WinAce

<a href="http://users.rcn.com/rostmd/winace/theist_questionnaire.htm" target="_blank">Thought-Provoking Questions on Christianity and Theism in General</a>

This is intended as an exercise in freethought primarily for Christians willing to scrutinize their beliefs. A few sections apply to most other theists as well, but it's quite Christian-centric.

Comments and suggestions by other atheists are welcome, of course. This is basically the final version, barring a few last changes and additions I might make.

[ October 08, 2002: Message edited by: WinAce ]</p>

randomsyllable

Not bad.

A couple of things though. One or two of the questions should be reworded in order that a yes/no/maybe answer set works correctly.

"Are holidays like Easter and Christmas based on known dates relating to Jesus' birth and death, or were their currently accepted dates inspired by popular pagan festivals such as the worship of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre [8] and the Winter Solstice [9]?"

There shouldn't be an "or" there as then you must agree with one half of the statement or the other, not yes/no/maybe

it'd be cool if you could whip up a simple table with selections so the the results could be "tabulated" (research, etc.)

Otherwise, well done.


-random

WinAce

Thanks for the warm comments.

I removed most of the 'maybes', except those that genuinely require such an answer (such as the 'would you do this' questions).

I was toying with the idea of setting up a form and CGI script to tabulate the results, but it would take quite a lot of work. It would probably be worth it in the end, but for now I'm just wanting to iron out the kinks in the questionnaire.

Liquidrage

It would be pretty easy to calculate the results.

It would be a lot of work to figure out what the results are supposed to say

I thought it was very thought provoking and honest. Honest being of prime importance in this case. Though I have some questions.

I really do not know anything about Mithraism though. Is it certain that what you say it true? Are there many references beyond the web site you metion, etc.

I wouldn't want to see a nice logical collection be shot to hell because one link is debatable and thus calls into question the overall integrity of the questions.

randomsyllable

As for tabulating the results, I think the most important set to get would be the last few "Miscellaneous Questions"

Good data to build arguments around if people are made to think b/c of certain questions.

Again, some of the questions need samll rewording. They should all be declaritave statements you agree or disagree with. maybe, being the third option, but it must be clear what "yes" refers to.


-random

WinAce

I was able to find quite a lot of information on Mithraism, both online and off. Although it was more or less a secret cult with few surviving documents, I believe I got all my claims more or less correct. There are a few books I could probably check out of the library if you have reason to suspect I got anything wrong. And of course, I'll submit it for review on ChristianForums as well--that'll be the ultimate test and they'll instantly point out anything I missed.

Here are a few links:
<a href="http://www.dimensional.com/~randl/tarsus.htm" target="_blank">Saul of Tarsus and Christ's Blood</a>
<a href="http://www.vetssweatshop.net/dogma.htm" target="_blank">Mithra and Christ</a>
<a href="http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html" target="_blank">Cosmic Mysteries of Mithras</a>

I don't know how I'd implement a tabulating system. It would probably require some sort of database, which I'm not sure how to setup.

Anyway, I cleared up the wording on a couple of questions, added several others (including an entire section on human psychology) and did some general proofreading.

Thanks for the comments and feedback so far.

Kassiana

Did God know that including an existing Sumerian flood myth into the Bible, changing several details, such as turning it into a global flood, and leaving no geological evidence of its occurrence, myriad evidence against it, and a disastrous local flood around the area and time the myth is originally placed [2], would lead many to suspect it was a human-exaggerated legend and artificially drive them away from belief in Christianity? -- Assuming any God had anything to do with the creation of the Bible, yes.

You would likely worship the Hellenistic Pantheon had you been born in ancient Greece. On a similar vein, you would likely worship Allah or Vishnu had you been born in Iran or India today. Cultural influences are the single greatest factor deciding which religion you'll pick, with few individuals choosing one that's unpopular in their country. Given this data, in your view, is belief in Christianity a legitimate, fair criteria for deciding who goes to hell? -- No, but then again, I don't believe there is a hell.

Omnipotent God could resolve spiritual issues and pave the way to salvation without requiring blind faith, which wouldn't lead to good people arbitrarily going to hell for eternity just for being honestly mistaken. -- I don't believe there is a need for "salvation." And I don't think the Gods mind whether we believe in them or not. So of course I agree with the above.

God that didn't do this and is instead content with at least 60% of humanity spending eternity in hell [3], with no chance of ever being forgiven and the exact same punishment being administered to child rapists, medieval inquisitors, Hitler and your friendly neighborhood agnostic, is worthy of human worship? -- Not at all. Any God that would punish a human being for not believing in it for good and sufficient reasons (and I think most that disbelieve in Gods have good and sufficient reasons) is not worth being called a God.

If Adam and Eve did not possess the knowledge of good and evil before eating the apple, were they nevertheless capable of understanding that it was a sin to violate God's commandment? -- Depends on your definition of "sin," I'd say. If you define "sin" as "knowing God says not to do something but doing it anyway" then yes, I'd say they could understand "sin." If you define sin as "knowing that what God wants is good and going against it is bad" then of course they couldn't.

If you answered 'yes', and they already had knowledge of good and evil, was there a purpose to the Tree of Knowledge? -- N/A

Would you ever consider throwing your kids out on the street for taking a chocolate chip cookie before dinner, when you clearly told them not to? -- Nope, wouldn't even throw my birds out for biting me when I clearly tell them not to.

If you did, would you ever let them back in without conditions such as exclusive worship of yourself required before forgiveness? -- Seeing that I wouldn't to begin with, this question is unanswerable by me.

Is there any crime so horrendous that it would justify eternal, unrelenting torment, with no second chances ever being given, even if the criminal repents and is forgiven by his victims? -- Not that I can think of at the moment.

You arrive in Heaven and find that many of your friends, people who weren't really all that bad, are not there, because for this or that reason, they never got around to accepting Jesus in their finite lifespan. Do you expect to be happy and content with that little bit of knowledge? -- Wow, Pagans go to heaven? I imagine I'd probably stand around staring at all the places I thought Christians would be going "but, but, but" for a week or so.

Will you rationalize it away as 'they had the choice, but now they must pay the price ... forever and ever'? -- No. They didn't have a choice. Most non-Christians don't believe in Jesus because they CAN'T.

A million years has passed. Nothing has changed. A few billion years now pass. You still know that the people who were once dear to you on Earth are suffering as greatly as they were when you just arrived in Heaven. Will you eventually break down and ask 'God, can't you please do something? They really deserve a second chance, you can't just forsake them like that if you're so good... can you?!' -- Assuming "God" worked like that, yes. I don't think God would torture anyone, however.

Will God consider whether they've suffered enough and grant your request, giving them a second chance? -- If God is truly a God, yes.

If he refuses to give them a second chance, will you be able to honestly say 'The being I worship is the epitomy of justice. Whatever he does is perfectly moral in every way, and it is not up to us to question his actions.'? -- Seeing that I don't worship the Christian God, probably I could continue to say that my Gods are moral. I do believe one can question the Gods, though.

Will an ecosystem with no death, such as the Garden of Eden, logically become overcrowded very quickly if any animals are allowed to reproduce, as they were ordered to do ("be fruitful and multiply") in the Genesis account? -- If you assume conditions as they are on earth, probably. If you assume conditions as run by a God/dess who can do whatever S/He damn well chooses, no.

Is there any logical reason you could imagine that a person in Africa would die from a rotaviral infection merely because of drinking contaminated water? -- Uh, yeah, because it was contaminated, and human beings sometimes can't fight off infections?

Is there any logical reason you could imagine that legions of innocent people should be destroyed by a natural, understandable phenomenon like a tidal wave or earthquake simply because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time? -- Yes

Aging, death, suffering, natural disasters and other nasty things are all claimed to be the result of the Fall of Man. However, when we look at ancient fossils, distant stars, our geologic record and elsewhere, we can come to only one conclusion--they existed long before any human was around. Does this have serious implications for standard Christian theology? -- Probably. However, as an ex-fundamentalist, I've finally reached the point where I really don't care what Christian theology says. I'm more interested in what my faith says.

The fairly chaotic nature of our universe makes the existence of such problems impossible to avoid. It's also a very large universe, leading many to consider that we're not the only intelligent life around. However, if the universe was changed from perfect to corrupted by Adam's act of sin, would any other intelligent life also suffer for an act they did not even know about, much less be guilty of? -- I would hope not.

If other intelligent life is fairly common in our universe, it logically follows that what we've seen locally on earth--random natural disasters--have completely obliterated entire civilizations for no other reason than they were unfortunate enough to be in the path of an asteroid or within range of a supernova. We have so far avoided such a fate by around 65 million years, but the dinosaurs weren't as lucky. Compared to the smaller evils mentioned before, would any entity with the power to stop an event of such magnitude who instead stood idly by while billions of self-aware life forms burned to death in a burst of intense radiation be worthy of our respect, much less worship? -- Possibly.

God is capable of writing a book like the Bible that would have just one possible, objective interpretation and wouldn't result in myriad denominations with a wide variety of mutually exclusive beliefs. -- The Christian God as popularly imagined can, yes.

Is God capable of inspiring a book that has no obvious contradictions from the outset even to people who don't already believe in it, as opposed to a great assortment of such absurdities [4] (which can be rationalized away by apologists using methods that could just as well work for the Quran or any other holy book if you had an obligation to defend it [5])? -- Sure.

Would God be capable of foretelling the future in a specific, unambiguous manner, such as 'in the new calendar year 1908, a great fiery explosion from the sky will destroy the forest of Tunguska, Siberia', as opposed to vague parables which can only be interpreted as fulfilled after the fact, can never be interpreted as failed, since there's no deadline for occurence, and are unimpressive to Jews, who still await their actual Messiah [6]? -- Sure.

Do you agree with the Bible that genocide, including killing women and children, is in some cases not a crime? -- The only way genocide could not be a crime is if killing the entire population would be better than letting them live. The only situation I could think of is something like severe radiation poisoning of an entire city, say, where everyone would eventually die anyhow but slowly and painfully. (I don't KNOW that this could happen, but if something like it can, it might justify someone taking their lives quickly and less painfully.)

Are holidays like Easter and Christmas based on known dates relating to Jesus' birth and death, or were their currently accepted dates inspired by popular pagan festivals such as the worship of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre [8] and the Winter Solstice [9]? -- Go Pagans!

Was there a Persian cult of Mithras predating Christianity by centuries, one in which the deity was incarnated into human form and born of a virgin on December 25 in a manger, is prophesied to bring the eventual triumph of good vs. evil, required the faithful to be baptized, had a 'last supper' with his companions before ascending to heaven after fulfilling his earthly mission, and in which ceremonial 'blood' and 'flesh' (such as bread and wine) were consumed to impart eternal life and oneness with the god [10]? -- Uh, yeah. Most Christians I know of would agree Mithraism existed and had certain features which resemble some of Christianity.

Has Christianity itself evolved over the centuries, with many doctrines being added, changed or reinterpreted from the original ones in current mainstream denominations like the Catholic church? -- Obviously it has.

Is Christianity, strictly speaking, one of the youngest of all currently popular world religions, second only to Islam? -- Depends on how you see it. If, like some scholars, you add on its "parent's" years of Judaism, no. If you don't because you see Christianity as so very different from Judaism, then yes.

When praying, do you count the unfulfilled prayers as failures, or explain them as part of God's plan? -- I don't really think about it.

If God has a plan, it should be a very good plan. Given that basic assumption, prayer can consist of two things. Either you pray for something that is already included in God's plan, in which case he would likely make it happen anyway, or you pray for something that isn't, which he likely wouldn't perform against his better judgment. Given these two options, is there a significant chance of swaying God's opinion and behavior with your request? -- Depends on the God. Kwan Yin is known for having mercy on even those who are evil who request it of her.

Is a dying cancer patient with 20 friends and loved ones praying for his recovery more worthy of surviving than one with no friends or loved ones praying for him? -- That would depend on the cancer patients.

If a doctor had the power to cure every single child suffering of malaria across the world easily and at no personal expense, but only did so for those who asked him just right, would you consider him a good human being? Would it not be more fair to ignore every single one than to play favorites? -- I doubt that situation could ever arise.

Have the studies on the medical value of prayer used flawed methodology and given contradictory results (some showing success, some showing no change, some showing the non-prayer group improving more) [11]? -- Yes, obviously.

Do prayers to Allah, Vishnu or other deities, when fulfilled, as devout Muslims and Hindus claim they often are, indicate those gods exist? Do the miracles those religions profess to have observed do the same? -- Why not?

Given that people of other religions see their own gods in such miracles, would you be able to objectively test whether a 'miracle' was caused by God, another force, or an unknown or not-well understood natural phenomenon? -- I certainly could not.

Are miracles that point to the existence of other gods over the Christian God fake? -- If they are miracles, then no.

If you answered 'no' to the preceding question, does the Christian God intentionally leave his miracles ambiguous so they can be interpreted as evidence of other, lesser gods and lead people further from salvation than they already are? -- No.

A Buddhist quits smoking, loses weight and comes off drugs. He believes it was due to his religion and the enlightenment it brought him. Is his religion hence correct, or has he merely attributed his own hard-earned accomplishments to it? -- A religion is not necessarily "correct" because it can inspire someone to do good stuff. There is a third option; his religion inspired him to do something good, and thus in this instance was good for him. This does not mean it is good for others.

Are diseases like Alzheimer's, as well as brain damage, mind-altering chemicals, etc. capable of destroying or irreparably damaging memories, personality and basically everything that makes us 'human'? -- Unless Alzheimer's can alter our DNA, then no, it cannot eradicate ALL that makes us human. Human has more definition than merely the mental.

If a mind only partially ravaged by Alzheimer's is repaired upon death, would it be restored based on the last point where it was more or less intact, removing any memories acquired after the onset of the disease, akin to a computer backup? -- I really don't know. Do you?

Would the new memories be reconciled with the old ones, which would somehow be recovered, even though they were stored in the now-corrupted parts of the brain? -- Hell if I know.

Would memories be preserved at all, or merely the capacity to be self-aware if a suitable host medium like the brain could be found again, in which case the old person (memories and personality) would be lost forever? -- Boy, you have some interesting questions! Too bad all I can say is, "Yeah, wow. I don't know."

Given that we have no scientific reason to suspect memories, personality and consciousness are stored anywhere but the brain, with the two appearing intrinsically linked, is it rational to believe that what makes us self-aware and intelligent is actually found within a 'soul' that survives death? -- Maybe not, but life is more than rationality.

Near death experiences often involve a comforting white light which people later attribute to the afterlife. However, do many of the rarely-reported cases also involve trolls, aliens, demons, government assassins and other horrifying and obvious hallucinations? [12] -- Do they? How interesting! I'd love to hear about some of them.

Do chimpanzees and dolphins, which are self-aware and intelligent [13], possess immortal souls, or do they simply and unfairly vanish into oblivion when they die, personality, memories and all? -- I think they, as well as parrots, trees, and other living things, have afterlives as well.

Is it possible to have a brain capable of intelligence without a soul attached? -- No idea, but it's not important to my religion either way.

Would you be able to detect a soul-less individual from among his peers, or would they think and behave completely like other people? -- No idea.

Will an artificial brain be a suitable host for a soul, or will only organic ones do? -- No idea.

Would testing that hypothesis involve checking if intelligence/sentience was possible in AI computers, and simply assuming a soul was present if it was, with no other evidence? -- Heck if I know.

If souls have the ability to physically influence the chemical processes in the brain, which is logically required if they will have any effect on the decisions it makes, could we predict and detect the unmistakable link between neurons and spirit? -- I don't assume that only physical processes affect human beings.

A soul is likely not present in each sperm or egg cell, which would be a waste. This means it would become attached later in the development of a human being. Possible options are conception, formation of a rudimentary infant brain, birth, the first time an infant recognizes he's a unique person, the first time he has a logical thought, and others. Given that the act of connecting with the body must produce a physical link if it is to affect the mind, could we detect it in the act or somehow prevent it from doing so? -- I don't think you would find a physical link for a spiritual connection.

When we sleep, are unconscious, anesthetized, or comatose, do our souls lie dormant as well? -- No idea, and I don't really care if they are or not.

Cycles of said unconsciousness perfectly match those of lowered brain activity. This seems unusual if an entity from outside the brain is responsible for sentience. If your answer is 'consciousness is only produced by the interaction of such a being with a working brain', couldn't it just as easily be produced by the interaction of various parts of the functional brain without any supernatural, unconfirmed, ad hoc souls behind them? -- I don't think consciousness is produced by a "soul."

Where does the soul get its self-awareness from? Are souls not ultimately prone to the same objections as the brain being solely responsible for consciousness, and given this and the other problems with dualism, isn't it more reasonable to apply Occam's razor and declare it an unnecessary ad hoc hypothesis which explains nothing while adding irreconcilable problems? -- No.

Is there anything we could observe that would directly falsify the soul concept, or does its 'strength' lie only in the fact that it cannot be disproved, with no real value except providing a comfortable escape hatch for our fear of death? -- My, this question assumes nothing about those of us who believe in souls, does it? I hold no religious belief because of fear of death. I do not fear death as death. I admit to fears of dying, certainly, especially in great pain or for a great period of time, but death itself is not frightening.

Would we be able to objective distinguish between a universe designed by the Christian God apart from a universe designed by a different god, committee of gods, super-intelligent natural beings from another realm or an unknown phenomena? -- No idea, and again, I don't really care about this one. If Pan, geo-forces, or aliens created the universe, it makes no difference to me.

Formerly unexplainable phenomena, like lightning and geologic activity, were often attributed to various supernatural forces throughout history. Given that we now perfectly understand the causes of those, and have a fairly well-developed understanding of even greater mysteries like the origin of life and our solar system, as well as a few competing hypotheses for understanding the ultimate origins of the universe, should we assume anything depended on God and risk disappointment should the real explanation be confirmed? -- Given our spiritual experiences of God/dess(es), which are as real as any physical experience and sometimes more real, yes.

If complexity requires an even greater designer, isn't God the ultimately complex being, requiring a paradoxically greater being to create him? -- No.

If God didn't require a designer and exists outside of time, is there any reason to assume the natural, explainable phenomenon which caused the universe couldn't just as well sit outside of time? In other words, is there any reason to reject a very unproductive, scientifically questionable explanation over a much more parsimonious, useful one? -- Interesting that you assume the concept of God is useless; do you really think that those of us who believe in Gods find no use for that concept? Why not use (gasp) BOTH for what they're intended?

Some have said that the universe exhibits a fine-tuning of the physical constants like speed of light and radioactive decay rates that makes life possible, indicating it was intelligently designed. However, there are many objections. We have no way of knowing how different those constants could be, how much of a difference would make the existence of current life impossible, how likely our particular configuration is, or whether other forms of life could develop with a different set of variables. The greatest single objection to using this as evidence, however, is this--would life develop in such 'dead' universes to gaze and wonder why they were apparently not designed for it at all? -- I don't really understand this question. I think you're asking if there is life that can exist which wasn't designed to exist. I have no freaking clue if it can or not. I'm not a scientist.

If God is omniscient and knows everything, he knows the future as well. This has serious complications for the doctrine of free will and responsibility. If he knows for sure that at this time in a few years, Joe Smith will commit several gruesome murders, can anything change that, including the free will of Joe? If he knows that you'll eventually be saved and go to heaven, is it possible not to be saved? -- Assuming there is the popular concept of the Christian God, then Joe is using his free will to do whatever he does.

Did God know everything we would ever do before he even created the universe? -- I think the Gods did not know.

If he did, and still decided to make the universe in a way in which it would turn out exactly as he foresaw, is he ultimately responsible for everything occurring in said universe? Was it not impossible for Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit, or for us not to sin, or for certain pre-determined people not to be eternally condemned to hell? -- Assuming there is such a God, yes.

At the very least, does this seriously throw a wrench into any standard claims that we're solely responsible for our current imperfection, by any reasonable system of justice? -- Of course. Why do you think I'm no longer a Christian?

If God is all-powerful, could he not simply create a universe like our own, with perfect beings who had free will and the capacity for evil yet wisely chose good, similar to what Christianity expects in Heaven? -- Yup.

If God was benevolent and all-powerful, could he avoid allowing gratuitous suffering like infants being born and dying the same week of horrific congenital defects before even learning what sin is? -- Depends on the God.

Would you be a moral, kind person if you had never been exposed to the Bible? -- Maybe. There are immoral people who have never heard of it, undoubtedly. There are also moral people who haven't.

Are you capable of choosing what's right without the threat of punishment or offers of rewards, and often in spite of them? -- Sure.

If morality is defined by God, would anything he decreed, including ordering you to kill an innocent child, be moral? -- Human morality is not defined by the Gods.

If God could never order such a thing, doesn't it imply that his moral code is based on some outside standard that would exist just as well in his absence? -- Maybe, or maybe that God upholds that moral code by its very existence.

Are we capable of using just our intellect, with no outside influence, to develop a more-or-less enlightened moral code, such as humanism? -- Maybe. Human beings always have biases, and no human system is perfect. I doubt the ability of human beings to function with perfect logic, as human beings are not Vulcans.

Is the Golden Rule limited to Christianity, or is it just a plain good idea from almost any religious or philosophical viewpoint imaginable? -- No, it isn't always a plain good idea.

Have you known atheists and agnostics who were basically good people without any religious beliefs? Have you known devout believers who you wouldn't even want to associate with? Yes to both. In fact, there are atheists in my family and I have no problem with them.

Has this questionnaire made you think deeply about your most valued beliefs? -- Not really.

Do you now believe you might have reason to modify some of your beliefs as a result of rationally scrutinizing them? -- No, not really.

Do you better understand the atheist/agnostic position now than before taking the quiz? -- Nope. Seeing that I've been learning about it since however long I've been here at II, you really didn't say anything I didn't expect.

Do Deism (the belief in a God who created the universe and left it to its own devices), Universalism (the belief that everyone will be saved eventually), or agnosticism (the belief that a higher power may exist, but we cannot know for sure) seem any more attractive after considering these profound questions? -- No.

WinAce

Thanks for the reply. I didn't really gear my questionnaire towards Pagan beliefs, as I have no real objections to them, as opposed to standard Abrahamic theology. Regardless, I see you've thought about your beliefs more than many atheists.

Your comments did well to point out that some of the questions I asked could be better phrased or made less patronizing to a believer, and I'll take your suggestions to heart. However, they will take more time to revise than the standard typo or grammatical error.

Kassiana

WinAce:
Thanks for the reply. I didn't really gear my questionnaire towards Pagan beliefs, as I have no real objections to them, as opposed to standard Abrahamic theology. Regardless, I see you've thought about your beliefs more than many atheists.

Kass:
No problem. I saw that you didn't, but you said it was a questionnaire for theists, and I am certainly one! Also, sometimes people don't anticipate what answers others will give to their questions, so I suppose now you've gotten a bit prepared for answers out of left field.

WinAce:
Your comments did well to point out that some of the questions I asked could be better phrased or made less patronizing to a believer, and I'll take your suggestions to heart. However, they will take more time to revise than the standard typo or grammatical error.

Kass:
It's okay. I won't start my clock running until tomorrow. ::grin:: Thanks for actually reading what I wrote. I know it was at least a book's worth of material. Heck, your response indicates it was fairly coherent, too! I don't always know how my words will come across to others, so I'm glad I made myself fairly clear (and I hope fairly politely? because I wasn't intending to insult you).

WinAce

I should have probably stuck with writing questionnaires for just Christians, as your replies did catch me off guard. I have no intention at all of converting anyone else because I see nothing fundamentally wrong with other beliefs, although Christianity has some real doozies in its core doctrines.

I wrote that questionnaire to cut down on the bigotry displayed against atheists by so many Christians. Hopefully, given an understanding of the deep questions we ask, they can avoid jumping to unwarranted, patronizing conclusions such as 'they're just spiritually blind' or 'they reject God but know he exists'. *Shudder*

Oddly enough, I've never seen a non-Christian bigoted against atheists. I'm sure they exist somewhere, but it seems pagans and others have done so much thought on the subject (and been the target of such stupidity themselves) that they actually realize we've done the same. This is the type of religious tolerance one can only dream of.

Your words were very intelligent. I've updated my questionnaire to remove a few rabidly ignorant statements (what I was thinking when I wrote the God concept was 'useless' in a piece intended for theists, I'll never know). I've also reworded several questions to avoid the pitfalls you pointed out. Thanks for the feedback, once again.

I've also added a few new questions, including an entire section on human psychology.

Hopefully there are only a few corrections left to be made--then it's on to printing it out and bringing it to church. *evil grin*