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Anyone who thinks that Christianity and Islam are equal religions needs to get a clue.  Here we see:

“Rejecting Islam is insulting God. We will not allow God to be humiliated. This man must die,” said cleric Abdul Raoulf, who is considered a moderate and was jailed three times for opposing the Taliban before the hardline regime was ousted in 2001.

That’s right, the moderate position is that if you were a Muslim and you become a non-Muslim, you must die.  (I think the folks over at Debunking Atheism should consider what would have happened if they were ex-Muslims instead of ex-Christians.)

If this doesn’t highlight the difference between the two religions, it’s only because you are refusing to see.  Most people probably can’t even remember the last time a Christian blew up an abortion clinic–and even if they did have memories that went back that long, they’d have to acknowledge that the overwhelming Christian response from everyone including the “Religious Right” was condemnation of the whackos who did such things.

Islam, on the other hand, continues to blow up people daily.

Atheists like to say that all religions are equal, and that religion is the heart of all the problems in the world.  This is patently absurd, and it’s fairly easy to prove:

Would you rather offend a Christian (which the Debunkers do constantly) or a Muslim?

Tell me again how these are equal?

Since I wrote my previous post, I got to go to lunch.  As I walked through down-town, I looked at how the snow was melting on the lawns, how water trickled across the sidewalk, and even the cracks that were in the concrete.

There are patterns everywhere once you look for them.  Consider that a twig looks like a tree branch (only smaller).  A crack in the highway looks like a river with its tributary system.  A grain of sand, magnified, looks like a mountain.

All these things are similar to one another.  And that got me to thinking, especially since I could see the sidewalk upon which I was walking.

We know that the sidewalk is man-made.  Even had we never seen one before, we could look at it and see that it is man-made because of how straight the edges are and how repititious the sections are.  Such things are never found in nature.  Instead, nature exists more randomly.

Yet even in that randomness, there is an internal order.  How else could a crack in the sidewalk look like a river tributary?  Despite the fact that both of these things are randomly generated, they still fit an orderly pattern.  That is, they each have tolerances which they fit into.

We can tell the difference between cracks in the sidewalk that are caused by nature and those that are put there when the sidewalk is laid down.  The man-made cracks are straight.  The natural cracks are jagged.  Yet when we think about the subject of scale we get a different picture.

Zoom in to the “straight” crack in the sidewalk.  With enough magnification, you begin to see the individual bumps and jagged pieces that comprise this “straight” line.  Zoom in yet further and the concrete begins to look like a mountain range.  There are jagged peaks and sharp valleys, flat vistas and shallow dips.  Zoom in enough so that you are focused on just one “mountain” and you’ll see that this mountain is just as ragged as the outline of any mountain peak you see in real life too.

It is only the level of scale that makes such lines appear to be straight for us.

So here’s the thing.  If we see these straight lines of concrete in the woods, we know that there is human agency behind them.  We know that because we know that humans like straight and orderly lines, that people will put the concrete where they wish it to be and in the pattern they wish it to have.  We see the same types of patterns in other human buildings: houses that are square like the square tiles on the sidewalk, etc.  Thus, looking at the patterns that are produced and seeing the same pattern in other places, we know that the same designer is behind it.  In this case, humanity.

But consider that when you “zoom” in on any of these human things, you’ll find that no matter how straight we make our lines they are still composed of edges with random variations throughout.  And these random variations look identical to many other things that occur in nature on different scales.  These things are universal.

If the same patterns show us when a human agent is doing something, could we not conclude from the patterns in every single bit of matter that there is likewise the same designer behind all that matter?

Atheists, I know, will say that it’s just “nature” behind it.  But regardless, there must be something there controlling all of matter.  How else could you explain the universality of these “random” occurances?

I have a confession to make.  I am a computer game junkie.  I just like playing games, especially RPG or action games.

But sometimes that does pay off.  Last night, I was playing “Pacific Fighters” which is a WWII game where you get to fly airplanes in mock battles, etc.  Since I’ve just gotten it and aren’t very good at it yet, I used the Full Mission Builder to create some take-off and landing drills, as well as a basic attack against stationary objects, etc. so I could get a “feel” for what I was doing.

I used a map that had two separate islands and put in a route from the first island to the second island.  Because the program is realistic, it doesn’t have computer generated waypoints that you can see, so you have to base your flying on visual landmarks.  Thus, I stuck the waypoints in based on the various tiny islands that were sprinkled between the two big islands where the main mission was carried out.

So why is all that important?  Because as I was “flying”, I kept looking at all these little islands below on the screen.  Then, this morning, as I walked down the sidewalk in the snow, I realized something interesting.

You see, yesterday we had a blizzard.  It was so bad, I didn’t even go to work.  Today, it was still faintly snowing (although it was sunny at the same time it was snowing), and there were bits and pieces of snow on the sidewalk.  But it wasn’t a covering.

Instead, what happened was that there were pockets of snow and pockets of dry sidewalk.  Yesterday, the wind was blowing really hard as the snow fell.  Also, the temperatures being the way they were, some of the snow had a chance to melt.  That melted snow then froze and turned to ice on the sidewalk.  This morning, the places that had ice had the snow sticking to them, and the places that did not have ice were mostly dry on the sidewalk.

So what’s the point, then?  What does that have to do with the fact that I was playing “Pacific Fighters” last night?  Only this: the pockets of snow looked identical to the way the little islands looked in the game.

Now the islands in the game were patterned off of real islands.  They were “mapped” into the computer game so they were very similar looking.  But even were they not, it got me thinking of islands in general.  You’ve probably seen pictures of the Florida Keys, or various other island chains.  The snow on the sidewalk still looked like those.

I like patterns.  It’s part of my nature, which is probably why I noticed this.  But here’s what’s interesting about it.  The snow pattern was made due to several complex things: the way the wind fell, how the snow melted the night before, how it turned to ice, etc.  The islands in the oceans, however, are primarily shaped by such things as wave action and the errosion of the banks.

How, then, did two different things created by such radically different means come to look almost identical in everything but scale?  (The snow “islands” on the sidewalk obviously weren’t as large as real islands.)

If we see something that looks similar to another thing, we generally conclude that either the shape was caused by a similar process or else it had a similar design.  Thus, snow dunes look like sand dunes because the wind makes both of them.  But there was no errosion on the snow on the sidewalk like there was on the banks of islands.  How, then, did these two things come about looking so similar?

In fact, it reminded me very much of fractals and the way that the chaos theory works.  Perhaps we can say that underlying these two things is the chaos theory–that that is what is similar.  But what is the chaos theory?  It’s not a thing, of course.  It’s a theory about the mathematical processes behind random things.

See, a fractal that approximated the shape of an island or these snow islands is based off fairly simple mathematical formulas.  But mathematics are not phyiscal entities that alter things either.  Thus, we have to say that nature must, in some manner, be oriented in such a way that things come out looking like fractals.  Thus, nature must somehow exist in a manner that it has forces that can be simulated with mathematical formula.

No, I don’t really have time or means to probe any deeper than that at the moment.  Just giving you something to think about.

Some of the atheists over at Debunking Atheism have complained that if God is the standard for what is good, then it is gibberish to say that God is good.  For example, sdanielmorgon said:

This is exactly the question I was raising before when I said that if goodness is a by-product of god, if our standard of appraising actions and positions as “good” or “bad” is contingent upon god, rather than a capability we can objectively use to assign truth values (and thus have some semblance of free moral agency), then we can call god “goobledegook” or “good” and it means the same basic thing: that what we call “good” or “bad” can never be used to apply to god, because we are using a subset of god’s own imposed values to judge the entire set of god’s character.

I got to thinking on this issue and figured a good analogy is that of logic.  Is logic itself logical?

If we start with the foundation of logic, the Law of Identity (A is A), we notice that “A is A” is itself circular reasoning.  Thus, logic would be logically invalid if applied to itself.

But if logic is not logical then we have no reason to think that the axioms that logic is based on are actually true.  Put it this way: if logic comes about from the irrational, then why is logic rational?  And would that mean that the rational presupposes the irrational in order for the rational to even be defined?

If we are going to say that logic is not logical, then perhaps we can say that God is not good for the same reasons.  However, one must not forget the fact that while logic is not logical, it results in creating and defining what is logical; and thus, in the same way, God would result in creating and defining what is good.

I, for one, would have no problem with that proposition.

That’s right, today is William of Orange Day!  You know this holiday as St. Patrick’s Day, unfortunately.  Not too many people these days know the distinction between the Catholic position and the Protestant position anymore.  Alas that this should be the case.

Since I’ve been discussing moral issues with those fine atheists at Debunking Atheism, some may have noticed that I’ve “let” the atheists get away with mis-defining God.  This is true since even their mis-definition doesn’t support their argumentation and the logical implications of what they are stating is what I was intending to address.  However, I also do not want to leave the impression that the God they pretend is the Calvinist God actually is.

So I’m going to clarify bit by bit and show their mis-definitions for what they are.  Let’s start with the idea that God is a murderer.  In order to properly address this charge, we must first start with a definition of murder.

Murder is the unjustified taking of innocent human life.

Now perhaps the “innocent” in there is really a redundancy since we’ve already stipulated that it’s “unjustified” but I want to add it just to be certain and clear.

So we ask the question: Can God murder?

This is often asked in the realm of the discussion that people on Earth die, God is in control of how things happen, thus God killed those people.  If we killed people that would be wrong.  Why, then, is God able to do so?

Firstly, we address the question of if these people are innocent.  To answer that question, we have to look at the deeper issue of what the moral code is.  If morality is adherence to the Laws that God gave us, then the standard He set for us is what we must obey.  God’s standard is perfection, so anyone who isn’t perfect has failed God’s moral system.  Since none are perfect, all fail at some point in God’s morality.

Secondly, we ask is it justified that God has these people die?  To determine that, we ask what the punishment for disobeying God’s moral commands are.  The answer is: death.  The wages of sin is death, so it is certainly justifiable for God to require the life of the one who is not innocent.

When God “kills” a person, therefore, we see that it is neither the taking of innocent life nor is it unjustified according to the standards that God Himself has set.

Why, then, is it wrong for other people to murder?  Firstly because God said so.  That alone settles the matter since God is the one who gives the Law.  But God also gives us a reason to show it’s not just an arbitrary commandment. 

If God does not kill someone for their sins, it is because God has shown mercy.  That is certainly His right to do.  It is not our right to usurp God’s mercy as if we were in the place of God.  If we kill someone without proper justification then we are claiming to be God.  That is something that is morally wrong, for there is only one God.

I find it quite ironic that John Loftus is so upset about the fact that I am a Calvinist.  I understand Arminians who get upset over Calvinism, but why should an atheist care either way?

But at least this affords me the opportunity to further explain my position.  Mr. Loftus is upset because if God ordains all things then God must be evil since God has ordained evil to occur.  This, however, is not a logical deduction because it assumes a certain definition of evil that has not yet been proven accurate.

The first question we must ask is this: does God’s law apply to God?  To answer that, we simply ask: What was the purpose of the law?

So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:24).

The law is our guardian.  Elsewhere we read:

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5:20-21)

The law came into effect to increase trespass so that grace would abound all the more.

Therefore, we ask: what is the scope of the Law?  Or to put it another way: for whom was the Law made?  The answer is: for people.  The Law, therefore, has nothing to do with God.  His commandments are for us, not for Him.

On the face of it, therefore, God does not stand under the Law, so if He does something that were we to do it would result in our condemnation God is yet not condemned, for He is not under the Law.

So if God is not under the Law, how then can He be deemed evil?  He has not broken the Law.  The Law was for our benefit, not for His.

But aside from the fact that there is no Law over God, is there any reason to think that God’s ordaining evil is itself an evil action?  (Although it’s frankly absurd to speak about “evil” without there being a Law in place, let us play this game for a moment.)  When Job complained to God, God’s response was simple: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38:4).

Paul, anticipating the exact response that Mr. Loftus offers, said simply:

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honored use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory– even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? (Romans 9:19-24)

God is the creator.  We are not.  He has the right to impose rules on us if He chooses to do so.  Even if these rules were arbitrarily chosen and seem unfair to us, He would still have that right.

But God isn’t arbitrary.  God has a purpose for why these rules are in place.  They are to lead us to Christ.  They are to demonstrate His great love:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6-8).

God shows the greatest possible love to us, but that would not have been possible apart from His ordaining evil to enter into the world too.  Someone may argue that that isn’t really good to do, that the evil is worse than the good that comes from it.  But once again: who are you to determine for God what is good and what isn’t?  Only the arrogance of the sinner seeking to rule over God would even think to complain about God’s sovereignty in dictating what our behavior ought to be.  Only the sinner who seeks to replace God in heaven would argue that God’s ways are evil.

Yet again, there comes a post that requires more space than is feasible in a blog comment field, so I’m posting it here.  To follow the point of this conversation, it may be helpful to read these comments to this post.

Bahnsen Burner said… 

Peter: “And in case Dawson reads this–yes, I know you claim to come to an objective morality.”

Yes, a morality based on facts which obtain independent of anyone’s wishing (i.e., objective), which are discovered and integrated by means of reason (as opposed to faith in invisible magic beings), in the interest of identifying and securing those values which an individual needs in order to live (as opposed to appeasing the imaginary dieties).

I wonder, though, how you can separate the idea of “indepentent of anyone’s wishing” and “needs in order to live.” These very needs are themselves a product of what the one wishes to have: food, water, shelter, etc. That they are essential to our survival does not mean they are not something we wish for. However, this is a minor thing.Of more interest is the notion that morality is simply to secure “those values which an individaul needs in order to live.” By “live” I suppose you mean more than just survive, but to live happily too. After all, mere survival does not require much morality at all–animals do that just fine without any sense of morality whatsoever. But if we are instead talking about quality of living, we are left with the problem of establishing what objective values can there be for quality of living? Who determines that? Is it simply something I want? If so, how is that not subjective?

Peter: “But I simply ask: why can’t God be selfish in how He creates His morality?”

The concept ‘selfish’ – if properly formed – necessarily implies that it would have something to gain and a need to gain it.

I’m not so certain about that. Rather than a “need” to gain something, I would argue that it is merely a want to gain something. Thus, acting selfishly is based off desires, not needs (although the two are not always contrary, they often can be). 

But it would be incoherent to apply this concept to the Christian god given the characteristics believers attribute to it. Since the Christian god is said to be immortal, eternal, unchanging and indestructible, it would not face the fundamental alternative that man faces (namely life vs. death) and thus would have no need to act in order to exist (as man does). Applying concepts of morality to a being so described simply results in a jumble of stolen concepts, for their genetic basis is denied in the properties attributed to the being.

My question wasn’t based on the Christian God (but instead on the charicature of the “God” John claimed was the God of Calvinism–one who is arbitrarily “evil”, etc.). That said, I still don’t see the linkage between acting “selfishly” (or to use a less-loaded term, in “self-interest”) and morality such you can claim “Applying concepts of morality to a being so describe simply results in a jumble of stolen concepts.” In other words, it is not at all clear that you have established how acting in self-interest is equivalent to morality, so until you can demonstrate the two are equivalent there is no jumble of stolen concepts.

Furthermore, it is not at all demonstrated that self-interest is only that which applies to life or death issues. This, again, would result in a morality that is nothing more or less than what lions do in the jungle.

What if, instead of self-interest being related to life or death, God was interested in His own glory? Thus, He acted in such a way as to increase His glory for His own purposes. This would still most certainly qualify as a “selfish” motive, for it is for Himself that He acts the way He does. Certainly, there is no issue of “life or death” involved–but that is just an arbitrary meaning that you’ve placed on the concept of selfishness relating to morality. It is not itself objectively known.

In fact, since the Christian god has no needs (need implies deficiency, and the Christian god is said to be “self-sufficient” and thus could not be said to have any needs), it would have no use for a set of principles which enables it to discover and identify any values (since it wouldn’t need them in order to exist), which means: it wouldn’t have any use for morality as such to begin with.

To an extent you are correct. God’s morality is not based on what He “needs” to do. It is, properly speaking, simply God’s nature. God does as God is. The way He acts is because of the way He is. Thus, He doesn’t have a “use” for morality–He simply is and the way that He is is what determines His morality. Naturally, what God does is not the same as what we do. Our morality is not based on our nature, but instead based on what God decrees for us to do.

It would have no need to act whatsoever, so whatever action it is said to take would be utterly arbitrary, i.e., for no rational purpose whatsoever.

That does not follow. If God does something because He wants to do it, it is not arbitrary. He has His purpose. Whether we understand His purpose or not is completely irrelevant to the point. If He has a purpose, whether He discloses it to us or not, then His actions are not arbitrary.

Furthermore, even you would not go so far as to say that any action that is done without “need” is arbitrary. Do you need to watch TV at night? No, but you want to. Is that arbitrary? No, because you gain some pleasure from it. Certainly you could play video games instead. But you decide not to do that. Your choice is not arbitrary as to which one you pick because it’s based on what you want to do. Wants do not equal needs, and it is the want that determines whether something is arbitrary or not.

It would have no need to pursue any goals, so its actions could not be seriously goal-oriented, just a source of self-entertainment as it tries to allay the boredom of an eternal misery (an angry god that does not change is eternally angry).

Are you saying self-entertainment is morally wrong?

To occupy itself, it created a cartoon universe whose inhabitants are its puppets, and eventually it will tire of this and destroy it in one of its fits of irrational, needless anger.

You present that as if it would be wrong for God to do that. How so? Based on your idea of morality?As for me, God certainly has no “need” for goals–but that does not mean He doesn’t want certain things. And again, it is the issue of want that determines whether something is arbitrary or not. Flipping a coin and deciding off that is arbitrary. Doing something because you want to isn’t.

Peter: “Suppose that God did create us with the sole intention of torturing us all forever and ever. God has that power–so how is that morally wrong?”

On the Christian’s premises, there’s nothing wrong with this, since according to Christianity we are the property of its god (just as a dictator thinks of the people he rules), and it can do with its property what it wills (even if it uses human agents to carry out its will).

Except, of course, that God’s nature is not such that He would do something with the sole purpose of torturing us. In fact, God’s sole purpose for anything is His glorification. He is glorified both in our salvation and in proper judgement of those who are not saved. Thus, my hypothetical question is ultimately not about the Christian God at all. Instead, it is about how you can determine whether such a God as that would be good or evil. I maintain that you cannot answer that question since “good” and “evil” are meaningless in your worldview.

In this sense, it would actually be inconsistent for Christian believers themselves to be opposed to murder, for any murder that takes place would be “ordained” by their god, which could only mean that any action taken to prevent that murder from taking place would be an action opposed to the Christian god’s will.

This is absurd, though. That we recognize something happens according to the will of God does not in any manner mitigate against the responsibility of those involved in the action. And on the face of it, it is most certainly not illogical to hold to this:1. Those who murder are guilty and ought to be punished.

2. God ordains that John murder Bill.

3. John is guilty of murder and ought to be punished.

God’s ordination of these events does not alter the responsibility of the actors involved. Whether you agree or disagree with this is, at this point, irrelevant. It is only a matter of simple logic here.

After all, God ordained that Christ should die for our sins, yet He still held those who did it responsible. Again, unless you can show some transcendent morality that that violates you have no reason to complain about it occuring.

(Good thing most Christians aren’t so consistent with the implications of their worldview!) Recall that Jesus said “resist not evil.” An irrational worldview which seeks to enable evildoers would need injunctions of this sort. Besides, the bible nowhere says that killling is “wrong.” It simply gives the context-deficient prohibition “thou shalt not kill,” which is not at all the same thing. If this worldview suits you, well, that’s not my problem.

Well, first I would point out that “thou shalt not kill” is a poorly translated KJV text. It ought to read “thou shalt not murder” as murder is different from killing (and, by the way, the term in Hebrew also implies causing the death of another person through carelessness, not just active plotting to kill someone). In any case, the Bible did not stop with only the Ten Commandments. There are several other places which clarify what constitutes murder and what does not.But aside from that, the rest of your statements are unproven assertions.

Peter: “As it is, any time any of you argue that God is immoral for doing something you are arguing for an objective standard of morality that transcends not only all of mankind but the divine too.”

That is not problematic for my position since moral evaluation applies to all actions which are *chosen* by a sentient being. If the actions attributed to your god in the story book are actions which it is said to have chosen to take, then they are open to moral scrutiny.

And yes, they are the actions that God has chosen to do. And they are open to moral scrutiny insofar as morality is properly defined. However, there are still many questions regarding your position of rational self-interest that remain to be answered in regards to how they relate to God.

Nothing humors me more than atheists trying to convince me that I hold contradictory beliefs.  Inevitably, the “contradiction” comes about because they impose some of their beliefs into my system.  Naturally, my beliefs do contradict their beliefs, but that doesn’t make them self-contradictory.

Indeed, certain atheists over at Debunking Athe…er, Christianity are writing about how immoral God is for predestining people and then damning them to hell. Mr. Moore in those comments wrote:

How does God preordain and condemn all while being morally consistent? Simple- he has two wills. Contradiction averted.

The problem with this is that Mr. Moore is importing his view of morality into the system.  He claims there is a contradiction here, but he does not allow God to define His morality (a right that, as an atheist, Mr. Moore claims for himself).  God is the standard of morality, however, and thus there is no contradiction precisely because God is the standard so if He does it, it is automatically good.

Put it this way: who is the sinner?  Who is perfect?  Who do you think comes to a more accurate definition of morality?  Problem solved.

I’ve been thinking about the Problem of Evil since I’ve been talking with a lot of atheists and that’s their favorite ”argument” to bring up against Christians.  Now, before I have argued about how it is inconsistent for an atheist to speak of evil at all, since it’s not a part of their worldview.  In the atheist’s worldview, actions are neither good nor evil–they simply are.  Shake up a bottle of Coke and watch it explode, or go on a killing spree downtown–both actions are equally moral because there is no morality in atheism (beyond mere opinion that “I don’t think you should do this!”).

Anyway, when the atheist argues against the Christian position by saying that the Problem of Evil proves that God does not exist as the Christians say He does, they really use the tactic of bait and switch.  They begin by talking about the Christian God, but they apply a different morality than the Christian morality to God and then criticize God as if He is self-contradictory.

It goes like this:

The Christian God is all-loving and all-powerful (two terms, which I must point out, are never defined by the atheist).

Evil exists.

Therefore, either God is not all-loving (for He has willed evil) or else God is not all-powerful (for evil has occured without His permission).

The problem, of course, is in the statement “Evil exists.”  As shown above, this statement is meaningless for the atheist.  But the atheist may very well say, “This is an internal critique of the Christian system.  Christians say evil exists, therefore it’s a contradiction in Christianity.”

And that is where the bait and switch occurs.  Yes, it is true that Christianity teaches that evil exists.  However, it is equally true that it teaches that nothing God does is evil.  It is impossible for God to be evil for two reasons: 1) He is the Lawgiver and thus gives the Law rather than be under it; and 2) His nature is that He will not violate His own character.

So, does evil exist?  Certainly it does.  But only because people have disobeyed God, not because God has done anything.  Is God still all-loving if people are evil?  Certainly.  In fact, God shows His love all the more abundantly in that He died for us while we were sinners.  Is God still all-powerful because evil happened?  Certainly.  It was God’s purpose that evil should occur so that He would be able to demonstrate the depths of His love in dying for a fallen human race.

Is there a contradiction then in what the atheist presents?  Not at all, for the only way there could be one would be if the atheist could show how it is evil for God to do what God does.  If God does not behave in a manner that is evil, then He is still inherently good; and if He has a morally sufficient reason for evil to occur then there is certainly no contradiction inherent in the Christian system.  It is only a contradiction to claim that God allowing evil is itself evil–something that is alien to the Christian worldview, and thus demonstrating that the entire problem of evil does not result in an internal inconsistency in Christianity, but rather the inconsistency of Christianity with an atheist’s idea of morality–certainly a thing no Christian would argue is false.