The Top 12 Excuses for God’s Horrible Behavior

So it’s either he doesn’t exist or he’s a kid playing The Sims! Yay!

The ninth excuse is that suffering builds character.

Siddharta would’ve loved this excuse. 🙂

I think that the biggest problem I have with such arguments (from both sides of the fence) is that they’re rooted in dualism. The idea of good vs. evil is a fairly canonical example—ie. that there are two choices, that of good or of evil, and you can only ever classify something as one, or the other.

Of course, most people consider this to be something of a sliding scale, and rightly so. However, that only considers one of the variables, and one that’s ill defined at that.

It’s really hard to come up with a watertight definition of that; eg: do you define it in terms of maximising benefit to the most people, or do you simply view it in terms of an individual, or a state, without consideration to individuals? When we speak of ‘good’ vs. ‘evil’, these definitions are implicit at best.

For example, the ethical system of the Samurai in Feudal Japan (as espoused by Hagakure seems to be entirely oriented towards protecting the honor of one’s clan. So, when one commits a grievous mistake, it would be considered proper for a samuri to commit Seppuku (ritual suicide).

This seems about as far removed from modern western culture as you could get. However, there’s still this idea of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, however, it’s significantly different from any conception we might have of same.

So, the problem is more or less that we’re arguing about a topic we haven’t defined, or have defined in such woolly terms as to be meaningless.

Now, because these ideas are dualistic concepts, they’re each defined (in some sense) in terms of the other. This means, you can’t have one without the other. Some of the ‘excuses’ you mention hint at this, but don’t state this explicitly.

There’s also another major problem which extends from this same idea is that we’re using these words without really understanding what they mean. We’ve shown that these ideas can vary significantly between cultures, so how can we imagine that an all powerful, omnicient and ineffable being would have the same definition of good and evil as a bunch of hominids?

Sure, you can make the argument that man was created in the likeness, or in the image of man, but then again, a photograph of a landscape is a likeness of that landscape itself. You wouldn’t, however, argue that the photo and the thing photographed have the same nature.

Amusingly, perhaps, some of these arguments start to make a bit more sense if we apply them to the worldviews of some of the Gnostic sects. By and large, these sects were of the opinion that the world was created by the Demiurge, an malformed, insane and accidental offspring (via a circuitous route) of an ineffable deity, or true god. Argument (6) and particularly your comment about “Some say that God works through us’ would make a bit more sense in this light, because the true god would be working through some people to recitify the mistakes of the creator deity.

Of couse, any form of gnosticism is damnable heresy to virtually all christians.

It seems to me that we need to sort out our terminology, or we’ll never get out of the loop of asking ourselves incredulously how anybody else could be so credulous as to believe that which we can see is plainly incredible (see god and excuses, above.)

Do we ACTUALLY mean that the religious are deluded and/or irrational? Because if we do, and take “delusional/irrational” in the sense of being under some mysterious psychological condition, the pathological effects of which are obvious to us if not to them, then we have a medical emergency the world over. Apart from the scale, then clearly what we should be worried about are our treatment options, and not so much about the precise composition of the irrationality itself. That is, a person doesn’t spend time trying to figure out why another person imagines himself to be Napoleon, as opposed to imagining himself to be a little blue fish. It is enough that we find his alter-personality self-evidently unsound and untrue, in some way relating to his ability to interact with us and the wider world. Hence, treatment, is the answer, except we have about five billion patients. However, there is no need to actually argue with them about it. What are we doing, trying to prove that the little blue fish is a bad little blue fish? For what purpose?

However, if we do not mean this, then indeed we might mean that they are merely mistaken. Not mad, just wrong. Well, if they are not mad, in which way are they merely wrong? What is it we understand that they also understand, such that we can point out to them when their thinking started to stray from the “proper” way? We contest two major assertions: a)that there is a god and b)that given that there is a god, we have figured out god’s project and know what he wants. We atheists simply say that there is no reason to suppose (a) holds, and that is the end of the matter. We find this simple. But suppose you held (a) to be true, can you see how vexed and fraught (b) then becomes? But only if you hold (a) to be true.

It seems to me that representatives of specific religions speak mostly to the question (b) whilst those of us who are atheists mainly addreess the question of (a). We are simply speaking in different registers, about different things.

What we should really be able to tell people is that since (a) is not true, (b) doesn’t matter. As long as (a) has a possibility of being true, then (b) is not really irrational. If (b) is not irrational, then all bets are off, as god could be anything or want anything, and we’ll argue about it for ever.

The point is that we should all decide that since we can not, in fact, even decide about (a) meaningfully, and that this existence cannot be verified (or god refuses to verify), then apparently, even if god exists, he/she/it doesn’t much care whether we believe or not, and in fact doesn’t much care about us at all, so we might as well behave as if he/she/it doesn’t exist. Failure to which, at least let us behave with each other AS IF none of our actions are under the supervisory capacities of such an entity, and simply work out our interaction with each other without reference to the supreme she/he/it.

I know it doesn’t matter that I am black, since there is just not any scientific reason to make this important or meaningful. However, I know that society, and politics, and history and so forth have made this essentially unimportant detail –on the same level of significance as my height, for instance, biologically speaking– meaningful in ways beyond the biological. I do not wish, then, to convert racists i.e. to explain to them how wonderful I really am, EVEN THOUGH I am black. I just want them to not have power over me. I want their thinking NOT to influence public policy, or impact on my education, or in any other way disturb my world and my life. I use racism because it is almost as instinctively abhorrent to us (I hope) as religious belief. There are other analogies to be made, but you get my drift. Both of these are ways of seeing the world that I cannot comprehend, nor do I want to, and I find them both harmful in some historically factual way. They are not exclusively wrong (i.e. not all bad is attributable to them), nor are they exhaustively wrong (i.e. they are not all bad). However, the general principles and foundational bases of each are repugnant to me, to the extent that I cannot even parse them.

However, atheists can certainly be racists (some insist on it, in fact.) Indeed, I think it is probably quite a lot easier to be racist if one is an atheist. I also have known very many extremely pleasant racists –although they weren’t crazy about me, I could quite understand why other people would like them a whole lot. They weren’t evil, even, really. Some are even extremely thoughtful, about almost anything except this one blind spot. All it needs is an extraordinary interest in and regard of various amounts of melanin, genetically insignificant combinations of possible kinds of hair texture, and other arbitrarily defined categories which are simply not useful for anything. This is obvious to non-racists.

However, to racists, we have a)absconded with the right to decide what about our physical selves is important and what is not and b)disregarded perfectly good evidence all around us that definitively shows that white people are superior to everyone else.

The non-racists will say that of course these do not prove the superiority of white people, as such, but only other social variables like opportunity, education, etc. etc. Racists say that if these things are so obvious, and if white people are NOT special, why are they still in charge of most of the world, have most of the money and have built cathedrals and etc.? Why is the reverse true? Why, for example, are Africans in such dire straights, and why, if their blackness is not a restrictive condition, can they not simply manage to get over whatever it is that is wrong?

To both racists and the religious, I ascribe a fundamental misunderstanding of the world and of what is important about existence. However, I don’t spend my time arguing with racists (although I do militate against the effects of racism) and it seems to me that cumulatively fewer people, over the long duree, choose this way of thinking about the world. On the other hand, many people have abandoned this way of thinking only to enter into another one that is surely as worrying for those not so inclined.

Writing books about the many many wonderful things that non-racists have done, and why racism is harmful will matter only to those who already have reason to doubt their own racism, or to those who are already not racist. Pointing out racist contradictions would make no sense if we have already agreed that racism does not make sense, since then, racism does not actually have to make sense. I thank you for the god contradictions, but surely they can only entertain us: they aren’t going to bother serious believers, are they? Contradiction / irrationality seems to be beside the point.

I wonder why Christians reject the notion that a simple explanation that accounts for all the facts is to be preferred to a complex one that doesn’t.

A few ideas I’ve thought about that might help explain it:

1) Most people are predisposed to believe in magic, and thus supernaturalism is a “default” setting that’s difficult if not impossible to turn off.

2) Strong emotional attachment to the idea of a loving god, and a heavenly afterlife, higher purpose etc.

3) Tradition.

4) Fear of being shunned by friends and family; fear of making such a fundamental change, especially later in life.

5) Fear of eternal punishment that’s been indoctrinated over many years.

In light of all the obstacles, I wonder why so many Christians (like you and I, for instance) DO wind up rejecting religious notions! For me, the need to be completely honest with myself, after I discovered years of lies I’d bought into, overwhelmed the other objections. But not everybody is motivated by that need.

I agree about the paucity of science. It is one thing to say that theism is an unsatisfying explanation and quite another to say that science then fills in all the blanks, or is about to at any moment. This would be just another version of god, really. God is about to give us the answer, He just hasn’t let us discover it yet, or revealed it to us, etc. Or he already has, and we were too stupid to get it.

What we can say is that we have not yet found another method of discovery that applies itself as successfully as science does to the objects that science has claimed as its targets of knowledge. Furthermore, we do not have a good method of discovering what these possible alternative methods are. However, we are willing to give the benefit of the doubt about the material world to science, on the basis of its prior record(including the chance to discover exceptions to such a record.) Also, for these sorts of explanations, we regretfully have to withdraw religion’s efforts from further consideration because they don’t do nearly as good or as useful a job. The God Hypothesis has simply stopped working, and to the extent that we can see, it never really should have been attempted. It isn’t sensible to continue throwing more effort into making it work, when we can simply change projects and direct those resources elsewhere.

However, surely we can see that this particular project that science is undertaking is, of necessity, limited? We have to be open to the possibilities of matters in which science is simply not applicable, or is not the best tool, as well as those matters to which science is in fact a hindrance. I mean this in the same way in which developing a specific set of muscles so as to be hyper-competitive in one sport may actually prohibit the development of another set of muscles or skills required for a different sport. Er, sumo wrestlers versus gymnasts, for example.

Surely, being realistic/atheistic about religion need not lead us into being dogmatic about science, need it?

I’ve often wondered how many examples we could find in the natural world or just everyday experience of instances where the simplest explanation turned out to be false and the more complex answer was actually the right one. My guess is a lot.

I would remind you that we are not discussing the processes of the natural world or of everyday experiences but the idea of evil and that of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God, and the logical contradiction when both ideas are assumed to represent real things. If either one is unreal, the contradiction evaporates.

If we assume that the bad things that happen to us are ‘evil,’ then we know evil exists.

Since I witness and others witness bad things happening everyday, everywhere in the world, to everyone, I know they happen. Since I never see any god, and neither does anyone else, I find it reasonable to think that no god exists. What possible reason would I have then to suspect an invisible god is behind or in any way involved with bad things?

For those of you who think evil and an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God both exist, you’ve got a contradiction to work out, and I imagine it will take some doing. It seems much more likely that there is no such god whose attributes pose unsolvable riddles because there is no evidence for it. The simpler explanation is better.

Unless I delude myself, I must accept the reality of bad things. I would be deluding myself to conclude that a god exists when there is no good reason to do so.

I would remind you that we are not discussing the processes of the natural world or of everyday experiences but the idea of evil and that of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God, and the logical contradiction when both ideas are assumed to represent real things. If either one is unreal, the contradiction evaporates.

You assume that the situation as you lay it out is all that there is to it. An “all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God” (which I don’t KNOW exists) just might know a few extra vectors than you and the entire human population knows about. The idea that you can fully analyze the situation you, yourself describe on the basis of human experience alone fails just on the basis of logic.

I don’t know the answer to the question but I do know the framing of the question is inadequate if you want to look at the entire picture. In that case the agnostic position is the only one that will truly state the honest conclusion. We don’t know.

However, surely we can see that this particular project that science is undertaking is, of necessity, limited? We have to be open to the possibilities of matters in which science is simply not applicable, or is not the best tool, as well as those matters to which science is in fact a hindrance. I mean this in the same way in which developing a specific set of muscles so as to be hyper-competitive in one sport may actually prohibit the development of another set of muscles or skills required for a different sport. Er, sumo wrestlers versus gymnasts, for example.

In what areas do you view science as either “not applicable” or “a hindrance”?

“I don’t believe” instead of the easily shot down “I don’t know”? Because no

That should be ‘I know there isn’t a God”

You assume that the situation as you lay it out is all that there is to it. An “all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God” (which I don’t KNOW exists) just might know a few extra vectors than you and the entire human population knows about. The idea that you can fully analyze the situation you, yourself describe on the basis of human experience alone fails just on the basis of logic.

I’m not assuming anything–I’m discussing the topic as it was presented. You say you don’t know if an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving god exists, but you posit that it might, and based on that you denigrate all human knowledge. Why? Humans don’t know everything–no shit Sherlock. Saying you’re ignorant is a poor agnosticism. It keeps you from thinking critically. There’s a lot we do know, and we’re learning all the time. If you want to be Mr. Doubt-It-All, why don’t you doubt that there is any other kind of knowing besides that of the more advanced terrestrial species? On what other basis would you analyze our situation besides human experience? Human experience is the only one I care about.

I don’t know the answer to the question but I do know the framing of the question is inadequate if you want to look at the entire picture. In that case the agnostic position is the only one that will truly state the honest conclusion. We don’t know.

Just how is it that you know my framing of the question is inadequate? Can you frame it better, or do you think that’s not possible, and how do you know that? Since all we can know is what we know, all we can know is good enough for me. Just because it seems not to be good enough for you, doesn’t permit you to include me in your ignorance. I trust my faculties because there is nothing else to trust. If I did not, then there would be no point in me asking or trying to answer any question.

You know, it’s statements like the person Hemant commented on that get me on my Soapbox and saying, “God didn’t do it! People do it!” There is no deity who did 9/11 or what have you. If evil is God’s love, I don’t know why people worship such a deity. Makes no sense to me. I could go down all 18 of those and some how poke holes in them, but I’ll be good and not take up unnecessary space, because I know others can do the same and have.

olvlzl, no ism, no ist,

You’re making no sense, and you answered none of my questions. I doubt I’ll be checking out your thesis on the razor.

Wow, Roe.

I never heard that one before. Quite an impressive argument.

One thing that never fails to amaze me is how easily any proposition about God can be shown to limit God.