Whitworth, apostate generator
May 24, 2009 | Contributed by Daniel Walters
“I used to be a Christian.” A smirk. “Until I came to Whitworth.”
It’s a very common line at Whitworth. It’s graced countless opinion columns, each time pretending to be a shocking statement.
But it’s something that’s happened time and time again to Whitworth Student after Whitworth student. Some, to be clear, have gone the other way — actually becoming religious in college.
But most of the movement among students seems to be away from the religion referred to in their brochures.
Personally, I survived Whitworth with my religion intact (and, maybe, ultimately stronger.) . Still, my question is: How does Whitworth, a Christian university, end up creating so many non-Christians?
After processing for some time, I believe these are many of the factors. Naturally, I can’t — and won’t — speak for your individual experience. But this is something, I think, worth exploring.
College, where the parents aren’t.
College is a time of solidifying your own identity. Of separating oneself from your old life, your old church, your old parents, and, sometimes, your old beliefs.
So it isn’t surprising that college — even Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty College in all likelihood — leads to a certain percentage rejecting the philosophy they started with.
So much of the Christianity people come to Whitworth armed with is the flannelgraph kind. Fuzzy. Simple. And able to fall off under the slightest breeze.
The parental protection is gone in college. You’re out of the womb and the umbilical cord’s been cut. Instead, you’re in a world of questions, bright and scary.
Whitworth, to its credit, tends to encourage those questions.
But people begin to run into knotty questions about their religion, without having the theological underpinnings or confidence to answer them.
Questions like:
How could an all-powerful loving God allow the epic amount of suffering on earth? Did God create evil? How could God send Joe, my non-christian neighbor who’s a pretty decent guy, go to hell? Did Muslims forced to say they’d converted to Christianity in the Crusades go to heaven? Do people who’ve never even heard of Jesus get automatically sent to hell? Why did God require Genocide in the Old Testament? If the Bible’s completely true, how come some elements seem to contradict eachother (Jesus’s last words, the number of witnesses to the empty tomb, etc)? If God wants people to believe in him, why doesn’t he just regularly appear in a pillar of fire? Who created God? If God knows who’s going to go to heaven and whose going to go hell, then isn’t that the same as him automatically choosing who goes to hell, before the people are even born? How come Genesis seems to be regularly contradicted by scientific discovery ? Why were Christians so often in opposition to scientific progress? Why have so many wars been waged in the name of Christianity? Does the concept of the “Trinity” make, like, any sense at all? If God answers prayer, why haven’t any of my prayers ever been answered?
Some of these questions, to be fair, are based on theological misinterpretation. But not all of them have satisfactory answers. So it isn’t surprising that people will find at least one of answer totally unacceptable.
Of course, there are similar questions to atheism. Questions like: If there isn’t any God isn’t everything bound by cause and effect? If everything’s bound by cause and effect can there be any free will? If there isn’t any free will is morality — and indeed, philosophy, a sham? Why would anything matter? What’s the first cause that set off all the effects? What caused that cause? How about that cause? What set up the underpinning rules of the universe? How can *consciousness*– that weird sensation that there’s a YOU are inside your body –work if there’s no other realm but the physical? How does consciousness come? What does *unexistance* feel like when you die? Why do so many smart people believe in religion? If there’s no free will and no God and nothing beyond cells and dirt and energy, can there be any purpose? Can “nothing but matter” matter?
But for some those aren’t as troubling. Eventually,the human mind decides one makes more sense than the other.
So there’s a larger question: Why is the college mind more apt to find the set of Christianity criticisms more persuasive than those toward Atheism? In my analysis, it’s because Christianity makes a horrific imposition: It asks you to simply believe, to trust, to have faith.
Faith: The bane of the college mind.
There’s a point where all the reason, all the intellect, all the test-tubes, and history books and logical proofs are insufficient. There’s a point where the waters of pure reason lap at the shore of the Unknown. And slightly beyond that, the shores of the Can’t-Know.
Ah, but for the university-mind “can’t-know” is a very ugly idea.
After several years of college a certain arrogance — an intellectual swagger — develops. You know all about all kinds of things.Who’s to say you CAN’T know it all? Who’s to say that you have to “trust” in anything other than your own knowledge.
And faith, why, that’s tantamount to admitting ignorance. It’s trusting in the immeasurable, the intangible, the unknowable.
Faith requires a pretty substantial amount of intellectual humility. It says, I can’t know for sure, but that doesn’t mean I can’t believe.
To the people who reject such faith, it’s unsurprising that you often see their lip subtly curl back in the slightest sneer. It’s the same sort of contempt any person holds for their previous beliefs.
Ah yes, there was a time when I believed in God. Of course, there was a time I believed in the Easter bunny and Sewer monsters and Frodo Baggins as well, hahaha. But I’m an Adult now.
In the intellectual culture we’re asked to abandon belief for the search for truth. In many cases that’s good — it encourages more truth seeking. But it’s also fallacious to believe that reality itself ends at the shores of the “can’t-know.” And while the criticism against atheism are easier to ignore — atheism, after all, has a sexy intellectual sheen — it’s important to once again be reminded that atheism requires its own sort of faith to fill in the blanks. Well-worn territory, I know.
Whitworth is full of Christians. The bad kind.
Sometimes, rejecting Christianity is less about the doctrine itself as much as the people professing to profess that doctrine.
There’s a certain belief that because Whitworth has a large portion of Christians, Whitworth itself is a cardboard stand-in for the religion. Of course, that’s a problem, because Whitworth also happened to have quite a few jerks.
Coming from a relatively poor high school, and having a fabulous time, Whitworth was a bit shocking for my sheltered self. Cruelty! Sniping! Gossiping! Pettiness!
Many people I’ve talked to, unsurprisingly, blame Christianity.
I believe that’s a mistake. The people who were doing the sniping and backbiting were not people that had religion as the dominant force of their life. The nicest, sweetest people at Whitworth did. But that’s just my experience.
Oddly enough, Whitworth, to my view, is both too nice (reticent to really get down and dirty exploring unpopular ideas) and too mean (the gossip-mongering above.) So why?
My theory is money. At least at the high school level, I firmly believe that the richer the school is, the more people tend to be shrews and jerks, prone to mockery and social-heirarchy. There are two reasons for this: Rich kids have more time to worry about their social heirarchy, and their parents got where they are because of their status. It’s why Gossip Girl is set in the Upper East Side of New York, and not in The Wire’s inner-city Baltimore.
Whitworth has a decent mix of rich and poor, but also has so much emphasis on social interaction, that it’s inevitable people will be bashing eachother along the way.
The result? An almost effortless hypocrisy.
But I never believed you can judge a belief system by the people who claim to believe it. Checking “Christian” on a census box is hardly enough to be transformative.
Yet, I’ve known several people for who Christianity was amazingly transformative, people to who The Light was indeed a guiding light.
Many people who chucked away Christianity, I believe, never really met the good examples.
Punctured expectations.
With college being a crucial point of life-change, people carry a series of hopes and expectations. Disappointment, unsurprisingly, is inevitable. I think many Christians, having found that they haven’t received the answers-to-prayer or the deep-personal-fulfillment they’ve been promised on the Christianity brochure , are willing to abandoned the whole thing all together. For many, I guess, they figure if it hasn’t happened by college, it won’t happen at all . Now, I think those promises are aspects of a faulty theology, but in America it’s a common one. Very understandable.
Who has time for Christianity at Whitworth anyway?
Of course, the most common way of rejecting religion doesn’t come at the culmination of a philosophical journey.
Most don’t comb through dusty tombs, pull their hair, and grapple with the very “is” of the universe.
For most, it’s not a Eureka moment. For most, their religion dies bit by bit, dribble by trickle, without ever realizing it’s gone.
Christianity, trickily enough, isn’t a religion that can be measured. God, we’re often reminded, doesn’t tally church attendance. He doesn’t use a stopwatch to keep time of your prayer. Even grand-total-of-sins isn’t something God uses to judge one Christian over the other, we’re told. A sinner is a sinner, no matter how small.
There’s no Holy-Meter to measure who’s the best Christian. Christianity doesn’t seem to have quantifiable measurable goals.
That makes it all the easier to slip-slide away, without even realizing it. For many at Whitworth, swarmed with the hubbub of the HUB — clubs, classes, causes — religion is lost in the hustle and shuffle.
Other religions are happy to take their place: Savedarfurism. Sustainabilityanity. Frisbeeology.
Consider the Whitworth Small Group. Packed-to-the-brim with excited first-semester youngsters, and then, one by one, the group gets smaller and smaller until it’s just a husk of a disullisioned small group leader– if that.
I think something similar happens to many Whitworth students. Their religious beliefs fade away. And, in a way, I respect those who wrestle with the theological weight of Christianity and find it wanting, far more.
At least they have the courage to to fly their beliefs high, instead of letting them slowly drown under a rising tide of the trivial and inane.
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33 Responses to “Whitworth, apostate generator”
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People aren’t asking the questions you raise against atheism, Daniel—at least not on a 2 a.m. level. I barely see them broached in philosophy classes. However, people are asking the hard questions of Christianity. Because Christianity is the faith held by most Whitworth students, it’s the one that’s most often up for criticism. As much as we can talk about bias toward Christianity in America (which is there, no doubt), it’s also the religious faith most under attack. Speak ill of Islam and you’re culturally insensitive or intolerant. Speak ill of Judaism and you’re Hitler’s granddaughter. But it’s open season on Christianity. I don’t remember if it was Forrest Baird or Jerry Sittser—maybe both—who said that becoming the state religion of Rome was the worst thing ever to happen to Christianity. Now Christianity can be married to all sorts of cultural trends and untenable political positions. The real message gets lost or buried under slogans and agendas. How ironic that the Humble Servant becomes the poster god for political power. It’s disheartening, and I can see how it could be disillusioning as well (though I don’t like the word “disillusioning.” It makes it sound like the people who lose faith are those who see the truth most clearly; sometimes you need faith to see.). But that’s more about America than Whitworth. I don’t see that sort of distortion very much here. Even so, it’s edgy, artistic, countercultural to give up God.
I don’t want to say that losing one’s faith is all (or always) about fashion or rejecting mass culture. Of course it’s more than that. And of course it varies. Some people lose their faith like it was a temporary tattoo. It was never more than something they wore on their skin. For some, there are real roots that come out and leave deep empty spaces. The wound bleeds into their art and their conversations. They fight for it; then they fight against it. Sometimes it’s a matter of cognitive dissonance. A person believes one thing and lives as though she believed something else. Eventually something has to give, and the lifestyle is harder to change.
It is heartbreaking when people walk away from God. Despite the whole range of suffering this world has to offer, this is the worst thing that could happen to someone you love: to turn away from the only One who can heal their disease.
At the same time, I don’t think it’s something Whitworth needs to pore over, trying to fix itself so as to prevent students from losing faith. This simply isn’t something preventable. In my limited observations, I have witnessed Whitworth faculty being so concerned, so intentional, so proactive about reaching out to students who’ve lost faith in God. It’s really encouraging to see, and I’ve seen this effort give someone who was questioning Christianity real doubts as to the tenability of atheism. Ultimately, however, people make their own choices. They choose a course and then look for confirmation to keep themselves on that course. That’s not to take a laissez-faire view of the whole affair. I believe that we affect each other deeply, and Whitworth has affected us. How we treat those who are losing their faith matters. But people losing their faith isn’t a result of something Whitworth does or doesn’t do. Each one makes his own decision. Not even God prevents us from that.
Since I feel like one of my previous comments partially inspired this post, I’ll tell some of my story.
The simple version is that everything in Daniel’s post contributed to my current state of agnosticism. Even more so…
“Each one makes his own decision. Not even God prevents us from that.” – Kelly
I wish that He did. It was in despair that I gave up on God. It wasn’t the fault of Whitworth’s culture or my parents’ culture, but in my own life it became too hard to justify God’s presence. A presence I’m not sure I’ve ever felt. And it is in a sort of agony that I maintain my separation. I keep this a secret from my family.
In the words of the philosopher poet Czeslaw Milosz; “If God does not exist, not everything is permitted to man. He is still his brother’s keeper and he is not allowed to sadden his brother by saying that there is no God.”
The sense of agony comes from a newfound sense of responsibility for myself. By not expecting the divine or the miraculous I have been engaged in some kind of positive humanism, not something I always have the energy for.
Yes, my lifestyle began to contradict my beliefs before my beliefs fell, but I’ve never felt so free.
God let me walk away.
I want to believe that if He’s out there, He’s proud of my honesty at the very least.
Not much, if anything, has changed in terms of my sense of right and wrong. In fact, with the exception of a couple bad habits, it’s nearly indiscernible from my previous lifestyle. However, I’m free from beliefs and standards that were oppressing me with guilt.
I also listened to a lot of music by a band called The Thermals and couldn’t stop nodding my head in assent to their aggressive atheism.
Before my faith fell apart, I was a pursuer of God. I wasn’t very good at letting Him pursue me. I stayed up nights, suicidal with the thought of the possibility of God’s non-existence. Then I realized that my wonderful life is the same life with or without faith in an objective purpose. I made my own purposes to save the world like I was praying for God to do. I’m not God, thank-God, but if I was I think I would do things a little different.
If this is what it takes for me to work for this life instead of an uncertain afterlife than I must maintain this stance.
I know lots of great Christians, they are often the most genuinely compassionate people I’ve ever known and that’s coming from a highly cynical person. Sometimes I want to see them enjoy that compassion as a product of themselves, rather than continue to spiritually flog themselves for not being as perfect as God called them to be.
Humanity is what I know. Spirituality has become a dim hope, if even a hope. I never really could make myself genuinely want to submit.
I can’t answer the criticisms leveled against Christianity or atheism and I don’t believe anyone can.
If faith is not delusion then I think it’s a gift.
I have a few thoughts, which I’ll just post as items on a menu. If anyone would like to further expore one of these, I’d be happy to. These are in no particular order other than I have a list in my head and this was the order they popped up in.
1) Lack of visible Christian movement in Spokane itself. Churches in Spokane (of any denomination) do not have outreach programs, block parties, or any other sort of general community involvement. At least two pastor’s I’ve talked to in the past five years claim Spokane’s faith is stagnant. If this is true, it’s certainly understandable how faith could be at risk in Spokane.
2) Devotion to Authoritarianism. I submit the majority of students at Whitworth, in regards to forming opinions on matters of political, social, or religious interest, find it easier to parrot what others say rather than do the hard research and form their own opinions. What does this professor say? What does this roommate say? What does Jon Stewart say? Sounds good, I’ll use that.
3) Core. What’s the one class that most students would claim they hate the most? Core. What is Core rooted in? Western (i.e. Christian) values. Association may be at work.
4) Whitworth’s movement away from Western-centric values. Continuing with the trend of Core and Western values, Whitworth has shown a desire in many departments (most recently the history and political science departments I believe) to move away from a Western-dominated viewpoint in the classroom. This may inadvertently be signalling a move away from Christian-dominated viewpoints, which in turn could be taken as a sign to students to move away from Christianity. As I said in point #2, students follow professors.
5) Bush. This has got to be my most shallow point of all, but here goes. Bush was Christian. Bush declared his faith often, particulary with regards to policy. Many students on campus are unsupportive of Bush. In fact, on this forum many students have questioned whether the President should be so rooted and open about his faith (I’d offer a link right here to some of these articles but I’m not tech-savvy enough to know how to do that.) Association may, once again, be at work.
6) Is this a bad thing? It is biblical to have an opinion, even if it means rejecting Christianity. In Revelation John writes that we should be either hot or cold, but not luke warm. God wants us to pick a side, even if it’s not Him. God can work with conviction. He can’t work with complacency.
Well that’s all for now. If I think of more, I’ll try them out.
“I wish that He did.” –Nathaniel
Sometimes I do too. Some Christians have thought He does make that choice for people (cf. Calvin), but I can’t understand that position. Maybe it’s even true, but I don’t see it. Here’s what I see: God is not a child. He doesn’t want a toy world. If He did, He’d have settled for rocks and plants and galaxies. Instead, in a move that shocked humanity, God wanted real, volitional, messy, needy, imperfect human love. And that leaves the door open for all sorts of crap. You’ve taken interpersonal comm, right? The higher the level of relationship, the greater the risk. But that risk wasn’t all on our end. God knew His own future suffering in Christ when He set this whole thing up. He thinks you and I are worth it.
This may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever said, but I want to encourage you to be mad at God, Nathaniel. Struggle with God like Jacob, like Job, like the Israelites. Whatever’s moving you away from God, don’t let it grow nameless. Know its name and whisper that to God. Read your poetry of discontent (God knows we need it), but then, when the wound starts to heal, try reading poetry of faith. It is a gift, but it’s also a door—which maybe sounds no more real to you right now than the pine-scented back of a wardrobe. It’s worth checking, even just every once in a while, to see if something’s really there.
Daniel – It would be interesting to see how Whitworth compares with other Christian schools in this regard.
This is bigger than Whitworth: At a small, Christian-affiliated school it may be more noteworthy than in the world at large, but a lot of young people are abandoning the faith.
Sure, the information helps: but the sneers, smirks and lack of intellectual humility are, I think, a misrepresentation. They may be something you fixate on to help make your own reliance on faith seem more attractive and noble (from time to time). Though I may be mistaken.
Blaming “bad” Christian examples is a cop-out. In fact, I could just as easily make a similar case for people who have bad experiences with atheists: if they’d only met the shining examples of people whose lives were truly transformed by their rejection of blind faith, more people would walk away from religion…
But faithlessness doesn’t make any claims about transforming lives. Christianity does. And when one of the flock falls away or does one of those “I knew Jerry for 15 years and I never knew he was molesting the youth group boys and girls” kind of acts, and the flock that lauded Jerry two days ago as a shining example of Christ spurns him and continues to believe that if Jesus was *really* working in him that would never have happened… that sort of selective, No True Scotsman mentality is hard to accept.
Kelly: It’s ridiculous to try to compare the temporary “suffering” of an all-powerful being to the supposed eternal torment of the majority of human beings. If the ‘broad is the path that leads to destruction’ and ‘it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven’ doctrines are true at all, that desire for ‘messy’ love is a very, very, abhorrently very one-sided desire.
Nathaniel: “I’ve never felt so free.” Hear hear [Smiley face]
Cory: I find 2) to often be true. Many times when I hear a Christian make an eloquent point, it turns out to be a one-liner – ask a follow-up question or bring up a counter-point and their responses sound uneducated and pithless. Compare that to an atheist/agnostic who has abandoned the faith and thus, almost necessarily, thoroughly examined the issues and it’s not really a fair fight.
3) and 4) are tied together, and I think you’ve got it mixed up. Many non-Christians dislike CORE because it only presents the western perspective. If it showed a more tolerant, less white-male-protestant point of view it might be more appealing.
5) Bush is an incarnation of many characteristics non-Christians despise, not a reason for abandoning the faith. Although I originally dropped the label of “Christian” because I didn’t want to have to associate myself with people of a certain ilk who had just as much right as I did to call themselves Christian. I’m sure you can relate to the foul sensation of realizing that the ‘god hates f*gs’ group can quote scripture at you twice as fast as you can throw it at them.
6) Good point.
The end. For now [smiley wiley face]
Grady, I am a professing Christian and I agree that Christians use the one-liners more than I’d like. But you make the assumption that this is a Christian-only curse (or at least that’s how it came out in your post). It’s just as logical to assume that someone who was a professing agnostic their whole life then turned to Christianity went through the same thorough examination. Bottom line, this is a problem that athiests, agnostics, christians, republicans, democrats, nazi’s, capitalists, communists, cougar fans and husky fans can all make alike. Don’t assume it’s only one group.
To clarify my other points (and I don’t disagree with you on those) Most of these points I do not consider to be “the main reason” for abandoning faith. In fact, they may only be 2% of the reason. But I think that they may be the first 2%, the first thing that got the ball rolling. I alluded to it above that these are pretty shallow reasons for abandoning faith. But something has to set it off. Nobody to my knowledge wakes up and says “I think I’ll not be Christian anymore.” As was evident with Nathaniel’s testimony, it took time.
None of my thoughts were the be-all, end-all of reasons. But they might have been the kindling, or even the catalyst.
Cory:
By all means the ‘devotion to authoritarianism’ curse applies across the board, and I’m sorry you picked up that implication. I tend to criticize shallow thinking where I see it, and since most of the people I disagree/discuss these issues with are Christians, I see it originate there most often.
Consider, however, that in this culture the majority of people default to Christianity. Defending that warmly-accepted viewpoint is not as challenging as switching to a new, culturally risky one.
And I mean that by comparison to atheism/faithlessness. The pervasiveness of Christianity; the dominant pressures and biases of society, parents, friends and social circles demands a solid explanation for abandoning the faith.
So I’d not be surprised to find more unsupported talking points coming from Christians than from atheists. But your experiences may suggest the opposite.
Being a part of that majority, I think I can see your point. I definitely recognize that to move from a Christian to non-Christian faith system requires some sort of consistent train of thought and logic, not only to persuade those who feel you are “abandoning” the faith but to persuade yourself as well.
If I may be boastful for a minute, one of the greatest qualities that I learned at Whitworth was how to have an intelligent conversation about faith and Christianity that didn’t involve attempting to convert the hellbound non-believer. If ever a conversation along these lines appears on this forum, I’ll be sure to participate and hope you will too.
Grady, I don’t have an answer to the problem of evil that’s going to satisfy you. I do have ways of thinking about it that satisfy me, most days. But here’s something: I think part of the problem comes from entertaining the idea of hell without really entertaining the idea of God. Let’s suppose there’s a being who is the source of all good things: love itself, light itself, life itself. A person can’t both reject these things and have them at the same time—except for a while, on earth, by God’s forbearance. I have to believe that hell is not an arbitrary punishment (that wouldn’t be just). It is the natural, logical extension of the rejection of God. What would life be without Goodness, Truth, Love, Light, the Way, the Counselor? Without Life itself? By very definition, it would be hell.
That doesn’t make the idea comfortable, but it’s something.
But your question is more along the lines of: even if it’s just, how can that be good? What good can possibly outweigh this suffering? Let’s look at the alternatives. On the one hand, one could give up free will and with it the possibility for moral responsibility, maturity, rationality, compassion, and love. One could make a world of robots, or maybe just nothing at all. On the other hand, one could keep free will and with it the possibilities both for deepest suffering and greatest bliss.
Let’s say someone gave you the option to choose. Option one: You could have a good life, pretty cushy, no hangnails or heartbreak or diseases. Nothing would go wrong. Of course, you could never have real love. No passion (that always holds the risk of loss or rejection). No free will, either (you could always choose wrong, and that has natural consequences). You could have relationships, but they’d be automatic. Press a button, and she says “I love you!” like a doll. That’s how you say it, too. Life would be scripted. You could do things, but it would never really be you doing it; there’d be no agency, because free will always has the possibility for choosing things that cause harm. Basically, you’d be a happy vegetable, if “happy” is even the word for it. A comfortable vegetable. But no hell, right?
Or, option two: You could live in the world as it is, with the vigors of health and the pain of bruises. Real friendship and real loss. Real love and heartbreak. The possibility for heaven and the possibility for hell. Agency. Responsibility. Complexity. Consequences. You’re not a vegetable, but a person, whose fate is in your own hands. Despite the fact that someone else is all-powerful, in ultimate humility he leaves the most important decision up to you. You decide your fate. The catch is that, as it turns out, on your own you could never avoid rejecting the good. None can; it’s the human disease. We want too much and too selfishly. But someone has tipped the scales in your favor, and at great personal cost. Someone freely offers you the good you can never earn and has the audacity and humility to allow you even to reject it.
If God’s allowing evil has something to do with wanting real love (which is what I suspect), then it is abundantly clear that this isn’t a selfish desire. God wants *us* to be able to have that sort of life. Isn’t option two the life you’d prefer? I would too. God can’t do the impossible. He can’t allow you both to reject him and to have him at the same time. But he has paid dearly to elevate us from mere vegetables, mere animals, mere machines—to cut the strings and offer us paradise and a choice. There is nothing “one-sided” about that.
Cory:
I’d love to. I often have that sort of conversation with some of my best friends who happen to be Christian. I don’t hear any pressure to convert in this conversation – except a little from Kelly, but that was not directed at me.
Kelly:
I’d probably buy all of that if you could show me why it doesn’t apply to God. Does God give up freedom, moral responsibility, maturity, rationality, compassion, and love? Agency. Responsibility. Complexity. Consequences? Is the alternative a lack of passion, true love and free will? If not, why? I don’t see why I should take ‘it’s the human disease’ as a necessary differentiator.
So with regards to your ‘vegetable’ analogy, do a cost/benefit analysis: let’s say humans are vegetables OR there are no humans at all. Humans score a neutral on the cost/benefit scale. God, we assume, needs nothing. If God wants “messy” love, then we can say God scores a slight negative by not having other conscious beings to play with.
But add imperfect humans with free will. During their lives, a majority fail to experience a relationship with God, live through a mix of joy and suffering, die and go to Hell. Pretty negative, overall. For God, though, there’s a big fat plus.
It’s so one-sided. How can you see the best option as “for the sake of my desire to be loved (and sometimes hated) by a tiny minority of beings, I’ll abandon this pain-free universe and introduce true, hellish suffering”?
It’s as if you’ve taken a couch potato off his couch. You know his vegetative state is unfulfilling. So you drag him through a gauntlet of fire, noxious gasses and abhorrent moral dilemmas where he has to choose between directly killing an infant or allowing a group of schoolchildren to be crushed – or something like that – and in the end you promise him green, exciting pastures. Because you want him to love you. And you know he’ll be happier, because you know his happiness better than he does. And he has no choice in this matter.
Fine – maybe you don’t want to be that couch potato. But evaluate this from the perspective of someone who knows the outcomes. Say you want a child, but because of certain genetic conditions you know for a fact that it will be born with a debilitating condition that will make its life a living hell? It will be rejected by everyone and will suffer incessantly? Does your love for a child, and your knowledge that the child will experience life with free will, justify your bringing it into the world? Or would everyone get by just fine if you abstain?
Now tell me why, in your worldview, God didn’t abstain.
I know we’ve been over this, but it’s been too long since I heard your responses, so indulge me [Smiley face] I appreciate your intelligence on this sort of thing and I look forward to your answer.
Let me ask you a question, Grady. What are your thoughts on suicide? You seem to postulate that for many people life is so painful as to make existence itself an undeniable cruelty.
Since you clearly don’t believe in an afterlife, in your worldview many people are given a choice between a life of pain and non-existence. You seem to think the obvious thing is to choose in many cases, is non-existence.
Me personally, I think a life with pain is still worth living. Pain, to a certain degree, gives it texture. Now it’s possible that I haven’t experienced the horrific soul-wrenching pain that other people have experienced. Neither, to my knowledge, have you.
But a lot of people who have — even people who aren’t religious — still believe life is worth living.
Perhaps life isn’t quite as much of the bleak landscape as you make it out to be. There are moments of horror, and moments of terror, certainly. But there are also gleams and glimmers and glimpses of joy.
Your deformed-child analogy is revealing I think.
Maybe you think it’s a no-brainer that you should denying your theoretical child the chance to ever experience life, with the belief that any joy he might experience would be outweighed by pain. But it’s not a no-brainer for everyone. And it’s not, necessarily, for God.
There are stories of parents who decided to bring their deformed child into the world, and the child found some moments of preciousness against the wall of pain. Try to kill them to put them out of that misery, and they may even put up a fight.
Personally, I like my existence. I don’t always like the hue and shade and flavor that existence takes, but I still like the fact that I’m there. And the way that people keep fighting to exist, I think that quite a few other people to do.
Thanks, Grady. I’m glad you’re still willing to listen.
I want to take a little aside and talk about something Cory introduced. There’s an idea, which Cory didn’t so much assert but which is out there, so to speak, that this sort of discussion is best done without Christians being too fervent about it. Like we can all sit here at our respective screens and coolly discuss the relative merits and problems for one view over the other, pretending that this isn’t really about eternity or ultimate suffering or anything like that.
Hell is a really emotionally charged topic for me. Isn’t that rightly so? Even thinking about typing a sentence about particular people heading to that end has me crying absurdly at my desk right now. We’re all so polite, and tolerant. What about passionate? Here, finally, is an issue that matters. What you believe one way or another (according to one view on the table, my view), has eternal significance, not in a cliché but in a hauntingly literal sense. That adds urgency, and I can’t subtract that from the equation through abstraction. I can’t even wish to.
Sorry if that makes me speak too personally, or too ardently. It’s not about numbers. It’s not about “converting” people. It’s certainly not put on, and neither is it going away. I suppose I’ve already made a fool of myself by caring too much. Fine. These things are more important than that. And, Cory, it doesn’t make my conversation any less intelligent. Indeed, if belief is the door to salvation, then I can hardly be intellectually honest without hoping to make that belief more tenable for others. I suppose you’re thinking about conversations which devolve into unthinking dogmatics, pressures, mind games. That doesn’t have to happen. Reason and passion are not mutually exclusive.
Kelly, have you ever heard the question “can God make a mountain so big He can’t move it?” I hate those questions. Not because the question is so wierd or difficult, but because the person asking the question doesn’t care about truth. They just want to win the argument.
I’ve thought about another question often in my life: if I ever left the faith, what would it take to convince me to come back? I have an empirical mind. I would need to be persuaded with logic, facts, and intelligent trains of thought. It would be a very scientific process for me, and it definitely wouldn’t happen overnight. (I can get just as passionate about this as you can discussing hell, morality, etc.) I did not mean to imply that it’s better if Christians avoid attempting to convert. But if it was me, and I was not a Christian, and I wanted to have a serious, thought-provoking discussion about God, Christ, the Bible, etc, I would need two things:
1) A willingness to be wrong. After all, if you’re asking me to change my viewpoint, then you better be willing to do this as well.
2) An urge to find the truth, not to be right.
I feel like the best way to obtain these things–not always, but sometimes–is to deal with conversion later and simply see what the other person has to say.
As Romans and Corinthians say, we’re different parts of the same body. You and I just have different roles
Daniel:
The overall negative is a life of good&bad (maybe more or less neutral or on the positive side) in addition to an eternity of suffering. Add it up and it turns negative.
Whether that child analogy holds true for a regular life may or may not be relevant, but tack on a >50% chance of eternal torment and I think my point becomes a little stronger.
So if you don’t buy the ‘broad is the path to destruction’ and ‘camel through the eye of a needle’ doctrines I mentioned above, I still submit the questions I asked Kelly:
How can God have free will and not be subject to the same ‘disease’ you think is necessary for humans to have freedom? So many times Christians underestimate what >omnipotence< really means. You reason that evil is necessary for free will to exist without realizing that that argument assumes this reality is necessary! Why did it *have* to be that way when God created it?
So a few questions remain, I think. But if I thought I was never wrong, I’d still be a Christian, ya know? That’s why I’ll always continue to think about these things.
Kelly:
I absolutely agree. There’s certainly an emotional connection. For me, it works like this: if there’s truly a god that would cause people to suffer eternally for victim-less crimes (like ‘not believing in me’) then I want nothing to do with that god’s afterlife. I’m absolutely unconcerned about what happens when I die, though I appreciate your concern for me.
Cory:
I’ve often wondered something similar – what would it take for me to return to Christianity? Like for you, I’d like it to be a scientific and deliberate process. As it turns out, I agree with many interpretations of God. Those who consider It a force very detached from our world, unaffected by prayer and existing in a realm that we can’t begin to describe, observe or explain.
Nice thing is, that idea of God has absolutely no effect on the material, noumenal realm. And thus, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t exist. It’s really only the idea of an immanent God that gives me the heebie jeebies.
Well, sure God, with free will, has the ability to be evil, just as Jesus had the ability to succumb to the temptations in the desert.
But he doesn’t choose to. In some Christian interpretations, other powerful beings (angels and the like) DID choose evil. Hence, Satan. Maybe you’d prefer humans to have the omniscience and infinite willpower that God has. If we did, I can assure you, society would be very different.
Just because someone doesn’t choose to do wrong, doesn’t mean he or she can’t.
Remember, free will is itself a magical concept, where one is able to escape both nature and nurture to make an independent decision. I don’t fully understand it, it defies our cause-effect quotients of science. But I do know that morality — of both God and man — is not possible without it. And neither is meaning itself.
Cory, I share your distaste for fruitless questions and brick wall discussions. Sometimes people don’t get it that an aim to witness can often get in the way of witnessing. I don’t want to be guilty of that. But I don’t think fruitful discussion requires that I hold loosely to my position. It’s immediately apparent to me that I’m not going to give up faith in God any time soon. That’s not even so much a decision at this point as something I perceive upon reflection. I am absolutely committed, in part because the commitment is not just to a set of beliefs but to a Person (three Persons, if we’re going to be precise; one God). I do try to hold loosely to particular arguments, to the speculative and inessential, to whatever part of this discussion is just my voice trying to make sense of things. I submit that what intellectual honesty requires is not doxastic elasticity down to the core, but that one does not avoid the real issues. Find the tensions and paradoxes, and treat them for the complexity they have. Admit when one has reached the end of knowledge and the beginning of speculation.
Grady, back to your question and train of thought. Daniel’s answer was pretty much what mine would be: God does have free will. For example, God freely chose to be incarnated. The only necessity involved is that God follow his own character (that is, that God should be God). But it’s no impediment to free will for someone’s character to guide his actions. That what free actions are, perhaps: actions done out of one’s own character and not by force, coercion, etc.
Your point about this, I think, was that if God can exist and have free will without sinning, then it’s possible. And if it’s possible for someone to have free will and never sin, then it’s incumbent upon a good God to create that world instead of the present one (one in which people are free and some choose wrongly). Is that the sort of thing you’re thinking?
Well, presumably, God *did* create a world in which there were free, good people who, despite having no original sin (the inborn tendency to sin), spontaneously did wrong. Why that happened is entirely mysterious to me. That’s not very satisfying, is it? The Adam and Eve stories in Genesis may not be literally how it happened, but they’re what we’re given. And Genesis says that a person who had walked with God and been declared very good heard a little something from the serpent and spontaneously sinned. And I have no idea why.
Maybe if I knew why Adam and Eve sinned, I could try to answer whether or not it seems like there’s something God could have done to keep them from eating the fruit, while at the same time preserving their freedom. On the surface, it doesn’t seem like that’s possible. But, as Daniel said, free will itself is hard to comprehend. I don’t think it’s *logically* impossible that God could have prevented them from ever sinning without taking away their free will, but I don’t know what that would look like. And maybe that scenario would require the absence of the things which make free will worth having anyway.
Daniel –
You know that because God told you.
Personally, as someone who walked away from the church, mostly because of the hypocrisy of those in leadership and also because of general unwillingness to question anything because “GOD SAID, SO STOP ASKING!” – I find the concept of ‘morality being impossible without God’ both repugnant if not unBiblical.
That suggests that humans are incapable of making good choices without some kind of heaven-in-the-sky bye-and-bye reward. Are you nice to me because God will smite you if not, or because you believe it’s the right thing to do?
I’m my version of nice to everyone because I believe it’s the right thing to do. I would go on to make many irreverent and general antiestablishmentarian comments towards God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus in general…but my reading of the Bible shows Jesus at least to have been a decent bro, and I have HIS back, at least.
You entirely misunderstand me, Gabrielle. My basic thought process is this.
1) In the atheist view, there is only cause and effect. To think otherwise would be to believe in the supernatural, something which somehow introduces “willpower” and “choice” as more than a product of genetics and environment.
2) Therefore, under the atheistic viewpoint, humanity is nothing but fleshy robots. We have a stimulus, we make a response. Free Will is a myth, because we are bound by nature and nurture. Our “choices” are simply a product of our inherent preferences checked against our circumstances. There is no choice.
3) If there is no free will, there is no such thing as morality. I have no choice but to kill you. I’m just responding, helplessly, to my stimulus. Like everybody.
4) Similarly, philosophy itself is useless, since you can’t choose your beliefs. Nobody can.
5) But under the Christian view, there’s something magical, something that can defy cause and effect, something that is able to escape the shackles of time and space. Hence, the possibility of something to be “before” the beginning of the universe to kick things off — because “before” has no control over him.
That notion of free will is, of course, pretty darn fanciful. It defies the rules of the universe as science sets out.
6) If we are made in that something’s image, then it would stand to reason that we may have some inkling of the free will of that something.
If Christians are right, then both Christians and atheists can make moral and immoral decisions. If atheists are right, we have no free will, no responsibility, no choices, and therefore, no morality.
And amusingly enough, under that pure cause-and-effect system, Christians have no choice but to believe what they believe. So whatchya gonna do?
Also, I have never ever said “God said, so stop asking.” I’ve never even said “God told me…” If God talks to me, it’s too subtle for me to claim theological certainty over the message and the messenger.
Look I’m the guy who told my opinion columnists to avoid using Bible verses in opinion columns whenever possible. I’m hardly operating under a simplistically totalitarian mindset.
Daniel:
Sure, why not give humans infinite willpower? Or equality and no desire for power? Give each person its own universe and cultivate a truly individual relationship with God. Of course you’ll always be able to resort to “I’m not God, so how can I know His motives?”
But from my (admittedly human) understanding of omniscience and love, there are certain aspects of reality that are unacceptably contradictory.
It’s naive to think we can ever act completely independently of our nature & nurture. No such free will exists. I strongly believe that if I knew every experience and action from your life I could predict with nearly 100% accuracy what choice you would make in any given situation.
And that doesn’t rule out morality. It just means morality is not something tied to your mythical idea of free will [smiley wiley face].
(Also note: some forms of Buddhism are atheistic and – though I’m no scholar of the religion – might have cause/effect theories).
To say philosophy and ethics are useless for an atheist is… maybe the dumbest thing I’ve heard from you, to be blunt. The study of those disciplines amounts to, if nothing else, a ’stimulus’ to the ‘fleshy robots’ that we are. It can inform and guide the way we live our lives.
Those people whose nature/nurture led them to make the wrong choices end up being punished, whether their choice was inspired by stimuli or magical free will. Either way, the threat of losing the right to freedom serves as a preventative sort of ‘counter-stimulus’ to those who are driven to commit crimes in reaching their goals. By adjusting stimuli, society weights our choices.
Morality is closely tied to character, according to the meta-ethical theory I ascribe to. That’s why upbringing and example-setting are so important.
Gabrielle:
I hope “I think it’s the right thing to do” isn’t your only justification for right/good action. But as long as it causes you to make good choices I can’t complain much [Smiley face]
Kelly:
“Well, presumably, God *did* create a world in which there were free, good people who, despite having no original sin (the inborn tendency to sin), spontaneously did wrong.”
What’s to keep the same thing from going spontaneously wrong with God? And how do you know that hasn’t already happened, especially if your only guide to right and wrong is tied to God’s actions? I guess it’s another thing you have the luxury of faith to turn to.
Somehow you have the being of God, who has the desire for love, power, glory, rulership etc… yet is incorruptible. And has free will. If God have can have those things yet not be a worthless puppet/vegetable, why cannot humans be made all-good?
And again:
1. knowing that the creation of human beings would be self-serving, why would God go through with it?
2. why limit yourself to the sphere of reality we experience? If God created reality, why must evil exist in order for good to come about, for example?
3. bonus: please justify the existence of allergies.
I ask these things to encourage thought. Not because your answers will be sufficient to change my mind.
Morality is about making the right choice.
If you do not have free will, *you* cannot make choices. Your stimuli makes the choices for you. Society is driven by their own stimuli. It’s a closed system, set off a bajagillion years ago with some sort of uncaused cause. You’re puppets to biology. If there is no Choice, there are not choices, there is no such thing as morality.
That’s a pretty airtight syllogism. Which premise do you disagree with?
You can respond with saying that it’s society’s job to direct stimuli, but again, each member of society is acting according to their own stimuli. When you say “Society” adjusts the stimuli you make the fallacy of assuming there is some rational actor in there as opposed to just slaves to nature and nurture — impossible in your worldview. Society is just as much a machine as the people who make it up are.
There’s not a glimpse of decision in there. There’s no responsibility.
Let me stipulate, that I don’t think morality is useless for an atheist. That’s because I believe they’re wrong, and free will does exist. I believe people can make choices beyond their stimuli, and so do have responsibility for their actions.
Allergies are the reaction of an immune system kicked into overdrive. No one likes the common cold, but chances are it is actually protecting us from a viral infection. I hate going to the ER after an attack, but my body sensed an inherent evil in my personal relationship to walnuts. It prohibits me from ingesting it by over-reacting. That was easy.
Now for the harder to digest: Atheism is a label and thus, not a term that can represent an expanding (and religiously diverse) population. There is not one atheist because as far as we know, “atheism” exists in the Christian spectrum. Atheism, as we use it, is a derogatory term for anyone who rejects the Christian God. I have a problem with Daniel generalizing the atheist population because I could argue that none of what he said is true for any one non-Christian, especially considering the fact that it was written by a Christian (and your relationship to atheism is? that’s a personal question, not looking for an answer). Not all atheists believe in science. Many people who have no relationship to God in the realm of Christianity don’t even think about those topics. And honestly, there’s nothing wrong with choosing not to think. Atheists and pagans get a bad rap at Whitworth. Too bad they don’t literally exist to defend themselves.
When Adam and Eve sinned, good and evil integrated into the world. I personally believe that this represented the moment when we became unable to distinguish between the two. Maybe in words we can clearly identify them, but there’s always a degree of separation between speech and the truth we articulate. How can we objectively label ideologies and people when we remain among them?
Julia:
While we can’t always attribute a specific philosophy to any given person, I don’t think we can’t distinguish between ideologies because of that. It just means we should be more mindful of generalizations, like you said. You’re right in saying that not all atheists believe that there is only cause and effect, just like some Christians believe in predestination, but atheism generally refers to the disbelief in any god. Outside of that, there are many terms to describe other forms of non-religion, such as agnosticism, non-theism, and irreligion. Daniel’s arguments seem to be against naturalism, which is an atheistic metaphysical view. Naturalism is also the only type of atheism I’ve encountered in my education at Whitworth, possibly because it’s one of the easiest to argue against (which is the only way I’ve encountered it, sadly).
Daniel:
You say that morality can be useful for a naturalist, but that still requires that your view of free will is correct. I think that Grady was right in saying it can still be useful without free will. Imagine that the universe is deterministic, and that free will is merely an illusion. How would the universe and the world be any different? Choice is still a complex equation of weighted options, but the “random chance” of free will is removed. We would still be in exactly the same place historically and socially, with our motivations only slightly different.
Joe might want to kill his neighbor, but the sum total of stimuli, including the fear of punishment, affect his decision. Free would possibly be the deciding factor in whether or not he went through with it, but it is a relatively small factor in the equation. Joe isn’t responsible for his actions, maybe, but he still “decided”. Society can influence every decision with stimuli such as punishment, and society is then affected in turn. Whether or not society is a determined machine makes no difference in how it can affect stimuli.
In a deterministic universe, there is no such thing as choice or morality as they are known from a Christian perspective. However morality still exists as a concept which serves to influence our “decisions”. I would argue it is wrong to cause pain whether the universe is determined or not. Determinism has no effect on morality, only on moral responsibility.
David, you’re still using old fuddy-duddy language like “decisions,” a hold-over from philosophies with free will. “Decision” implies multiple options, the possibility of multiple outcomes. But with a strictly deterministic world view, there’s only ever one path, and every single choice is not just influenced, but *controlled* by your heredity and environment.
Would you consider a tree that falls on a minivan and kills a family of four to be immoral? Because under the strict determinist mindset, a serial killer has the same amount of moral choice as that tree.
He’s utterly controlled by the environment and his genetics, just like the tree. How can we put any modicum of blame on him, if he can’t help himself? How can we have morality without genuine responsibility, and how can we have responsibility in a strict deterministic environment?
(Of course, under the strict determinist mindset, we have no choice but to blame, do we?)
With a deterministic worldview there will always be exactly one possible outcome, but look at it from an individual’s perspective. There are multiple “options” and each one has a weight given to it based on hereditary and environment. The option with the greatest weight will always be chosen and has been chosen since the beginning of time, but there was still the appearance of a decision. I suppose it’s more of a computation using an equation than a decision, so lets call it that.
If a person makes the computation that their life has already been determined and there’s no point in doing anything, they will starve to death. Their fate, if you will, has not been changed at all, they were merely determined to make that computation and die. Your life is still influenced by philosophy, even though the exact way in which it is has already been determined.
The difference between the tree and the serial killer is that the serial killer is still affected by his perception of morality. Kantian and utilitarian ethics can still apply: “I shouldn’t kill because it can’t be equally applied” and “Killing would cause more harm than good” (my understanding is a bit simple, I haven’t had Core 250). There is no choice or real responsibility in a deterministic environment, but that doesn’t mean we can’t reasonably have consequences for unethical behavior. We can’t “punish” a serial killer, but we can influence his equation with the fear of consequences. Imprisonment also serves the purpose of removing him from society and causing more harm, but it’s no longer a “punishment”.
Whether morality exists or not depends on your interpretation of morality. Is it mostly just ethics, or does there need to be some sort of choice involved? The perception of morality, along with philosophy, still influences a deterministic universe, regardless of its actual existence.
“The difference between the tree and the serial killer is that the serial killer is still affected by his perception of morality.”
But his perception of morality is determined entirely by external events. He’s able to “feel” that factor in his consciousness (another aspect I believe defies naturalistic understanding), but it doesn’t change the fact that the “morality” factor is just another variable in the equation that the serial killer can’t control, as much the strength of the trunk is for the tree. Right and wrong don’t matter if *you* can’t choose between the two.
“We can’t “punish” a serial killer, but we can influence his equation with the fear of consequences.”
No “we” can’t, under the deterministic worldview. That implies action that we ourselves can take. In a deterministic worldview, the circumstances are *forcing* us to take action, but it doesn’t change the fact with every person in society, it’s just stimuli leading to synapses leading to muscle movement. We’re all simply mindless cogs in some giant cosmic Rube Goldberg machine.
The feeling that WE, OURSELVES are actually making decisions is some sort of grand delusion. At least, according to the strict determinist.
While so far I’ve agreed with every distinction Daniel has made, I have to throw another idea out there. I don’t think atheism/naturalism necessitates determinism, though it usually does.
Imagine that humanity evolved a certain level of free will.
Almost no one will argue against determinism to a certain point. Many of the arguments on this forum, including the original post here. have been about trying to find a cause and effect pattern in order to explain human behavior. When we discuss politics we often worry about consequences that seem inevitable to us. Each of us has a brain that is capable of making judgments about the future, and this is where naturalism meets free will.
Your average human is remarkably controlled by the frontal lobe of the brain. One only has to watch a video of Phineas Gage humping a sidewalk to get behind that idea. His physical brain didn’t offer him every choice in a given instance. He was completely trapped by his instincts.
In our courts we have similar arguments when the defendant pleads insanity.
If a damaged human brain can cause a strict, recognizable set of patterns, we often diagnose that brain with a disorder.
It is possible that the normal human brain provides us with every possible choice in a given circumstance. Yes, this “free will” is a result of purely physical materials, but perhaps there is absolutely no difference between that form and the form in which we are subject to God.
In this view of mine, people are affected as much as they affect. Society is a cooperation between the highest functioning animals on the planet. Animals who have brains that allow them even to destroy the natural world they inhabit or to escape from it.
The more choices we allow ourselves, the freer we are. The Christian doctrine of the churches I’ve been to usually argues that the closer you follow Biblical guidelines, the freer you are. In my experience, this isn’t true.
Though I believe we are purely physical, I also believe that we are kings and queens of the recognizable physical realm. I believe we have nearly limitless potential when we cooperate. Even the potential to simulate the human brain, an article I recently read said that some scientists were about ten years away. However, I don’t think we can ever completely predict a fully functioning, healthy human’s behavior, and there lies my remaining idea of free-will. If there is a hidden God or other form of alien life in the universe that is controlling or loving us, I guess we might find out about it someday.
To be completely honest, the only reason I continue to argue for free-will is because I want it to exist.
“Right and wrong don’t matter if *you* can’t choose between the two.”
Consequentialism argues that the results of an action, not the way it was decided, determine the morality of that action (unlike virtue ethics). We would still experience all the emotions and feelings (including consciousness) in a deterministic universe, so we still have pleasure and pain. Right and wrong actions still influence these feelings, so they seem like they would matter in a practical sense.
Do they matter beyond that in a deterministic universe? Do they need to? Character only matters in a free will universe, where a person can do right or wrong in a given situation based on some external force (such as the soul). Strict determinism doesn’t exclude that external force; it just says that it will act in a predetermined way.
I think your second point addresses the fact that there isn’t much meaning in a deterministic universe. There really isn’t more inherent meaning in a universe with free will; meaning still depends on your philosophy. We might all be cogs in the machine, but a better way to think about it is that we are all actors in a grand cosmic play. Have you ever seen Stranger Than Fiction?
Ultimately, my point is a deterministic universe is possible, and that philosophy and morality/ethics still have usefulness in such a universe. Even though free will seems likely, there may never be a way of knowing that it isn’t just a delusion.
As I’ve said before, free will and the illusion of free will are the same – as far as our experiences go.
More to come. I think I’ll frame it as a new post because this one has gone far off topic.
All right. Grady, you posed a question about why humans can’t be made all-good, and then three other questions. Here goes:
“If God have can have [free will] yet not be a worthless puppet/vegetable, why cannot humans be made all-good?”
_I don’t have a quick answer to this one, but let me try to work something out. I hold that God doesn’t do evil (can’t, in a sense) because God *wouldn’t* do evil; it’s contrary to his character. I wonder if it would be contrary to free will to build into each human being a character which absolutely and in all cases *wouldn’t* do evil. That sounds like getting rid of free will to me. In God’s case, moral perfection has been his character from eternity, with no cause, etc. In the case of Adam and Eve (or the hypothetical creation-as-we-would-have-God-do-it), for God to build in from the outside the safeguard that the person would never choose evil sounds a lot to me like taking away free will. Part of the deal for Adam and Eve seems to be that they got to form their own character. They were made good, but morally as blank slates with the ability to choose either way. To point them in one direction before they were even alive would compromise their free will. They could still be somewhat free, I think (I think we’re free, and hence responsible, despite our inborn tendency to sin), but their love of God would not be robustly free (being unavoidable), which kind of defeats the purpose of having free will in order for that love to be possible.
“1. knowing that the creation of human beings would be self-serving, why would God go through with it?”
_Well that’s a loaded question, Mr. Comm Major. I do not think it was selfish of God to create the world as he did (where people can and do choose evil), or at least it’s hard to know how to apply the term “self-serving” or “selfish” to God in this situation. Before God created anything, God was all there was. God had no motivation outside himself, because there literally was nothing apart from him. God could either create the world for himself (his own glory, say) or “for its own sake”—but I don’t really know what that would mean, to create something for its own sake (until it exists, it doesn’t have a sake). Before God created anything, anything God could do would be “selfish,” because there were no other selves which could be the beneficiaries of God’s actions. But I don’t think that means that, no matter what he created, creation would have been a “selfish” act; the word just doesn’t apply here.
But if this is just another way of asking whether God’s creation is *just*… well, that’s the discussion we had above. You didn’t seem to object to the idea that to reject God has the natural consequences of lacking everything which has its source in God—which is ipso facto hell. (Feel free, of course, to bring up new points of contention if you do disagree.)
I wonder, though, if your complaint is more about the fact that the Christian story is, in a sense, all about God. God has all the interesting roles: Creator, Redeemer, Beginning and End, Judge and Sacrifice. Maybe part of what is distasteful to you is the idea that God’s glory could be the reason for our existence. Isn’t that a little… God-centered? Well, yes. It is. But it’s fitting that God should be the center, that his glory should be paramount. I think our American egalitarianism and individualism can skew our vision of this. Think of a group of works of art: one of them is, say, Venus de Milo, and the others are play-doh sculptures made by four-year-olds. The beauty and difficulty of Venus makes it worthy of greater praise than the play-doh sculptures. The play-doh is nothing compared to that great work of art. If they were all displayed together, Venus would rightly be in the center, the object of greatest attention, the sole reason for looking at the group of pieces in the first place.
Now think of the difference between God—who is perfect, having all the great-making properties to the highest degree—vs. little old you and me. It’s omnipotence vs. futility, eternity vs. ephemera, moral perfection vs. our petty attempts at piety. If there’s one thing the Muslims got right, it’s this: God is, in every way, greater. That’s why God gets the glory.
Of course, you might agree to that (when entertaining the idea of God’s existence), while still objecting that our utter lowliness in comparison with God shouldn’t mean our opinions and interests should be discounted. We may be dust, but we’re dust with feelings. But then remember the humility of Christ. It is entirely just that God be glorified on high, and yet Jesus left his throne and made himself a servant, humbling himself even to death on a cross for us, while we were still turning our backs to him. Isn’t it amazing that the God of the universe, creator of everything, would subject himself to his own creation—be limited to a body and time and culture? That’s what separates Christianity from other religions: grace and a humble God.
Yeah, you’re probably going to object that the span of Jesus’ life was just a blip on the eternal radar for a God who has always been and always will be. But I don’t see how that’s an objection. Once was enough to do what he came to do. The fact that he did it is nonetheless astounding.
[This is getting very long, so I’m going to hold off on questions 2 and 3, despite my great fondness for bonus questions. We can come back to those if things get boring.]
Daniel: I had to put a lot of thought into answering your question. To me, the problem is that you’re framing things in a way that’s too black&white.
On the one hand you’re describing a magical ability to sidestep the rules of cause and effect. On the other, you paint determinism as a blinders-on approach to an inevitable outcome.
Intentional actions are the result of our desires. The net effect of all our desires and what we believe about the best way to bring them about = intentional action. We are responsible for those actions because a) we do complicated analysis of our available choices and make the one that best serves to fulfill the most/strongest of our desires, and b) we do this based on our own desires.
Let’s say you really want to kill someone. Your thought process may go “Thank goodness my magical free will allows me to choose not to kill this person…” but in reality, you have competing desires that outweigh the desire to kill.
Not sure how much sense that makes to you…
Kelly: Wow! …thanks! [Smiley face]
Free will & God:
The idea that God doesn’t do evil because God wouldn’t do evil is fine. The reason I brought it up is because you suggested, “God *did* create a world in which there were free, good people who, despite having no original sin (the inborn tendency to sin), spontaneously did wrong.”
I simply wonder how this all makes sense to you. If we have free and good people who can sin, yet a free and good God who cannot, what’s the key ingredient of separation? And why is that ingredient not instilled in people?
On the other hand, if it is “Contrary to free will to [have a] character which absolutely and in all cases *wouldn’t* do evil,” what does that tell us about God’s supposed free will? Because yes, it sounds like getting rid of free will. Except for God, somehow.
But making moral perfection a human quality actually sounds more like ‘creating humans in God’s image’ than ‘taking away free will,’ if you ask me.
See, you talk about the ability to choose either way, and you hold that God possesses this ability. Yet, with free will intact, God would never choose evil. Having the character to always reject evil – does that necessarily compromise free will?
1. Haha, it’s a loaded question if taken by itself, but I thought I’d established a premise before asking the question [Smiley face]
The problem with your hypothetical ‘before God created humans, He had no motivation outside of Himself’ bit is that you’re chaining yourself to our human experience of time. You can’t say that at any particular ‘time’ God didn’t love humans, can you? They did, from the perspective of a being unconstrained by time.
So we’re back with the original point. Weighing the options of ‘creating nothing’ and ‘creating something and thus introducing heinous evil and suffering for the majority of humans ever,’ why not go with the first?
“I wonder, though, if your complaint is more about the fact that the Christian story is, in a sense, all about God.”
No… that’s not distasteful for me. The distasteful part is the cost-benefit analysis for all parties involved. The net outcome for humanity is “oh no, a huge percentage of us died in childhood from starvation or gruesome third-world ailments and now we face eternal hell.” The net outcome for God is “yay, a small minority of people love me and will celebrate eternity with me singing my glorious praises.”
That’s the part that kinda makes my stomach turn.
“So we’re back with the original point. Weighing the options of ‘creating nothing’ and ‘creating something and thus introducing heinous evil and suffering for the majority of humans ever,’ why not go with the first?”
Don’t humans choose to create something over nothing? We have babies. When we have babies, we take the same risk. You’re conveniently ignoring option number 3: “create something and thus introduce tremendous love and care should the create-ee accept it.” Eat your heart out Pascal.
I love the passion in this post, but I think it’s time to either move on to another post or go back to the original point. While this is a good discussion, it’s way off target on Daniel’s original question.
[Grady, sorry about the late reply. I’ve been on vacation.]
There are two issues here: free will and God’s purported selfishness.
Free Will.
_I don’t really know how to answer your question about free will any way other than how I’ve already answered it. My best attempt is this: God is morally perfect, and therefore would never sin (even incarnated as a man, facing every temptation), and yet God acts freely—that is, nothing outside of God constrains the actions of God. But to build this moral perfection into creatures would be to constrain their actions, since the perfection of character comes from the outside. Creatures thus created would therefore not have free will, because their goodness is imposed by someone else (not that that would be a bad thing per se; it just wouldn’t be consistent with free will). That’s why God’s moral perfection doesn’t keep his actions from being free, whereas being built with moral perfection would have kept humans’ actions from being free.
I hesitate to fully endorse what I say above, however, since I don’t want to rule out that free will and determinism may somehow be compatible, for reasons outside the scope of our discussion. It’s a theory, which I’d gladly hold on to as long as it seems true and gladly quit if it turns out otherwise.
Is God selfish?
_You think God is selfish for choosing to create humans, given that the way to destruction is broad. Here’s what you said about that: “The net outcome for humanity is ‘oh no, a huge percentage of us died in childhood from starvation or gruesome third-world ailments and now we face eternal hell.’ The net outcome for God is ‘yay, a small minority of people love me and will celebrate eternity with me singing my glorious praises.’// That’s the part that kinda makes my stomach turn.”
But it’s not really fair to talk about this in terms of humanity as a whole. Each person is given the choice to accept or reject God’s offer of redemption, as an individual. It is as individuals that we enjoy the promised land or suffer sheol—and on that level, the benefit to us is overwhelming. Think about it. The Almighty God of the universe, who spun galaxies into orbit, the Omnipotent, takes humanity—his beloved, the crown of his creation—and makes them into little powers of their own. They are the most precious to him of everything he’s created, since they’re created in his own image, and yet rather than forcing them to love him as he loves them, he lets them choose for themselves. It must be the chorus to a half-dozen country songs: if you love something, let it go. In what is almost the height of love (the highest comes later), God does not force us to come to him—God himself, who has control over everything, relinquishes control over that which he most loves. And they spit in his face; they go their own way, and choose themselves over life itself. So God goes further, lower. God makes himself one among them, lives in dirt and skin and time. He endures their sneers and indifference, their whips and false piety. He goes to the cross.
And even then—even when he is willing to die and suffer ultimate pain, he doesn’t take from them the dignity he gave them at the beginning: freely to accept or reject. He doesn’t play the God card and storm in and force you to submit to him. Grady, what more do you want from God? To remove your debt? It’s done. To offer you redemption freely? He does. It’s almost embarrassing how far God humbles himself for us, for our glorification (and, yes, ultimately his). Even to the very last, even to eternity God lets you choose. You may not want that kind of power, but you can hardly call God selfish for granting it. Selfishness would be to take by force what God in humility allows you to withhold from him: yourself, whom he fashioned, whom he loves.
More than anything else, I would like to believe that all humanity enjoys eternity with God. Unfortunately, we’re told that’s not the case. But that’s due to our selfishness, not God’s. God woos us and lavishes gifts on us, but he will not take us by force, even though we owe him our very lives.