Richard Carrier

Okay, I understand this.

By analogy, if I knew of a flawlessly good leader in my neighborhood, I would love and respect them, and as a result my respect and love would compel me to listen to them and follow them. Of course, in reality, there is no such person--everyone, even the greatest humans, are fallible and ignorant to some degree. And this is my position with regard to God: I see and hear no flawlessly good leader in my neighborhood, God or otherwise. And I am skeptical that you see any such being, either--unless you are saying God talks to you directly, so you can have no doubt that he exists and what his will really is.

But to my original question:

Why love and respect God? If God were actually in fact cruel and sadistic, and you discovered this, would you still love and respect him? If so, pardon me, but you scare me. But if not (and I hope not), why? That is, what motivates you to love and respect someone? You don't have to answer. My point is that, if you keep asking that question of every answer, getting deeper and deeper into the motives behind your behavior, ultimately, I suspect, you will end up in self-interest (i.e. you love a being with God's attributes because it is good for you; or because it is good for everyone, which is good for you; or etc.).

However, though I think that is a necessary and inevitable fact (no action can make any plausible psychological sense unless it is ultimately motivated by a personal sense of benefit), I distinguish opportunism as a subset of this. Not all self-interested belief systems are "opportunistic" belief-systems. The only thing that makes Christianity, as I said, "seem" opportunistic is that its very kerygma contains an appeal to opportunism: Believe and be saved; disbelieve and be damned. It does not say "Love God just because God is a really good guy; and by the very definition of being a really good guy, he won't hurt you if you blow him off." This is certainly not the central, defining message of Christianity (as opposed to some other or some generic theism). To the contrary, Christianity's central, defining creed contains explicit appeal to salvation and damnation.

So though from your account I agree you do not believe for opportunistic reasons, your religion (Christianity, as preached by Jesus and Paul in the New Testament, and by most leading Christian theologians today) still seems inherently or perhaps only primarily opportunistic--at the very least, its explicit appeal to opportunism entails that millions of people probably believe for opportunistic reasons. Surely, there is no explicit rejection of such a cause of belief anywhere in the Christian kerygma. And that, ultimately, is what validates my Pascalian Wager for Atheism.

Richard Carrier

I hope you have better evidence than that. That passage supports the view that belief in Jesus is not sufficient for salvation--it does not support your additional belief that belief in Jesus is not necessary.

And the Bible is quite plain on that point: "He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved, but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned" (Mark 16:16). Similar statements issue from Paul and others. Nowhere in the NT, to my knowledge, does it say belief is not necessary. Even passages like the one you cite do not entail this.

Still, your reference to the speech of Kalomiros is fascinating, and his theology is more internally consistent than Western Christianity, but I see no real Biblical justification for it.

I like this quote especially:

"Atheism is the denial, the negation of an evil God. Men became atheists in order to be saved from God, hiding their head and closing their eyes like an ostrich. Atheism, my brothers, is the negation of the Roman Catholic and Protestant God. Atheism is not our real enemy. The real enemy is that falsified and distorted 'Christianity'."

Nice.

It is interesting to see an entire Christian tradition rejecting the need for belief in Jesus. I consider myself duly educated!

[Note, though, that he cannot be right when he says "Atheism was unknown in Eastern Christianity until Western theology was introduced there." Since Eastern Christianity preserved Greek pagan philosophical texts with much more consistency than the West, and most of our Greek texts extant today come from the hands of Eastern Christian scribes, they must have known all about atheism, which had many examples in texts I know for a fact were preserved for centuries in the East. Atheism is by no means a uniquely "Western Christian" phenomenon. It was known in the pagan West and East (and, of course, other cultures, like China).]

Tercel

Well I'm not sure I agree it says that: it really just appears to teach works-based salvation.

Isn't it funny that the only time in the entire Bible where it is explicitly stated that "non-believers are damned" is in one of the single most textual-critically dubious passages of the Bible?

Nowhere else are there statements quite as clear. Though I agree that several statements from Paul and others certainly imply this.

Consider Romans 2:6-16. Those Gentiles, who haven't heard the law, who haven't heard about Jesus, or who haven't heard enough proof to be honestly convinced: Will they be damned, or will they be judged based what they did with the degree of truth that was given to them?

At anyrate, I believe that after they die everyone will gain certain knowledge of the truth. If you want to say belief is necessary that's fine with me: I believe everyone will believe. If you want to say that belief during this life is necessary, then we disagree.

Based on my own Bible reading (plus a lot of thinking) I came to this interpretation of salvation myself. I was more than pleasantly suprised to find that, apart from other liberals, an entire Christian tradition had already beaten me to it.

The one thing that worries me about his theology is the complete lack of judgement. I think CS Lewis has a much more balanced view in The Great Divorce.
Regarding Biblical justification, I see a lot for it. Rather than taking five random verses at face value and saying "well that must be the way it is" his theology (or at least that is how I arrived at it) is derived from an understanding of the concepts involved and logical extension from that.

There are some very choice quotes in there. Though you will perhaps excuse me for not agreeing that the above is one of them.

He is giving a speech and engaging in apologetics... you should recognise that when you see it!

Agreed, but I think he has a good point in there somewhere. Ever since first reading that speech, I have been impressed with just how much many of the atheists here seem to hate and object to the evil God they see portrayed by Western Christians. I am very inclined to wonder just how many of those would still be Christians if Western Christians had a nicer god. (and not to mention: more consistent theology)

-DM-

What you said earlier was: "To me the only clear place in the Bible that it is condemned is Leviticus which also condemns quite a few trivial things. (eg eating shellfish)"

I responded with some biblical verse references which seem to me to make homosexual behavior seem anything but trivial. I also responded with some biblical verse references outside of Leviticus which relate to the issue. If you do not believe that the Leviticus verses make homosexual behavior other than trivial or that the other verses relate to homosexual behavior, so be it. I am quite willing to let readers decide for themselves.I could as easily have included all the verses between RO 1.26 and 1.32; it would remain just as clear. Really? What is there about "men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty [death] for their error" which makes it unclear that Paul was not referring to homosexual behavior (regardless of whether it was or was not the same as we know it today)?Do you pick and choose what to trust, or do you distrust everything that the Bible has to say?My dictionaries give a definition for "fornication" very close to this one (from Webster's Collegiate): "consensual sexual intercourse between two persons not married to each other." Men who engaged in homosexual behavior in biblical times were not married. But more importantly, here is what Thayer's Greek Definitions has to say about the meaning of the Greek word translated "fornicator":

G4205
Thayer Definition:
1) a man who prostitutes his body to another’s lust for hire
2) a male prostitute
3) a man who indulges in unlawful sexual intercourse, a fornicatorCare to prove that it wasn't what they had in mind, or what it was that they did have in mind? (I cannot do either; I'm not omniscient.)It seems reasonably clear to me that homosexual behavior would very likely be included in the condemned behavior of the Sodomites given the derivation of our English word "sodomy."

-Don-

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Richard Carrier,

Not entirely correct. It would be more accurate to say that the person who adheres to the tenants of Christianity only for salvation is opportunistic. Not the religion. Note this has nothing really to do with religion in particular...one can 'adhere' to going to college and studying hard to get good grades and a job that pays alot of money. This doesn't mean 'engineering' is opportunistic. It means the engineer is.


This would be where I land. In addition, I feel most Christians would land here as well. I know for myself that I seek God not for some future ransome, but because I sincerly desire to know God. Though there are immediate benefits of knowing God they are not the means in and of themselves.


Well Richard I think it may just be your assumption that the central Christian dogma is 'believe and be saved' although this certainly is a message in the NT. I tend to agree with Jesus about what the central tenant of Christianity is...

'For God so love the world...'





This again may be a selective interpretation. Most would probably agree that the Bible's main theme is about God's love for man.

Should we obey God? Sure...the Bible says so. And though it does use language like "hell is for the wicked" and "heaven is a righteous man's reward" it isn't saying "you should obey because we are going to ship you to Philly if you don't...Maui if you do." It seems to be saying "you should obey because...God is authority".


Regardless, it seems to me a fairly large leap to go from 'person A only obeys because they want an mansion in heaven' to the conclusion 'Christianity is opportunistic'.

Your mileage may vary.






Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

Hawkingfan

If god truly loved the world, there would be no need for anyone to die in order for god to forgive the world. It's as if you owed me a large debt, and I was going to kill you because of it. But then I say to you, "Here, because I love you so much and I'm such a nice guy, let me give you some money so you can pay me back and won't have to kill you. Aren't I a nice guy?"

Inconnu

So much too read!! Hello btw

I like these. Shame that they are impossible to adhere to completely, almost anti-nature. Even observing and acting out these "rules" produces gain for the perpetrator i.e. satisfaction in doing what is required of them from "on high". Even the inner glee gained from donating to charity is a "gain" for the donator. Give and take all the way. Not to mention the fact that you cannot "give" to ALL "the poor", so there will still be "the poor", which make your act of "giving" futile, even pointless, other than an extraction by the "giver" of satifaction, in other words, an opportunistic "gain", unfortunately.
p.s. first post, be gentle

Wyz_sub10

Hi Inconnu,

Welcome to the forum! Please take the time to introduce yourself here .

Take off your shoes and get comfortable.

Wyz_sub10,
EoG Moderator

ReasonableDoubt

Tercel said "The idea that we cannot force ourselves to believe is an irrelevant tangent.''

But you can't force yourself to 'believe" in something that your brain does not find convincing. We're talking about facts here- does God exist or not? To some people the evidence is compelling, to others, not. To those who don't find the evidence compelling, how is it possible to believe it?

I think what you're saying is regardless of the facts, you can ACT as though you are a believer if you want to. You can live your life in a certain way. I agree with that. But that doesn't mean that you've forced yourself to believe something that goes contrary to the evidence.

If I met someone I really liked who tried to convince me that the earth was flat, and I really wanted to join the Flat Earth Society- yes, I could join it. I could follow the motions and say whatever was required to say. But there is no way that I could actually force myself to believe that the earth is flat, when all evidence is to the contrary.

Littledrummerboy

Richard, to answer you question of "why love God? I found out God were in fact cruel and sadistic, would I still love him?" This question is not really possible to answer, I'll try to explain why. If you are a monotheist, like me, believe that there is only one ultimate being, and one ultimate truth, then it is the standard for right and wrong. Because that God is the standard, and it was "evil" we would not know it, we would think what is considered by us to be "evil" is "good" and vice-versa, because the Bible says we were made in God's image. We aspire to be like God. If God were malicious, then we would look at malice as a virtue, as something good, and you would be asking the opposite question of "what if God was love and just would follow him?" Do you see what I am saying? A monotheist believes that God is the ultimate truth, therefore what he decides is right, therefore if you follow him you are right. So if that God is evil by our definitions, then evil would be good and good would be evil. I know this is confusing, (mainly because I'm doing a terrible job of explaining it,) but am I explaining myself well?
As to your question of "does God talk to me?" Well, not directly, not in that I hear a voice proclaiming, "this is God," but I have evidence of his hand in my life, evidence I am sure ya'll would pass off as coincidence, but also evidence of his work in other people's lives that leads me to believe there is something larger at work here, whether it is fate, destiny, luck, or God, (I chose to name it God, further more the triune Christian God) but I cannot believe that we are just here and when we die we cese to exist. Thanks

Stephen :notworthy