In The End of Christianity John W. Loftus describes the following Christian belief which he finds very implausible:
“That the highest created being known as Satan or the devil, led an angelic rebellion against an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent God … and expected to win. This makes Satan out to be suicidal, inexplicably evil, and dumber than a box of rocks.” (100)
So how could any creature be so dumb as to rebel against the supreme omnibenevolent creator of the universe? John definitely has a point: that is definitely implausible.
But now consider the following statement John made in his blog:
“If I was convinced Christianity is true and Jesus arose from the grave, and if I must believe in such a barbaric God, I would believe, yes, but I could still not worship such a barbaric God. I would fear such a Supreme Being, since he has such great power, but I’d still view him as a thug, a despicable tyrant, a devil in disguise; unless Christianity was revised.”
Let’s spend some time chewing on this passage.
According to Christianity, God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent (that is, perfectly good). And worship is, minimally, the ascription of proper worthship to that deity. Incredibly, if that being exists John will refuse to worship that being. Thus we can paraphrase John’s position as follows:
“If I was convinced that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent God existed I would refuse to recognize the worthship of that perfectly good God and would instead treat him as a despicable tyrant.”
Now wait a minute. John’s accusing Satan of being dumber than a box of rocks?
