A real "atheistic" argument.

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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Suppose that we believe that indeed Adam’s sin, original sin, condemn the entire human race from them on like a hereditary condition so that we were enemies of God and well deserving of Hell.
Suppose that God then sent his only Son to die in our stead, that those who do believe in His Son are not doomed but Saved and given Heaven instead.
Am I right in this oversimplification of most christianities? I have been to many and that is essentially the program they give. We’re sinners, regardless of how well you behave, you fall short of God’s standard, so it is on the tail of Jesus gown alone in which you can coax your way onto heaven and it is not in the end how well you do, but how strong is your faith…works follow from that alone, as all else is selfishly motivated.
Am I fair so far? Do we agree on this? Oh, I know that I am forgetting much of Romans and the doctrine of Predestination etc, but I am painting christianity in the best possible light. Predestination makes one quiver at the notion that we’re destined for destruction or salvation. It would not surprise me if Nietzsche got his idea of “Amor fati” from his lutheran father.

Here is my argument:
It is a ganster religion.
This God is omnipotent. Salvation is like protection. Salvation from what? From Hell. Yet who created and maintains Hell? God. So it is salvation from His own wrath.
The gangster offers you his protection…from his own bullets and henchmen.

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That’s a funny theory. Exactly.

3

Pretty much. Salvation from God’s wrath that we deserve, that Satan deserved. It’s a way to escape our punishment. And God has every right to do so on the basis that he could have previously known what choices we’d all make. But here again we are trying to assume God’s thoughts.

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Haha, yeah, who knows what that crazy evil guy is thinking.

5

Evil? You don’t want to start. :slight_smile:

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I used to very much agree with that statement, and to some extent I still do, but Ned had some points which kinda blew my mind on the subject. Very much changed my opinion of Christianity as a whole, and make the Christian God make much more sense to me. Not enough for me to lose my atheism, but definately as something more than as a common thug

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Club 29:
Wrath we deserve? But according to who? He holding the Tommy-gun? Should it be the abuser who decides if his abuse was deserved by the victim. He told them that would die, but should they? Should disobedience of a command carry with it the pains of hell? Is God’s wrath justified by anything other than His power? And if yes, then, does might makes right?

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Xunxian:

I don’t see anything in that quoted material to challenge the argument that Omar presented.

The essence of the argument is not a rejection of authority so much as asserting the right to judge whether the authority is legitimate. Or – since this is really what we’re doing – to judge whether the God a religion describes could be real. One of the claims about God made by Christians is that He is perfectly good. But a God who does the things that Omar described, which is essentially what Christians believe of him, is not good.

There are only two possible responses to this. One of them is what Ned said, that we all deserve a violent death (and presumably eternal torture thereafter). The other is to define “good” as “whatever God wills.”

The second response is easier to deal with. If “good” simply means “whatever God wills,” then the claim that God is perfectly good becomes a tautology and has no significance. If that claim is to have any meaning, then so must the concept of “good” independently of God’s will; that is, when something is claimed to be God’s will, it must be meaningful for us to judge whether the thing so claimed is good (and hence whether it can really be God’s will), or else the whole idea of “good” becomes itself meaningless.

As to the first one, I can only say that this is a subjective value judgment with which I disagree. And further, that I think my disagreement doesn’t show I have too high an opinion of myself, but rather the premise shows a pathological lack of self-esteem.

In short: if there really was a God (in the sense Christians mean), then arguably a divine monarchy would be a better form of government than democracy (the main problem with historical monarchy being that all kings have been human and subject to human failings). But if so, then it would be a better form of government because God would be a GOOD king. Yet the God described in Christian theology is a very, very BAD king. A gangster, as Omar put it.

The point of which is not to say that God is evil. It’s to say that the Christian description of God is a description of an evil being, and therefore, since part of the Christian definition of God includes perfect goodness, that descrption of God as an evil being cannot be true.

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Abuser? Who abused? Look. Lucifer was the first to rebel, he suffered his consequences, he got basically what he wanted except now he will lose. Adam and Eve directly disobeyed God’s command, he told them not to eat of the tree of the “knowledge” of good and evil. They did, and because of it the world is cursed. The pains of hell come to those who don’t obey even now.

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Omar-

A brief clarification. The unspoken conclusion of your argument would be that this contradicts the claim of God being benevolent, right?

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I’m still pondering what real atheistic argument actually is. Nobody has stepped up to the plate yet.

12

Real atheistic arguments are explanations that make god unecessary.

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So this argument doesn’t qualifty. And only something is necessary if there is a purpose. So what would make God not necessary?

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Actually, yeah, this isn’t an atheistic argument. It’s specifically targeted against Christian theology and has nothing to do with any other religious conception.

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Replacements for what make him necessary.

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Exactly. What I don’t always understand is all of these inclusivistic theology threads, where we discuss the holy spirit and the like. I don’t see why any ‘true’ atheist would ever be a part of arguing against one of those topics, but I could understand inclusively arguing one Christian theology over another type just because they’re in a religious forum of philosophy. I believe all the true atheist in here should be arguing like theologians and other religionist. They should be discussing the differences, and even the benefits of Christainty versus Catholocism, or Universalism versus Mormonism, and etc. That’s what a ‘true’ atheist would do anyway.

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But only with a God are we possibly even necessary, without God, as I’ve stated, he can only be proven unnecessary by something you hold in higher or greater value, and then that’s just subjective. So no, I don’t see the point.

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Uccisore-
I haven’t even gone into that because benevolence is so widely defined. I am sure that to some, the “protection” they got was indeed a form of benevolence. Even in germany, after the Rohm purge, which clearly showed that Hitler was a thug and a murderer who wiped his feet upon what passed as a legal system, people still approved of him, in fact, more than before.
benevolence is not an objective thing, so I stay on purpose outside of that real and let who might agree with me do so on his own conclusion. But I do try to make a link between a ganster morality and God’s morality, because both offer protection to the weaker stranger from themselves- their wrath.

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Club 29:
Abuser? Who abused? Look. Lucifer was the first to rebel, he suffered his consequences, he got basically what he wanted except now he will lose. Adam and Eve directly disobeyed God’s command, he told them not to eat of the tree of the “knowledge” of good and evil. They did, and because of it the world is cursed. The pains of hell come to those who don’t obey even now.

O- Don’t get sidetracked. It is not a question about who was first to rebel but if the conditions warranted such a rebellion. It is a question about power and it’s attempt to sanction violence as right while at the same time professing the contrary.
“Love thy enemy…”
Why, when even God burns His enemies eternally?

If the story had ended just like that and the world was simply cursed then by all means such is our lot. The problem begins when it is not that the earth alone is cursed, or that our toil and pains on earth are our punishment but when you add the dymesion of hell all changes because now you introduce another idea, that of judgment, not simple causality of which God is a simply expectator, but an active participant. Secondly, the command violated is one set arbitrarly upon man by a power higher than he, without consultation of debate-- man is and never was free. The legitimacy of a command, in my opinion, cannot lie simply on the greater power of one party but in a mutual agreement. Else, might makes right and we legitimized the use of power to set the standard of what is right rather than reason.

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…And on another note, let me splice to the OP another idea, since some are opposed to my choice of words. Can I make a wide atheistic argument? It has been done before by Hume, for one. But here is my take.
Why do we need to believe in God? That is the question that comes to my mind because it is pretty clear that there is no proven “How?”
But let me just put down some reasons why God seems to me improvable, though not yet impossible.

1- God is the Creator. But why do we need a Creator? Why could not we posit that the universe has always been? If the universe needed to be created then a principle is created that streches into God Himself: Who created God since all things are created? And if God needed no Creator then why should we not extend the same courtesy to the universy and simply say that it too was never created?
2- Monotheism is by far the theism of choice in our empirialistic world. But why one God? perhaps the universe was created a million times by a billion different gods. No logical necessity can be established to rule out possible gods to just one.
3- Perception of God is quite subjective. So even the Spanish seemed as gods to the indians of Central America, though we know that they were just men. Could it be the same God? Is it impossible that a being with great powers fancied himself as God though he was only a partaker of existence along with the universe? remember that God moved over the dark waters and did not create them. Milton’s satan fancied himself a son of heaven and not of God. Waking up before a being who then tells you that you were his creation cannot prove to you the validity of the claim. Funny that creating woman needed that Adam fell asleep, so that again he witness nothing directly, but must believe that only report avaiable as true.
4- Since we’re prisioners in our own minds what is it that we perceive in religious, or mystical experiences but ourselves, despite the strenght and the conviction they may convey- they are fantasy to some degree or other, just as all perceptions. Some develop from without, and are corroborated, while others are simply from within yet strngh enough to pass as external.

I am sure that I have had more than these but these are fresh in my mind. Enjoy