened in the history of the world. Look Shawn, incredible suffering and pain are the result of our living in a cursed world; cursed because of *our* sin (Genesis 3:16-19; Romans 8:20-22). The very sin of unbelief that you use to deny God for is the same type of sin that created the problem to begin with (Gen. 3:1ff)! God’s goodness and love moved Him to provide a Savior to redeem people from the curse that you are groaning under (1 John 4:9-10), but the ultimate redemption will not be realized until God has made a final end of sin in the world. Until that time, we are still subject to physical death, atrocities, and varying degrees of evil. Had God not *predestined* the greatest evil that ever occurred; namely, the crucifixion of the Son of God, people would have no hope (Acts 4:27-28). So don’t be so quick to dismiss God when you know the Bible says that He does things for a reason even though He has not deigned to reveal that reason to you in every circumstance. No, you trust Him just like you should trust a loving earthly Father because you know that He’s good. But sadly, you don’t know that and aren’t interested in that (Rom. 8:7-8; 1 Cor. 2:14).
Paul the apostle prayed to have his “thorn in the flesh” removed, but God said, “No” because He wanted Paul to understand he didn’t need to be physically whole to experience the sustaining grace of God. Through the experience, Paul grew in humility and in the understanding of God’s mercy and power (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). So it goes with God’s children who are subject to severe and gross wickedness. I know, for I have both personally experienced such things myself and have many missionary friends who have lost friends and family at the hands of evil men for the cause of Christ. Their faith did nothing but grow stronger because man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.
4. You assume that God’s future restoration of all things (in the New Heavens & New Earth) cannot compensate for earthly suffering. The truth is, “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). When a believer loses a loved one, he has God’s promise of future wholeness, and faith is “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:4).
5. You assume that if God exists then His plan is subject to man’s approval. Sorry dude, it’s not. One of the contentions of the “why doesn’t God prevent atrocites?” argument is that God just isn’t being “fair” to the victims to allow them to undergo such horrendous pain and suffering. Yet, Scripture is clear that God is perfectly just (Psalm 11:7; 2 Thessalonians 1:5-6) and in His sovereignty answers to no one, including you (Romans 9:20-21). A believer has faith in God’s goodness, even when circumstances make it difficult. The unbeliever will often grind their teeth in anger at the fact that God would ordain such things. Such things don’t prove the non-existence of the Christian God; they actually demonstrate that what the Bible says *is* true; namely, that men will hate God for the very sin that *they* brought into the world.
6. You assume (intellectually) that God does not exist. This is the underlying assumption on which the whole “why won’t God stop atrocities?” argument is based. Those who champion this argument start with the assumption that God does not exist and then proceed to buttress their idea as best they can. For them, “religion is a myth” is a foregone conclusion, presented as a logical deduction but which is, in reality, foundational to the argument. However, this is assuming the very thing you’re trying to prove, a classical logical fallacy known as “begging the question”.
So Shawn, before you are so quick to accuse God of not existing, of being evil, lazy, or some other nonsense, you would do well to consider what I’ve said above. I speak the truth to you in love.
May God open your eyes to see the truth of His grace.
Dustin S. Segers
Shawn says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 5:29am
Dustin said:
“I simply suggested that people’s perseverance in faith *ultimately* has nothing to do with them, since it is rooted in God’s power and not man’s gumption to keep his faith through mere human efforts”.
Then your God was pretty powerless at keeping John Loftus’ faith (and mine).
….”It’s only by God’s common grace that men aren’t worse!”
That clearly implies God has drawn the line at current levels of depravity. Nice one God, couldn’t you have stopped before the little girl lost her legs and was further mutilated?
……….”God raises up some men for certain evil purposes and then condemns them for the wicked intention of their hearts in the very thing that He raised them up to do”.
That’s great for God, but what about the victims of the evil men God “raised up” (not too fair on the pre-destined “evil men” either)?
Again, Thanks a lot God. Nice morality.
Don’t forget “and the true Christian’s faith will ultimately be strengthened through those God-ordained means, whether it be through prayer and Bible study, or the butchering of their entire family right in front of their eyes”.
I don’t even have to comment on that one.
You Pastor, (if you actually are a Pastor, and I hope not) are a fascist, fundamentalist, dangerous, evil minded, ignorant, and UTTERLY IMMORAL (no sorry, you have one moral, obey any twisted logic you divine from the book of Middle Eastern faiytales your parents told you to believe in) individual.
If all Christians were like you, I wouldn’t be just posting on blogs, I’d be taking more dramatic steps to eradicate your cult.
Fortunately, there are less stupid, more compassionate followers of Jesus Christ, who justify a more considered response.
But Randal, if there was ever a better example of how dangerous your belief system can become in the hands of the mentally challenged, this guy is it.
This is why some atheists see religion as a dangerous superstition that needs to be eradicated for humanity’s sake.
Thanks for at least illustrating my arguments Pastor.
Jerry Rivard says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 5:51am
But Shawn, didn’t you read all the way to the end? He speaks the truth to you in love!
Jerry Rivard says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 7:00am
I disagree with you on at least one point here Shawn. (How ’bout that, PM?)
Any belief system can be dangerous in the hands of sick minds. Neither theism nor any of the religions built upon it is a requirement for atrocious human behavior. It’s true that many, perhaps most, of the atrocities in human history were committed by humans purporting to act in the name of God. But that doesn’t account for Stalin or Pol Pot, for example. Evil sick people will do evil sick things; they’ll find an excuse to hide behind sometimes, but it will never be the real reason.
What I find so objectionable about this guy’s beliefs is that they are so anti-man. That’s not limited to theism either, even though it is more common there; there are animal lovers and environmentalists who think of us as a blight on this planet.
What can be more wicked, more evil, more dangerous, than hating one’s own species? But that’s what we have at the root of this particular brand of religion. A perfect God created flawed man (but in His own image), the first man sinned (by eating an apple – oooh), and somehow it’s all man’s fault, we’re wicked and evil, we need to be punished and restrained.
Yet somehow throughout our history we’ve managed to move from the cave to the skyscraper; from inarticulate grunts to cell phones; from walking on bare feet to flying in a plane; from killing each other for resources to (incomplete, but getting there) global cooperation. I’m extremely proud of our species, and lucky that I live in a time in our history when I can say these things without (much) fear of retribution. Several centuries ago, I could not, for the moment I opened my mouth, the pear of anguish would be stuffed into it.
The common thread that binds Stalin, Torquemada, Manson, and the monsters that could do such a thing to an 8-year-old girl is not their belief systems, but their ability to dehumanize human beings. That, not money or love of money, and certainly not failure to believe in God without evidence, is the root of all evil.
Shawn says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 7:34am
Well said Jerry. I agree.
It’s just that this brand of theism still intrudes so much into the lives of some of our cultures, and continues to be forced into the minds of children.
And it is given credibility because it shares (even if in name only) millions of followers with the more tolerant.
I expect there were some (maybe many) Nazi’s who didn’t want to actually exterminate the Jews (just move them out of Germany), but they provided the one’s who did the credibility of numbers to pull it off.
Another analogy is the Islamic extremists aren’t operating in an ideological vacuum. They have millions of tacit, albeit less extreme supporters.
I’m sure you’ve heard or read of Dawkin’s arguments for why ALL religion is now dangerous to society. I tend to agree with that logic.
Jerry Rivard says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 8:46am
I’ve read a lot of Dawkins, and I agree with much of what he says, but not all of it. I don’t recall his exact arguments for why all religions are dangerous (as I recall Harris argues that position more vehemently, and more eloquently), but I don’t need to read them again to know I disagree at least at the big picture level. Ideas and beliefs are not in themselves dangerous. It takes dangerous people performing horrible acts to bring out the true evil. There’s plenty of room on this planet for peaceful and tolerant beliefs of all kinds.
That said, and despite my strong faith in my species (not blind, but borne out by actual progress in so many directions), we do have some flaws in our thinking. The Nazis used propaganda to instill hatred of the Jews in the common people by dehumanizing them. (Remember those Leni Riefenstahl films with the rats running through the sewers?) But the people bought into it, and that’s the problem you’re talking about. It’s not the specific idea that they bought into, just the fact that they did. That they could. Even those who just wanted the Jews out of Germany couldn’t have felt that way without that dehumanization. Think about any atrocity, real or imagined, and you’ll find the perpetrators thinking of the victims as less human than themselves. This is as true for the lone serial killer as it is for the most brutal dictator, from the Manson family to the KKK. The difference is that the dictator and the hate group leader need help. They cannot act alone.
Whatever the deficiency – much more likely to have been put there by evolution than by God (and the ultimate evil if God put it there) – that allows us to accept so readily that us-against-them mentality is what needs to be addressed. We are fighting the wrong enemy if we name a particular range of ideologies as the culprit. And ironically, we’re fighting it with the same weapon we seek to eradicate.
It helped our ancestors to cooperate in smaller groups in competition with other groups, but that has become counter-productive. We need to evolve to the point where we see films of rats in sewers as films of rats in sewers, and know that people are not rats. That’s not a physical evolution (good thing, cause we don’t have time for that), but a moral one. We are evolving morally, and have been (generally) throughout our history – but I think we’re gonna need a way to step up the pace.
Remember the old saying from the 60s, what if they gave a war and nobody came? It’s naive of course – it would work if nobody came, but we’re just not there yet, not even close – but what if they showed propaganda films and nobody believed them? That seems to me to be an achievable goal. We need to find a way to increase the percentage of people who can think for themselves. Then the bad ideologies will go away.
Pastor Dustin S. Segers says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 6:25am
Shawn,
I have sought to respond to you with logical argumentation, as well as patience, understanding, and love, while also offering you a friendly challenge to your assertion against God. In response, you have resorted to calling me names such as “You . . . are a fascist, fundamentalist, dangerous, evil minded, ignorant, and UTTERLY IMMORAL (no sorry, you have one moral, obey any twisted logic you divine from the book of Middle Eastern faiytales your parents told you to believe in) individual.”
Shawn, if you believed invisible pink unicorns from Alpha Centauri were leaving invisible cow-pies in your front yard I certainly wouldn’t treat you this way. But, given the fact that you believe we’re all just molecules banging around, you aren’t obligated to be moral or rational in an impersonal universe made only of matter.
Nevertheless, I’ll mention just a few things in passing:
1. It is hypocritical for you to willingly commit the ad hominem fallacy while chiding me for being irrational. However, since we are all just meat machines, *why* ought anyone be rational? You have further demonstrated both to me and the rest of the readers here that you not only have no grounding whatsoever for the immaterial, abstract, universal laws of logic that you just violated, but you have also confirmed that, given atheistic materialism, there is no moral obligation to follow them either. However, the fact that you *do* use them even though your worldview can’t make sense out of them is *evidence* that you are suppressing the truth of God within you and that you live in the very world of the God that you hate and in order to reach up and slap Him in the face you have to sit on His lap. This is why God says in Romans 1:20 that you will have “no excuse” when you stand before Him. The image of God is fractured in you, but it cannot be completely eradicated in this life since you live in and are a part of His creation. Thus, when you float between rationality and irrationality, morality and immorality as demonstrated in your response to me, you are showing that you are living on borrowed capital.
2. You hate God for the fact that He didn’t preserve your faith (as if He is morally obligated to do so with all who initially profess faith in Christ) and that He lets atrocities occur because He has a good and wise plan that is being fulfilled through them. Thus, you hate him because He’s not a celestial Mr. Rogers, the oceans aren’t made out of chocolate milk, and because candy gumballs don’t naturally grow on oak trees. Again Shawn, we live in a sin-cursed world that is subject to the very things that you can’t make sense out of without the God that you hate.
As it pertains to the eternal state of these people, if both the victim and the perpetrator were lost, then they both go to Hell and both get perfect justice from God. However, if the victim was an elect child of God, she has just entered into glory, whereas the obviously evil perpetrator is thrown into Hell to receive justice forever. And no Shawn, should the perpetrator die in his sins, he wouldn’t go to heaven regardless of whatever faith he professed since the very fact that he did such a thing showed that He was never converted unto Christ. Jesus made it clear that its not those who call Him Lord that will enter into heaven, but those who lived like they really had their hearts changed by His Spirit (John 3:3-5). This is not salvation by works, but salvation by faith alone unto good works; with the good works being evidence that a person’s heart has truly been transformed by a kind, gracious God who could give people what they deserve instead of giving them mercy on the basis of what Christ did for sinners.
In regards to predestination, God has the sovereign right to do with His creation as He wills by virtue of the fact that He made it, He owns it, and if He wants to make a vessel of destruction for the purposes of showing forth His power and justice in giving it what it deserves, then you have no logical or moral objection to that. God is Lex Rex; i.e., what He says goes, and what He says is right because it proceeds from His very nature, which is Holy and good.
By the way Shawn, what would you tell the mother of the girl that was butchered when she came to you for answers?
Would you comfort her by telling her these things?
*That all we are is a random collocation of molecules?
*Would you tell her that there is no cosmic right and wrong, and that sometimes one bag of molecules gets dashed by another bag of molecules?
*That sometimes SH*T happens and that’s what happened to her daughter?
* That evil will never be righted or dealt with and that the guy just got away with it forever?
It seems that while you rage against God, He offers kindness to you through the gospel of Christ. He has fixed a day in which He will judge the word in righteousness through Jesus Christ. If your heart stopped beating in your chest right now, you would die and get justice. Please repent of your God-hating disposition and place your faith in Christ; for He is mighty to save you from your sin and gives the hope of eternal life.
This will be the last response to you in this blog post. I hope you consider what I have had to say.
May God open your eyes to the truth of His grace,
Dustin S. Segers
Shawn says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 6:43am
Just to summarise the Pastor’s arguments for the Glory of his God:
“He lets atrocities occur because He has a good and wise plan that is being fulfilled through them”.
“In regards to predestination, God has the sovereign right to do with His creation as He wills by virtue of the fact that He made it, He owns it, and if He wants to make a vessel of destruction for the purposes of showing forth His power and justice in giving it what it deserves, then you have no logical or moral objection to that”.
“It seems that while you rage against God, He offers kindness to you through the gospel of Christ”.
Anyone see anything contradictory here?
May you gain sufficient intellect to open your eyes to the reality of life, and courage enough to not fear death Dustin.
Walter says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 3:41pm
“In regards to predestination, God has the sovereign right to do with His creation as He wills by virtue of the fact that He made it, He owns it, and if He wants to make a vessel of destruction for the purposes of showing forth His power and justice in giving it what it deserves, then you have no logical or moral objection to that”.
“It seems that while you rage against God, He offers kindness to you through the gospel of Christ”.
Anyone see anything contradictory here?
Billions upon billions are predestined to eternal damnation for the Creator’s glory, but good news, maybe! If you are lucky enough to be one of the arbitrarily chosen handful, you might actually receive some kindness from Christ!
Almost brings a tear to my eye.
randal says:
Friday, January 14, 2011 at 8:04pm
I know that many Calvinists live with this as a deep cognitive dissonance in their worldview. And I suspect that if they ever get over that cognitive dissonance they either (a) are no longer Calvinists or (b) they get very nasty.
Chinwendu says:
Saturday, January 15, 2011 at 11:16pm
Dear Dr. Randal Rauser, greeting to you from Little Congo. I am Congolese and mother to Abweti, the young girl in you pictur. She is carrying her half brother, Abidemi. This her father son. I write to you to say I have wet eyes and hurt heart to see you post a pictur of my daughter in your battle of the head with you enemy. I do not think approprate to do this. I lived through our war and was treat vary badly by men of Pascal Lissouba, but I should say I never been treat this badly. Shame on you.
Blake Reas says:
Monday, January 17, 2011 at 10:24pm
I think the problem here is with your usage of “Natural Revelation”. I do not dispute that there is a natural revelation, but I do not think it has the perspicuity that some are willing to give to it. The difference is one of Necessary and Sufficient conditions. Natural Revelation is necessary for one to believe in God, but not sufficient. Add to this the problem of what kind of God does Natural Revelation reveal after it has been filtered through minds with the Noetic effects of sin, and it is evident that maybe natural revelation is not enough to get us to proper God belief. Enough to condemn us, but not enough to save.
Second, I do not think that from a biblical theology standpoint that one can separate special from Natural/General Revelation.
The reason why Natural Revelation is not sufficient is because man never experienced the world (Natural Revelation) with out God speaking (special revelation). From the beginning, in the Garden, God had revealed himself and his purpose to Adam. Thus Special, and Natural Revelation are two sides of the same Revelationary coin. Nature tells us something but not clearly. It is only enough to condemn us, we need God’s proper interpretation of nature to come to an accurate understanding, and even then it is not exhaustive, but it is still accurate.
Third, Dr. Z is suffering from the emotional problem of evil. It has been shown pretty convincingly, if you are an Arminian, that the logical problem of evil has been defanged by the Free-will Defense. If this is the case, then on non-calvinistic grounds Dr. Z is having an irrational reason for his disbelief in God, isn’t he?