It Would Be Worse if I Did Believe

From the article: "Suppose you were an omnipotent god and there were no other gods. What would you do? Perform a continual sequence of verifiable miracles; after all, this doesn't require any effort, and keeps people from delusion."

Daniel, we've discussed this "logic." Even without turning to the whole faith argument, I find this rather weak. I can't imagine an omnipotent God feeling like he needed to prove himself to anyone. Suppose I created a universe in a laboratory (who knows .. this might be possible someday) or that I created a vast virtual world populated with sentient "beings" (again .. who knows what may be possible someday). The last thing I'd want to do is prove my vast abilities to the beings. Of course I might want to communicate with some of them at some point and might even tell them about how I created their universe (and I might decide that it was a bad idea afterwards if they took things out of context or failed to understand what I was trying to say).

Some of his other points are equally easy to poke holes in (for example the use of the phrase "our God" does not imply the existence of other Gods as he implies it does -- not to mention that the English translation of the Bible likely contains quite a few mis-translations -- as all other versions also likely do).

Still, I respect his conclusion. IF the Christian God is a torturer, then it makes no sense to worship Him. I've shared this with Daniel, but will share it with the rest of the readers here. Some Biblical literalists were trying to save some of us in the cafeteria when I was an undergrad about 25 years ago. They talked about the tortures of hell that awaited us if we didn't choose to believe. After hearing this for long enough, I said, if your God would condemn me to eternal torture simply for not believing in the literal truth of every word in the Bible, then I want no part of Him. The effect was incredible, all three of them got the same STUNNED expression on their face .. and all pushed their chairs away from the cafeteria table (as if I was about to be struck by lightning). Anyway, they moved on. Interestingly, one of my devout Christian friends who was at the table through all of this explained that her vision of Hell was that all truth would be revealed to us in the afterlife and that any torture would be our remorse at not having believed when we were shown the Truth. (It seems to me that the non-believers might be separated from God too ... I don't recall whether this meant a lack of access or what.) In any case, THIS concept of Hell makes perfect sense to me (and I think it's consistent with the Bible -- keep in mind that much of the New Testament -- particularly Jesus's teachings -- consists of parables [NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY] intended to help humans understand the unknowable).

So, don't believe in a God who tortures. I'm all for that. Just understand that many Christians also believe that God does not torture.