God Is Love = Stupid Theology Part 1

God is love. (John 4:16)

Quite often these days I see religious folk posting quaint little blurbs like the above on the Internet.  It makes me really question whether they have thought through their beliefs--because if they post the above sound bite because they actually "believe" it--then all they have done is show how fallacious their beliefs really are. 

The above quote is not only a contradiction in terms--but it is also blatantly false. Only a person who has NOT taken the time to think about what the words are saying would be under the impression that the above sentiment is somehow agreeable. It's not, for reasons we shall soon discuss.

So from now on I have decided to rebut stupid theology anytime I see it--in a series fittingly called Stupid Theology--just to show why its not only categorically wrong to hold such beliefs--but ultimately such types of belief(s) prove false. I suppose you could believe it if you so wished--but to me this would only amount to the tacit admission that the only reason you hold the [specious] belief at all is because the lie makes you feel good.

The above proclamation of faith found in the quaint, and brightly painted yellow, epigraph is designed to squash your doubt with a catchy apologetic rationalization. In order to show why it is patently false, however, we need to re-examine it line by line. Methodical, I know--but hey--that's what using your brain is--hard work. Which is why people who post this stuff need to spend less time in the echo chambers of their faith--and spend a little more time thinking through their beliefs.

Sometimes I want to ask God why he allows poverty, famine, and injustice in the world when He could do something about it. But I'm afraid he might just ask me the same question.

Okay, so I broke the single sentence into two in order to better emphasize the clashing ideologies at play here. The first sentence is a secular humanistic response to the Problem of Evil (i.e., the Problem of Pain/Suffering as we find in the physical world). The Humanist thinks, if an all loving God truly did exist, then this suffering is inexcusable. Hence we must questions God's integrity, concern, and sense of justice.

Of course the Problem of Evil is probably the most difficult theological obstacle any theist can ever face, so it seems suspect that it is purportedly answered in the following sentence. But pay extra close attention to what happens in the second line, because the apologetics at work shifts the burden and theodicy, or defending the goodness of God in the face of all the suffering and evil in the world, becomes the focus.

The fact that we are lead to believe that it is our responsibility to fix the ills of the world reflects the humanist sentiment behind the quotation--and I agree, it's up to us to address the issues of poverty, famine, and injustice in the world--but the problem here is the second line redirects our focus from the fact that the quote is about God's responsibility to act in accordance to his "all loving" nature. After all, according to believers, the Bible, and the theology, God is love.

So what of this love? Well, instead of doing anything about the ills of the world--God is content to ignore them. Hardly something a loving God would do. Especially one with the power to prevent such ills in the first place.

Yet it is this very realization which provides the negation to his "all loving" nature. We soon come to realize that there is a deeper problem we need to address concerning God's conflicted nature. God's assumed nature, according to religious belief, is likely to be false given the nature of the evidence. According to the evidence (i.e., the pain and suffering in the world), God can either be all loving or all powerful, but not both. We know this for the very reason that the idea of an "omnibenevolent and omnipotent" God willingly allowing evil (in any form) to exist is patently absurd.

God could be "all loving"--but not all powerful. That is, he might merely be unable to effectively change the natural order of things. This hardly sounds like the God believers profess an ardent faith in--it's certainly not the God who created the universe and everything in it--it certainly can't be the Orthodox God of Christianity.

So here's the rub, if God was all loving and all powerful--then God must act in necessity (in accordance with his nature) to prevent evils such as starvation, famine, sickness, etc. Yet these things are, sadly enough, found in abundance. Also, because God (supposedly) has the power to create entire universes and everything in them, then we know God has (at the bare minimum) the power to effectively change the physical laws--i.e., change how pain and suffering affect living organisms--but his very refusal to do so shows that God cannot be all loving.

Thus we know God is NOT love.

As such, we are left with three possibilities as to what constitutes God's true nature. 1) God is malevolent, or 2) God is indifferent, or else 3) there is no God.

The fact that the quote we are dealing with misdirects our attention from the issues of God's obligatory necessity to prevent evil (according to his "all loving" nature) is an apologetic trick meant to shift the burden and make us feel guilty for the problem(s) which, technically speaking, are not our problems--if a loving God exists.

The fact is, humans are anything but "all loving." But we are compassionate, so our conscience grows concerned when we see injustice, poverty, and needless suffering. This suggests we are morally superior to the God of theism, because we exhibit empathy where he does not.
 
Granted, there are some (overused) theistic rebuttals, e.g., rationalizations, the believer can fall back on when confronted with these prior set of objections. They can claim God works in mysterious ways, his mind is unknown to us, so who are we to question God?

Well, the answer to this rationalization is quite simple--we have the inescapable obligation to question such a God--because he explicitly allows for suffering which he should find as shocking, unsettling, and horribly unfair as we do--if he were at all a compassionate sort of person, such as we humans typically are.

[Of course, not all humans are compassionate, I get that. But most healthy human beings exhibit compassion as an inbuilt feature of being, well, human. We have evolved this way. As such, a loving God would undeniably have to, at the very least, exhibit as much compassion as we do in order to be considered at all loving.]

Moreover, we don't need to know the mind of God to know that idly sitting by and doing nothing, simply letting injustice, suffering, and evil occur without so much as batting an eyelid is, not only wrong, but morally reprehensible!

Hence the apologetic ploy is to leave us feeling guilty when the question is (deliberately) reversed to question our inability (or refusal) to obey the imperative to prevent evil by having God ask us why we do nothing. Again, the message here is, ultimately, humanistic--God wants you to right the wrongs--because he can't be bothered.

Ultimately, however, as I pointed out--it's not our burden--if a loving God exists--because the imperative dictates it is God's obligation to prevent evil, suffering, and injustice since it is his very nature to do so. 

[Coincidentally, this allows us to rule out the other oft raised rebuttal that God must allow for evil in order to realize the greater good--this makes no sense when God, being all powerful, could actualize the greater good without the allowance of even a bare minimum of evil. The free will defense, when used to explain evil, only shifts the goal posts further back--it doesn't solve the problem of God's imperative to prevent evil.]  

Thus, the fact that injustice, evil, and suffering do exist in the world is strong evidence that, contrary to John 4:16, God is NOT love.

Now here's the kicker. Remember the three possibilities we are left with? To reiterate, God is either 1) malevolent, 2) indifferent, or 3) non-existent.

As such, keeping these three points in mind, when we re-examine the quote:

Sometimes I want to ask God why he allows poverty, famine, and injustice in the world when He could do something about it. But I'm afraid he might just ask me the same question.

What we are really asked to consider makes no sense whatsoever. 

First of all, if God is malevolent, then the reason he allows poverty, famine, and injustice is obviously because that is in accordance to what he wills. In other words, God desires there to be poverty, famine, and injustice.
 
Secondly, if God is indifferent, then the reason such things exist in abundance shows God simply doesn't care to do anything about it--they exist--so what? No skin off God's back. Deal with it.

Last but not least, if God is non-existent, then the quantity of evil we find in the world exists simply as part of the natural order, so it makes no sense to question something which isn't even there--something that's not real--but merely a figment of our imaginations. It is the equivalent of asking the Flying Spaghetti Monster why there is so much evil in the universe. It's a ridiculous and absurd question to even posit--so much so that it's downright delusional.
 
Thus the above religious sound bite is not only self refuting, but it is also a case of extremely stupid theology. 

Theists would be quick to realize this if they took even just one minute to think it through more carefully. But the fact that we can see such blurbs pop up all over the Internet is strong evidence that most theists haven't thought long enough, or hard enough, about their beliefs. Subsequently, this goes a long way to explain why religious belief in God persists--presumably because the majority of believers have never taken the time to properly question, or adequately address, the speciousness of their cherished beliefs in the first place.

William Lane Craig = King of Bullshit

Most of what comes out of William Lane Craig's mouth is purely fantasy invented by William Lane Craig. When a person engages in serious discussions of heavy philosophical topics to boldly say whatever fantastically inspired puerile nonsense which he can conjure up without a moments thought, he is practicing  the Philosophy of Nonsense, which is just another way of saying: bullshit. William Lane Craig is the king of the bullshitters. He even has a degree in Theology Bullshit. 

And that's why I don't care about anything Craig has to say. Half the time what he says is painfully incoherent, the other half it is simply mad ravings of a delusional bullshitter. But you don't have to take my word for it.

Now that we know William Lane Craig is a compulsive liar, consider this following quote by Craig:

“Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa.”  (Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, Revised edition, Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994, p. 36.)

Translation: “I know for a fact that there are fairies in my garden and a leprechaun living in my anus, but (BUT!) nothing you can say or show me will ever change my mind that I'm wrong, or even a little bit mistaken, because my brain waves are tuned into the divine frequency of--I'm right and you're wrong--neener neener. Suck it God-deniers!”

All this goes to show is that William Lane Craig is not a serious philosopher, rather, he is a Propagandist. He wants to spin the truth, to make it his truth, and then he wants you to take his truth--preferably bending over backwards with a sordid sort of smile on your face that says--no--but really--yes. 

So why won't I cut the guy some slack? Well, other than Craig's winning pearly white smile, he doesn't really have much else going for him. He constantly lies to bolster his arguments, he confuses terms which even an amateur philosopher is clear on, he misrepresents others--including experts he contends with, but worse, neglects to make amends for deliberately misconstruing the truth when called on his bullshit. Other than immense intellectual dishonesty, which makes me dislike him as a philosopher, and his smug confidence in knowing how infallibly right he is (because he has the little voice in his head Holy Spirit telling him as much), while he adheres to a theology which claims all those who disagree with him will burn in hell, I can't seem to find a single redeeming trait for why I shouldn't despise him as a person. 


As an advocate for science, reason, and intellectual integrity I simply am not going to cut the man any slack. He can ship up or take a good drilling for being a hack. Until then, I feel we all have an obligation to keep calling him on his bullshit.

Why Theology Fails: On the Transcendental argument and IPUs

 

How the Transcendental argument for God is Not Even an Argument

Theologians like to bemoan the fact that most atheists aren’t aware of the really “good” theological arguments for God. They like to claim we’re theologically naïve. Well, if theologians could actually agree on a single coherent definition for God would help us in taking them seriously. No, I’m afraid Thomas Paine pegged theology for what it really is more than two centuries ago, the study of nothing.

The philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci, Steve Zara, and the biologist PZ Myers all seem to agree that there can be no scientifically meaningful “evidence” for God because the concept is so ill-defined. Other scientists and thinkers such as Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, and Victor Stenger seem to think that the concept of a personal God is untenable not because most definitions fail or because they are so ill-defined (although that may be part of it), but because they are mainly rationally incoherent and have no explanatory power (due to a lack of the invaluable thing called evidence).  Yet what all this goes to show is that attacking a nebulous or ill-conceived concept of God is a fool’s errand and a waste of time. Polemics against theism are mostly useless. We can only explain our personal reasons for why we find specific arguments lacking.

So here's one of mine: there is no single, clear cut, definition or conceptualization of God. Most religions have their own version of a deity, and various sects which have schismed off from these main religions have their own versions of God too. Each variant faith, much like a Russian Doll which has another doll inside it, contains a series of differing religious denominations which share theologies and may even have concepts which resemble each other but which may simultaneously be at odds with other groups within the same faith. This is why there are so many schismatic groups. Nobody can seem to agree. About the only thing they can agree upon is the persuasion that God exists—but what it is exactly that they are agreeing on nobody knows. 

Every branch of faith then has its own unique theology and its own variant explanation for God. If they all agreed unanimously on what God is, or what he means, or how he is defined then there would be no need for the variance (or variation of thought) in the first place. Therefore, even if God did exist, theology would still be useless.

Theology means the study of God. But isn't this sort of like begging the question? What is it exactly that theologians want us to study again? God? Okay, I get that. But what God exactly? Ah, here's the rub! Studying something, by definition, requires something tangible to study. 

The Transcendental argument states that God exists beyond space and time, he transcends them(!), he is an all transcendent being. If he is outside of space and time, separate from the physical universe, then there would never be any evidence to even consider. Simply put, nothing to bother about. So whenever a theologian says, “But hold on there, you’ve neglected one of the best arguments for God yet, the Transcendental argument!” I can’t help but think to myself, “Oh boy… here we go again.”

When theologians peddle theories like the Transcendental argument, stating atheists have yet to properly address such an argument, I don’t think they know what they are even asking. We demand proof, and so they offer up the Transcendental argument, which says God transcends all things--exists beyond our grasp--but this is an old parlor trick. Only after they have safeguarded God from being disproved by making him external to any evidence, they claim victory. I say enough of this old tired out shell-game, anyone who has thought it through knows the game is rigged. It's a dishonest enterprise to say that God exists and then seek to make the claim unfalsifiable. An unfalsifiable theory isn't even a theory, and an unfalsifiable argument isn't really an argument. 

First theologians need to settle upon a universally agreed upon definition to formally enter into the debate. As it is, the nature of theology is so utterly convoluted that nobody actually has any clue what they are arguing for. And theologians have the gull to lobby the fallacious accusation that atheists and skeptics are theologically naïve?! For crying out loud, give me a break.  

Such a position is not only pompous but condescending as well—as if educated skeptics were too “dogmatic” to see how clear and easy theology truly is. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before, we're all just materialists blinded by our “faith” in science. 

An atheist and a theist are discussing the existence of God. The atheist says, "You know, I just don't see it."

The theist is taken aback, "What?! But it's so obvious!"

"Oh, yeah?" inquires the atheist.

"Of course!" exclaims the theist.

"So where's the evidence? Where's the proof then?" begs the atheist.

"Evidence? You want evidence?! But God transcends science! Don't you get it?! Therefore we can’t have any evidence for something which is transcendent. There is no proof. Only faith! God exists because he is necessary!"


The Transcendental argument amounts to little more than a profession of faith, it's not a valid argument. When you make a truth claim, you have to back up that claim in order for it to be justified. If not, then a skeptic will ask you to divvy up the proof. No proof means your claim is totally lacking and is probably not the best explanation for what it is you are trying to prove in the first place. That's assuming you are starting from a point of clarity of knowing exactly what it is you are trying to prove.

Most theology is so convoluted, so tangled, so labyrinthine that to be clear on what it is we are even arguing about is not at all obvious. Now only if there were some evidence to help us in setting the record straight—that would be something. But, contrary to the pretentious theologians who think they’ve figured out what nobody else has, all we have (in actuality) is a whole lot of nothing. The Transcendental argument isn’t a solution to the question of God's existence, it’s not even an viable answer, it’s a theological trick to safeguard God from the criticism spawned due to a lack any trustworthy evidence for God. 

Pink Invisibility is a Negation: And so is an all loving God who allows for Evil in the World

Needless to say, if God were real (REAL!) he could do a lot better than being a vagary of perception, wouldn’t you think? PZ Myers has stated on his blog that “any evidence of a deity will be natural, repeatable, measurable, and even observable… properties which god is exempted from by the believers’ own definitions, so there can be no evidence for it.” I agree. You can’t say invisible pink unicorns (IPUs) exist without some sort of evidence—indeed, the entire theology of pink invisibility (the classic unicornist theory) or invisible pinkness (the reformed unicornist theory) doesn’t even make any sense. That is to say it’s incoherent—irrational. 

Meanwhile those liberal (hippy) unicornists say both mainstream theologies are way off—the unicorn is real, the invisibility is real, but the pinkness is a matter of the animal’s divine aura! Others might claim they had a born-again unicornian experience so they know—the Unicornian Spirit spoke to them at a religious revival—they know! (e.g. something the evangelical uniconist might say). Or they may be inclined to say that you can’t prove to them that there is no such thing as pink invisible unicorns—you can’t prove that they don’t not exist—so neener neener—we can believe whatever we want (e.g. something the fundamentalist uniconrist might try to get away with).

Regardless of the religious sect, or what particular theological premises they adhere to, their metaphysical assumptions about the supernatural properties (e.g. conjectura) of imaginary unicorns may or may not agree, but saying that pink invisible unicorns must exist precisely because they are beyond our comprehension, that they exist outside space and time, does nothing to prove whether or not there is such a thing at all. Nor does it solve the cognitive dissonance of contradictory features (or attributes) of invisible pink unicorns, i.e. that invisibility is the absence of all color, thus such a thing could never be seen as a color, let alone the color pink. The terms negate one another, pink invisibility just can't exist, just as the concept of an all loving God is negated by a universe filled with pain and suffering, and therefore we know that such a God could never exist (although an evil and amoral God is surely conceivable). Theologians act like theodicy (e.g. the Problem of Evil) is not an obstacle to faith, but ignoring a problem isn't the same as actually tackling it and dealing with it head on.

The point is, however, it doesn’t matter what attributes we assign to these mysterious unicorns, be it pink, invisible, or all loving (or whatever) none of these things will prove their existence. Why safeguard the irrational claims by pretending invisible pink unicorns are transcendent? That makes no sense. And what’s the evidence for these pink invisible unicorns transcendent nature, you might wonder? Faith they say? Wow! Talk about begging the question.

What else can you say to a person who believes as much—that is to say they believe whatever it is they wish because they have a belief in belief that what they believe is so, and therefore it’s real enough to them, so they’d like nothing more than to keep believing it. They act offended any time anyone criticizes these preposterous beliefs, and they immediately start laying on the guilt, talking about how they are being singled out and persecuted, and they protest: don’t attack our beliefs! They’re sacred. This caterwauling can be pretty annoying, but it still doesn’t justify their beliefs. Between believing in God or perhaps discovering that to the contrary the god awful truth is that there is no God, well, they’d rather just keep on believing. I suppose the only thing we could say to someone so deluded is, “Good luck with that.”

Here’s the kicker though, because there is no valid, or at least agreed upon, 'god hypothesis' there can be no testing the hypothesis perchance to prove that particular God’s case. In other words, even if by the off chance one theology out of all the theologies which have ever existed or will come to exist was in fact correct, we still have no way of testing all the minutiae of hypothesis, therefore we have little to no chance of proving said God. The problem is compounded when we realize the more religions which get invented the less likely we are of ever knowing whether or not God exists—an infinite amount of plausible theologies all get in the way—and the probability is always working against the theist. To avoid this problem most religions will profess that they are the one true faith—that theirs is the correct believe—all others are wrong. Yet this is a dogmatic conviction, not a proper conclusion based on the dispassionate and objective inquiry into what the evidence shows—mainly because there is an utter lack of empirical evidence.

Conclusion

The only way God can be proved in a naturally bound probabilistic universe such as ours, would be to manifest God directly. No theology needed. Just show me God. Theology is completely useless. It’s philosophy trapped in a box—the box of dogma drenched doctrines and screeds—worse than this, it’s ersatz philosophy. The irony being that if there is a truth to God’s existence, it is buried beneath a profundity of obscure theological conjecture and will continue to be unknowable for as long as theology continues to generate untestable and invalid assumptions which have nothing to do with the reality we observe daily. Theology is a failed enterprise through and through.

Low and behold, Thomas Paine was right all along. Theology is predicated on nothing, is the study of nothing, and leaves us with, you guessed it, nothing. If theists want to prove God exists, and they want to be vindicated in these devotional convictions, then I suggest they put theology aside and start taking science seriously. Because if there is a God which interacts with humans, causes miracles, is all powerful, created all things, etc. etc.—whatever else he may be these are specific claims, claims which overtly trespass on the domain of science. Science does have the power to prove the existence of god—if he were at all real. The fact that science hasn't found a single trace, not an iota of tangible evidence, should cause the most stubborn headed theologian to stop and give pause. On the other hand, if God is truly transcendent above all things, then it will forever be a futile endeavor to prove God exists.  So either theists must start proving God's existence or else get comfortable with the fact that they just won’t ever know—and can’t know—whether or not God is real.

Intellectual Honesty

I love the above picture simply because it represent the most common misconception of atheism--namely that atheism is a philosophy in and of itself, such a misrepresentation amounts to little more than religious polemic against atheism and a thinly veiled straw-man. Which begs the question--who is more honest--atheists or believers?

In a conversation over at another blog, I had mentioned that Christian apologists bend the truth in their favor every chance they get. We can guess the reason for this is because they want to validate their "truth" claim about God's existence. Although, this only amounts to theological arguments designed to 'sound' convincing because their is no readily available evidence which could easily prove, in a second, what apologists try so desperately hard to. This is why it is call "Apologestics" after all.

Following my statements that apologists bend the truth, I offered that, in the religious discourse involving all forms of rhetoric, it would be an unfair double standard not to allow atheists to do the same. Granted, bending the truth here is in reference to making one's rhetoric persuasive, making the "truth claim" all the more believable, but ultimately has no impact on the truth of the matter.

A Christian friend offered that I was simply being unfair by implying Christians were dishonest, and reversed my questioning, offering:

"Atheist apologists bend the truth in their favor every chance they get. To expect Christians not to be allowed to do the same is a double standard."

Oh, I agree. I wasn't saying that atheists never lie. But I was making a distinction... atheists aren't the one's claiming God exists. We're not saying there is all this evidence which, to our dismay, nobody rightly sees... but ignore this small set back... God is real--just take it from us. That's exactly the opposite of what atheists are saying. So atheists aren't at fault--since it's not up to us to qualify the theist statement about God's existence.  

In fact, I think we could agree that Christians, being theists, make the truth claim "God exists" their core defense for faith. Because if God wasn't real, then faith would be unjustified. So a lot hinges on the claim. The question "Does God exist?" arises, however, due to a lack of convincing support. 

So the question remains unanswered. Nobody knows either way, for 100% certainty, if God exists. I mean, if somebody did know for sure that "God exists" then they would win the Nobel Prize for Theology for proving God's existence beyond a reason of a doubt. This has not occurred.

Basically my point amounted to this: when it comes to the truth claim that "God exists" atheists are being truthful in stating that such isn't so. It simply hasn't been proved.


Because the claim to know God exists is not yet proved, we know that, yes, it is an insincere statement whenever a Christian espouses God is real.


Atheists who say a deity is 100% non-existent may be jumping the gun too, since we can't know if some nebulous deity, some form of a god, exists or not... but we can cite how improbable and far-fetched it is. We would still be justified in not believing in it.


But let's not fall back onto citing that vague perception of a deity and then force it into the framework of our faith--if the deist concept of god turns out to be real then this is distinctly NOT the Christian God. 

What I think most atheists are saying is that your *specific God (e.g. the Christian God of the Bible) does not exist. I think this claim, that the Christian God is erroneous, has an abundance of support. And more importantly, is in no danger of being refuted.


So I see no problem with atheist integrity on this point. Whereas I find most Christians are putting all their faith in the hope that it's true--and then claiming ad hoc that because they feel it's true, it is. This is simply circular reasoning--and doesn't suffice when making blatant truth claims.


Either God exists or he doesn't. Since there is no tangible evidence, and anything which Christians tout as evidence is spurious at best, I think we can safely assume atheists aren't the ones who have to worry about the "truth" of the matter. Furthermore, you can't assume to be proved correct when you have absolutely no trustworthy evidence, no proof to speak of, and say it is the truth. This simply amounts to a falsehood and wishful thinking. A noted delusion.


When it comes to the question of God, the atheist has *nothing to lose.


I predict the Christian rebuttal might be, "Unless God turns out to be real... then atheists are in heaps of trouble!" But then that's assuming, A) that God is real (more useless conjecture at this point), and B) it presumes too much since you're claiming to know God's mind is made up about concerning all atheists--and that's dishonest to the core.


And I've already mentioned how the Bible can't be trusted... so to say the "Bible told me so..." is just begging the question.


Yet when the atheist points out that the Bible is faulty, that the Christians concept of God is flawed, and that Christians presume to know to much, and by sheer observation is doesn't seem like God exists... this is being honest with what reality depicts.

I'm not saying atheists never lie. Nor am I saying that Christians don't have an honest bone in their body. These are simply unfounded stereotypes. Besides this, I was once a Christian and my integrity, my desire to know the truth, lead me to atheism simply for the sheer fact that it was the only position which didn't leave me with any cognitive dissonance. Whereas Christian apologetics depends on one's ability to constantly suspend their disbelief. 

Honesty is vital if we're ever going to discover the unadulterated truth, and that's all I'm saying.