Matt Slick from C.A.R.M. posted a series of questions to atheists. I previously answered 10 of them.
It's a good idea to read them first. This is the next set 11 to 20.
11. If you were at one time a believer in the Christian God, what caused you to deny his existence?
I was a Catholic Christian for about 30 odd years before drifting away from that religion.
The question is, as usual, a bit malformed. As an atheist, the christian god, or God as CARM uses the term, is one of thousands of gods and no more special than any of them from my current position.
However I will attempt to break down issues that led to my doubting the claims about 'his' existence.
A. The bible is full of statements that don't quite mash if the Catholic doctrines were true, including the concept that Jesus was God. The bible is not very clear on that, and there are instances that directly oppose the idea. The story of the Devil tempting Jesus in the desert is a classic problem for that claim. If the devil knew God, but tried to bribe Jesus to worship him instead of God, it makes the idea that Jesus was God (and eternal) absurd. This directly points out that the devil thought Jesus was a man.
B. Genesis vs Science. Genesis is completely at odds with Science. Utterly.
C. The belief in witchcraft.
D. The hatred of and negative propaganda about the Jews.
E. Limbo (now dumped of course, as if it never was preached as real for generations).
F. The fragmentation of christianity (thousands of denominations).
G. The immorality of the Old Testament God and Jesus (for different reasons).
H. The use of guilt and fear to keep people in line while calling it love.
Of course none of this prevents there being a god or gods, or impacts on other religions, but those aspects certainly makes one wonder if the abrahamic God makes any sense at all.
Add to that the problem of evil, the change in the doctrines between the jews and christians and muslims and the remarkable corruption of the Catholic church (E.g. a series of well known evil or mad popes, the fabrication of religious artifacts and the pragmatic use of saints and miracles for wealth and power.)
I could go on and on. I think the last straw came when I finally realised that nothing in the bible about Jesus came FROM Jesus (when you have a personal relationship with Jesus you can forget it is not him saying the words of wisdom), only tales about him from unknown or unreliable sources decades later. Plus all the non canonical gospels and stories and their absurd claims (Dragons for instance).
12. Do you believe the world would be better off without religion?
That depends on how religion was removed. Religion exploits human weaknesses. These weaknesses would still exist and would still be open for exploitation even without religions, as we see with people like Deepak Chopra and other mountebanks.
Religion has far more levels than merely the theology, this is self evident in that there are thousands of religions in the world, many drastically different, (so the theology is largely irrelevant) but all offer social control and some offer hope against the cold reality of death.
It has been so for so long that it would take a massive change in how we think about the big questions and the big fears to educate ourselves away from dependancy on easy lies and fast talkers.
If we could become more sceptical, more patient, less self centred and more responsible then yes, we could dump the out of date concepts that served our primative ancestors and move towards a future that replaced the lies with truths. How that would be achieved is a much harder question.
Currently ripping away religion would cause a lot of problems, however challenging it and seeking real reform that moves away from blind faith would be feasible and not as traumatic. In fact if we are ever to start finding truths, you have to recognise the lies first. As with all addictions, acknowledgement of the problem is the first step. Religion is certainly an addiction to many people.
13. Do you believe the world would be better off without Christianity?
Yes. Without Christianity we also would not have Islam to content with, or Mormons or all the other religions and cults that cling to the christian concepts of Hell and Heaven. Of course we might have something else instead, as human weaknesses are easy to exploit with lies and fast talkers. Would the world have been a better place without Christianity? That is impossible to say. Christianity has been a massive part in our human history for 2000 years. However humans would still act according to their nature, so there would still be art, still reform, still wars and still fast talkers so while names might change, the state we are currently in probably would not.
Since christianity is not one thing, but thousands of losely connected faiths and dogmas, it is possible to further reform Christianity to the point where it does not have to be removed at all to allow for humankind to flourish. The further away from the horrors of blind faith the better.
14. Do you believe that faith in a God or gods is a mental disorder?
This statement is often used by atheists like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris to describe how they preceive blind faith in a god. They have their reasons for thinking like that. However lets look at the term 'mental disorder' itself to see if blind faith in a god qualifies.
"A mental disorder, also called a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a mental or behavioral pattern or anomaly that causes distress or disability, and which is not developmentally or socially normative. Mental disorders are generally defined by a combination of how a person feels, acts, thinks or perceives. " ~ wikipedia.
Now I say BLIND faith as there are many types of faith you can have and apologetics like to pretend that they are all the same in terms of justification. They like to think of faith as a kind of justified trust in God.
However the story of doubting Thomas (John 20: 24-29) in the bible does support Dawkins view of faith as blindly believing something without evidence "...blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.".
So focusing on blind faith, is that a mental disorder?. Well it is a mental and behavoural state, it can cause distress and disability as it can control your thought processes and create blindspots for reason and logic (listen to any apologetic for an example of this line of thinking). The only thing that stops it being seen as not socially normative is that it is so widespread and persistant. If someone says they see fairies or have faith in fairies or elves (which many people still do) most christians would think that faith is crazy and would call it a mental disorder, but if they call these fantasies angels and christians will stop and listen (some anyway). So faith in God is not a mental disorder for a very bad reason, it is simply too common. In some christian denominations, speaking in tongues (gibberish) or drinking poison or handling snakes or praying away cancer rather than seeking treatment, or beating unruly children with a stick, or forbidding swearwords because curses are magical or think that by saying a few words over a cracker it changes into the flesh of Jesus so they can eat it is normal. In such societies, 'normal' can be a very twisted thing.
15. Must God be known through the scientific method?
As we are using the Christian God here, rather than all possible gods, then it is important to understand what atheists mean by providing empirical proof of God. Modern christian apologetics and priests have moved God outside of reality (making it, ironically,by default unreal) and saying that it cannot be preceived by man and science. While this is not backed up by the bible, that has never stopped apologetics from moving the goalposts before when asked to backup their claims.
In the bible, God has a physical form (and I am not talking about Jesus), as do angels which supposedly exist with God on whatever plain of existence he is on.
So there is no reason that God cannot manifest on earth or provide a suitable avatar that would achieve the same result. The bible is full of very physical miracles of his power, very showy and definitely not requiring blind faith to see them.
However even respecting the modern view of God, a being that is supposed to be everywhere (but just not anywhere science can detect him of course) and all powerful (but unable to demonstrate he exists to anyone who does not already accept he exists or accepts very subjectively interpreted events.) Even the most liberal Christian accepts that God is a personal god, and that claims in the bible about how personal he is are true. So while you might not spot a man in the sky with a big beard you should be able, using the scientific method, to descern his interferance with reality. Prayer being one example. Christians have a long and varied history claiming the miracles of prayers, yet not one has been scientifically verified. The Catholic church used to proclaim miracles at a drop of the hat, but in an increasingly educated and scientifically literate society, they have rapidly become very very reluctant to offically claim new ones nowadays and when they do, don't go out of their way to back it up and usually rely on unrepeatable claims and mysteries.
16. If you answered yes to the previous question, then how do you avoid a category mistake by requiring material evidence for an immaterial God?
Well according to the bible, God is not simply immaterial (whatever that is?), that claim was made up by apologetics to get around the problem of having no empirical proof of their God.
But even giving the immaterial claim to them, they are making the error, not the atheist, as we don't ask for material evidence for an immaterial God, but material evidence for that God's interventions on the material universe. Christians do believe God does stuff, all we ask is for them to prove it.
17. Do we have any purpose as human beings?
This question is one of those questions that don't (yet) deserve an answer (like "Why do the rain clouds hate me?"). It also attempts to put the burden of proof onto atheists. Provide evidence we have an ultimate purpose first then ask the question, rather than presuppose it and then dare atheists to disprove it.
Perhaps our only purpose is to feed the legions of bacteria that live on us, or perhaps all living things have one purpose and that is to struggle to survive in a hostile universe, or perhaps such answers are unknowable. The only purpose we can know exists 100% is the one we give ourselves.
18. If we do have purpose, can you as an atheist please explain how that purpose is determined?
Going back to my previous answers in Q. 17. and developing each in turn.
A. There are a heck of a lot more bacteria than there are other species of animal or plant. Perhaps bacteria are special to the universe. (This is a joke, in case someone thinks I am being serious.)
B. Those that do not seek to survive die out before reproducing, those that survived desired to do so and being successful seem to point towards that being a reasonable and respectable purpose.
C. Keep looking for the hard answers and maybe we will find out someday.
D. By genetic and social and personal factors.
19. Where does morality come from?
Nature ultimately, and further refined (in our case) by human development and cognitive awareness of the social contract and self preservation. Morality, from my perspective, is the difference between harmful and beneficial behaviour in a social system. Without a social framework there is no need for morality. Christians may have their own view of what morality is, but I really don't care as I don't recognise many of their presupposed justifications for their definitions.
20. Are there moral absolutes?
Perhaps or perhaps not. I don't know of any but that does not mean there could not be any, assuming the term is internally consistant in the first place. Since morality (IMO) is derived from our development (in many ways), and thus must be somewhat flexible then absolutes makes no sense anymore than a married bachelor makes sense. Christians like to use emotionally charged 'examples' like raping babies, but that proves nothing in itself. Just because certain actions are seen as objectionable by atheists and theists does not, in any way, prove it to be an absolute anymore than if we all agreed upon something being good makes it an absolute. There is no standard to judge these concepts against and that is the nub of the matter. Once again all it comes down to is presupposing a God and then presupposing that God's attributes, then unjustifiably claiming since those attributes exist the God must. A nice circular argument.
Ok, that is enough for now.
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