ContraRarian

Seversky skewers Christianity

I see they’re back to the Problem of Evil.  Again. 

It’ll all be Adam (and Eve’s) fault for trying a fruit diet.  Again.

There’ll be no satisfactory explanation of why an omniscient being didn’t see it coming a mile off and why an omnipotent being didn’t do anything about it.  Again.

There’ll be no moral justification for punishing not just the original offenders but all their descendants in perpetuity.  Again.

There’ll be no explanation of why God lied to Adam and no discussion of what that implies for everything else God is reported to have said.  Again.

Finally, and much more fundamentally, there will be no discussion of why a necessary being, such as the Christian God must be to be an Uncaused First Cause, would ever create a Universe and populate it with beings with whom he wants to enter into a loving relationship. Again.

A beautiful takedown of Christian theology and apologetics by Seversky @ atbc

One day, a dog owner went to the local pastor to announce the death of his dog and to request for a burial service. ‘I am afraid we don’t do services for animals in my church’, says the pastor, ‘but there’s a new church down the road, and only God knows what they believe in,’ he continued. ‘I reckon they could help. You can try your luck there.’ ’ Thanks, Pastor! I’ll go right away’, said the dog owner. ‘But’, he asked again innocently, ‘Pastor, do you think they’ll accept a donation of £250,000 as enough fee for the burial service? The pastor exclaimed, ‘sweet Jesus! Why didn’t you tell me your dog was a christian………..?

Breaking Up With God

ReligionDispatches has an interview with Sarah Sentilles, author of Breaking Up with God. Sentilles says (with my emphasis):

People assume I’m an atheist, but I’m not. I don’t know what I am, but if I had to choose a label I’d choose agnostic. When I say that people usually ask me if I think God exists, and I usually give them the answer that my teacher, Gordon Kaufman, used to give me: The question of God’s existence isn’t the right question because it won’t get you very far. It’s a question human beings can’t answer. If we take God’s mystery seriously, then we can never know. I think there are better questions that we can be answering: What does a particular vision of God do to those who submit to it and to those who won’t submit to it? What difference is my version of God making? Who is it harming? In one of his books, Kaufman writes, “The central question for theology… is a practical question. How are we to live? To what should we devote ourselves? To what causes give ourselves?” He argues that theology that does not contribute significantly to struggles against inhumanity and injustice has lost sight of its point of being.

I can’t know if God exists, but I do know the word God is operating in the world, running around doing all kinds of work, good and bad, and I think, as a theologian, I have a responsibility to think critically about the kinds of gods we make and worship and to try to come up with versions of god that might make the world a more just and life-giving place for everyone.

I do call myself an atheist - because it is clear that Yahweh is as much of a construct as Allah or Zeus or Vishna… But I love what Sentilles says: there are better questions we can be answering - and the universe is a wonderful mystery.

(ht: debunkingchristianity)