I'd like to discuss a typical answer I see Christians give when they are faced with the immoral acts of Yahweh in the Old Testament. It goes something like this: "How can you judge whether something is good or bad? If you don't believe in God and his commandments then you can't call something immoral."
So basically Christians say that whenever skeptics question the acts of Yahweh in the Bible the skeptic has no ground to stand on since he or she does not believe in absolute morality. Similarly, they would say that skeptics cannot condemn the acts of Hitler because skeptics do not think there is an absolute, divinely-inspired standard to live by.
This is not a good come-back. I think the skeptic is well within reason to step into the Christian worldview in order to make an argument against it. It is a simple line of reasoning... If the Bible is true, then there are absolute standards. Yahweh claims to be perfect and good. If he is perfect then he should follow the absolute standards, right? So the reasoning goes like this: if you want to find whether A is true and you can find that within A there are contradictions, then you have a strong argument against the truth of A.
In other words, even though the atrocities in the old testament are horrendous in my opinion, I don't have to use my opinion as the standard that I judge by. I can use the standard within the Bible and see if Yahweh meets those standards. The Bible says that God is holy, righteous and just. So when I look at a story like the first born killing in Egypt I have to ask myself, "Does this match up with the other descriptions of God in the Bible?" (Remember, Yahweh hardened pharaoh's heart so he had no chance of repenting or stopping the massacre.) To me, the Egyptian plagues sound like a case of "our god is bigger and more terrifying than your god" which makes it look like a very man-made story.
Most Christians rather than seeing the humanness of the stories just ignore the parts they don't like and stick to the parts that they agree with. If they like a terrifying, wrathful, jealous god they can find it in there. If they like a compassionate, loving, honest god, he's there too.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Mere mythologies and a false trilemma
I have to be honest. I am a bit disappointed in this next section I'm reading of Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. The writing style is excellent and very easy to read through, but I was hoping for something a bit more profound. In the beginning of the book Lewis was very thought provoking while making a case for the existence of God, but was careful not to jump to saying that it was the Christian God. Now in this second section of the book he is discussing what Christianity believes about Genesis, Jesus, etc. This felt like a jump to me as he really did not explain why we should suddenly start talking about Christianity since he was so careful not to make that assumption in the first part of the book. Of course I knew he was going to get to Christianity at some point, I had just hoped there would be a bridge from the philosopher's God to the Christian God.
Mere mythologies
Lewis also made a strange comment that really raises the eyebrows. When listing the clues God gave us for His existence Lewis mentions that "He [God] sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men." It's amazing that he took this as evidence of God's existence. I take it as evidence of stories from other religions being borrowed and used in Christianity. The early christian apologist Justin Martyr makes the same admission that Lewis makes, but he had a different spin on it. He blames demons for spreading myths that were similar to Christianity. "They have been uttered by the influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead astray the human race" (Justin Martyr, 1st Apology, Ch. 54). Justin explains that the demons were able to read the prophets and had some ideas about how the messiah would come and so they influenced heathen mythologies to appear similar to Christianity. If you are interested in reading about these mythologies, here is a Wikipedia article about some of them: Jesus Christ in comparative mythologies.
A false trilemma
One other thing I'll mention about Mere Christianity is the argument C. S. Lewis makes that Jesus has to be one of three things: a Liar, a Lunatic, or the Lord. This sounds nice, but it's not a good idea to corner oneself into only these three possibilities. The biggest problem is that it leaves out the possibility that Jesus was made into a Legend. It also makes a huge jump in saying that he automatically has to be God. He could have just been a prophet that God chose to raise from the dead. There are plenty of other possibilities too and let's not forget that we don't even know if everything Jesus "said" in the gospels were his words or not.
Mere mythologies
Lewis also made a strange comment that really raises the eyebrows. When listing the clues God gave us for His existence Lewis mentions that "He [God] sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life again and, by his death, has somehow given new life to men." It's amazing that he took this as evidence of God's existence. I take it as evidence of stories from other religions being borrowed and used in Christianity. The early christian apologist Justin Martyr makes the same admission that Lewis makes, but he had a different spin on it. He blames demons for spreading myths that were similar to Christianity. "They have been uttered by the influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead astray the human race" (Justin Martyr, 1st Apology, Ch. 54). Justin explains that the demons were able to read the prophets and had some ideas about how the messiah would come and so they influenced heathen mythologies to appear similar to Christianity. If you are interested in reading about these mythologies, here is a Wikipedia article about some of them: Jesus Christ in comparative mythologies.
A false trilemma
One other thing I'll mention about Mere Christianity is the argument C. S. Lewis makes that Jesus has to be one of three things: a Liar, a Lunatic, or the Lord. This sounds nice, but it's not a good idea to corner oneself into only these three possibilities. The biggest problem is that it leaves out the possibility that Jesus was made into a Legend. It also makes a huge jump in saying that he automatically has to be God. He could have just been a prophet that God chose to raise from the dead. There are plenty of other possibilities too and let's not forget that we don't even know if everything Jesus "said" in the gospels were his words or not.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
The Bible against itself
I've started reading The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark. I think Thom is a Christian even though his book is about the Bible not being inerrant. Most folks would probably label him a liberal Christian for this view of the Bible. He starts out by saying that the Bible contains arguments. Different authors of the Bible had different opinions about things.
For example, some authors believed in Nationalism and others in Universalism. Ezra is given as an example of a nationalist who did not believe in "sharing" Yahweh with other nations. Ezra even goes so far as to expel from the land all the pagan women who had intermarried with the Israelites along with their children (Ezra 10). The author of Jonah had a different viewpoint. In the story of Jonah, Yahweh was merciful to the repentant pagans in the city of Ninevah. The author of Jonah believed that Yahweh was the god of all the nations which is in conflict with what Ezra believed.
Another topic that writers of the Bible could not agree on is suffering. Thom Stark gives several examples in his book of how some writers thought that suffering was a direct result of sin, but other writers felt that suffering was distributed evenly between the righteous and the wicked.
So what conclusions can we draw from the arguments within the Bible? To me, it is evidence that the words in the Bible are the thoughts of several different men and there is nothing behind the curtains inspiring them into a single, unified message. What's interesting is that Christians believe the Bible "all fits together" and they use this as evidence of its inspiration. I've read the Bible from cover to cover a few times and whenever I hear this I think, "Really? It all fits together?"
What are some other things that the writers of the Bible don't agree on?
For example, some authors believed in Nationalism and others in Universalism. Ezra is given as an example of a nationalist who did not believe in "sharing" Yahweh with other nations. Ezra even goes so far as to expel from the land all the pagan women who had intermarried with the Israelites along with their children (Ezra 10). The author of Jonah had a different viewpoint. In the story of Jonah, Yahweh was merciful to the repentant pagans in the city of Ninevah. The author of Jonah believed that Yahweh was the god of all the nations which is in conflict with what Ezra believed.
Another topic that writers of the Bible could not agree on is suffering. Thom Stark gives several examples in his book of how some writers thought that suffering was a direct result of sin, but other writers felt that suffering was distributed evenly between the righteous and the wicked.
So what conclusions can we draw from the arguments within the Bible? To me, it is evidence that the words in the Bible are the thoughts of several different men and there is nothing behind the curtains inspiring them into a single, unified message. What's interesting is that Christians believe the Bible "all fits together" and they use this as evidence of its inspiration. I've read the Bible from cover to cover a few times and whenever I hear this I think, "Really? It all fits together?"
What are some other things that the writers of the Bible don't agree on?
- Paul's teachings vs. Jesus' teachings
- Synoptic gospels vs. John
- Salvation: Faith vs. Works
- God may or may not desire animal sacrifices
- God is one or God is three in one
- God may or may not pass on punishment to future generations
- God may or may not tempt us
- Free will vs. Predestination
- Observing the Sabbath
- Circumcision
- The rapture may occur before, during or after the tribulation
- God is Love vs. Yahweh's Atrocities (This is a big one for me)
- Jewish Old Testament Messiah vs. Jesus
- Resurrection accounts vary in each gospel
- Just Google "Bible Contradictions" to find a lot more
My next post will cover the next section I've read in C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.
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