The God Squad: What’s Wrong With Christian Apologists
For as long as Christianity has been around, there have always been people spreading the faith. A key strategy of preaching was identified by Paul in 1 Corinthians when he said, “I am made all things to all men.” (9:22) In other words, he was willing to say anything to convert someone. Approach someone on their terms, pretend you don’t think they’ll go to hell if they disagree with you, and be nothing but polite.
Early Christians realized the potential of Christianity was far beyond that of Judaism. Judaism is a nationalistic religion – it has no desire to appeal to non-Jews. Christianity, on the other hand, is designed globalistically – it’s designed to appeal to everyone on earth, no matter what culture they’re from. And to appeal to them, you don’t go rubbishing their entire culture – just like, if you want to catch a fish, the last thing you do is lunge at it. Fishing is a sport of patience and technique. So Christians reel you in with affection and understanding. The very last thing they do is outright tell you the truth, which is that, if you don’t believe whatever they tell you, then you’re going to hell.
No, they introduce the nice bits first and then ease into the nasty.
In fact, Christianity only solves the problems it creates. You don’t need it.
“Did you know Christianity teaches that Jesus died for your sins?”
“What sins? I don’t sin.”
“Well, Christianity teaches that we all sin, and unless we get even with God, we’ll go to hell.”
“But I don’t believe in sin, so why should I believe in Jesus’ salvation?”
Sin does not exist outside of Christianity. Christianity creates sin – a totally imaginary problem – and offers redemption – a totally imaginary solution.
Angry Father
You may think of God as a father, but just think – did your actual father ever threaten you with eternal torment if you didn’t do what he said? And if he did, would you think he was a good father?
Christians do something very bizarre, which is attribute qualities to God – like the quality of being a father – then totally misunderstand and misuse said qualities – detach them completely from their real, human context. No father sentences their child to eternal suffering, and no one with any degree of love in them would need to kill their own son (Jesus) in order to forgive everyone else. Love and fatherhood and justice are one thing in the human sphere, but they take on an entirely different meaning when applied to God! Doesn’t that make them useless? Shouldn’t they be called something different?
Think about what love means in the human context. It means you like someone for who they are; it means that, more often than not, you give them the benefit of the doubt, and more often than not, you simply forgive them their wrongdoings. But what does love look like when we elevate it to the Godhood? – it suddenly doesn’t resemble love at all. God doesn’t give us the benefit of the doubt or forgive us (Jesus had to die for us; we must accept Jesus in order to earn forgiveness, which is not forgiveness at all since God still exacted punishment). And given that God has never actually met any of us and we’ve never had a conversation with him, this “love” must be a very, very distant and impersonal affection, too. Think about it – if you love everyone, that means you love something they have in common – humanity. It doesn’t mean you love them for who they actually are. A broad love of humanity is very different from a personal love you develop by knowing and interacting with a person for years.
Consider justice. In a human context, that means appropriate punishment in proportion to wrongdoing. But in God’s context, justice becomes something else – eternal punishment for a single lifetime of lacking acceptance of Jesus! You’re given a finite lifetime and, depending on your actions (or lack thereof), your punishment or reward is infinite. This is not what anyone would describe as justice in human affairs.
Surely the difference in love between humans and God would be a difference of degree, not of quality? Why does love suddenly look completely different when applied in a divine context? Could it be that we’re not actually talking about love at all?
God Is Beyond “Human” Reason
This is a funny one. They always say it as if there’s some kind of non-human reason that obeys different rules and we can therefore not know it! The laws of reason are universal. They apply everywhere, at all times. Why, then, would some kind of bizarre, different reason apply to God? What would such reason look like? And what would its nature be, such that it remains impenetrable to us? What would its relationship be to “human” reason? Is “human” reason merely an incomplete version of godly reason? If so, why can’t it be expanded?
They have no answers. Why? Because this is a cop-out. When people say God is beyond reason, they think it absolves them of the need to conceive what God’s actually like. No, it doesn’t. If you claim there is an upper bound to reason, you must formulate a justification as to why it does not apply everywhere and you must describe what applies beyond it.
Knowledge Hypocrisy
Christian apologists are always so quick to point out the insufficiency of scientific knowledge when scientists say they don’t know something – but they fail to apply that assessment to themselves. How insufficient is their intellect, given their absolute lack of any attempts to explain the nature of God? They just think saying “God” is an explanation and yet they demand the most minute evidence from scientists. There’s a double standard going on here.
Love Or Justice?
Debate with a Christian and it might go something like this:
You: “Why does God send people to hell?”
Preacher: “Because he’s compelled by the principle of justice to give everyone what they deserve. But he loves us, so he gave us a way out by sending Jesus to die for our sins instead of us.”
You: “But if he loves us, why did he need to send Jesus? Why not just forgive us out of the goodness of his heart?”
Preacher: “God is perfect love, but also perfect justice. His love for us does not erase our sins. We must all be punished if we don’t accept Jesus’ sacrifice.”
There’s a couple of things wrong with this. Firstly, how on earth is the death of Jesus (one man) for three days enough to atone for the sins of billions of people? Yes, Jesus was sinless, but exactly how many sins can a sinless man’s temporary death for three days atone for? Isn’t there a problem with the math here?
And even assuming that by objective moral standards, one sinless man’s temporary death is enough to redeem billions of sinners, how is it justice that motivated this? If Jesus never did a thing wrong and yet he was the one being punished for the sins of others, surely that’s a subversion of justice?! When someone is convicted of murder, we don’t let someone else accept a sentence in their place! And if we did, you wouldn’t call that justice, would you???
God is motivated mostly by either love or justice (since the two are at odds in this situation, he must choose one principle to favor since he cannot simultaneously honor both). If it’s love, then he could simply forgive us with no need for Jesus. If it’s justice, then he would never have punished Jesus since it’s an injustice by definition to punish the wrong person for a crime. Instead, we would all be doomed to hell with absolutely no means of redemption. That is what justice means: people being punished for their crimes. It does not mean someone totally unrelated who never committed a crime being punished instead.
It’s absurd sticking up for a faith that you absolutely do not understand and therefore cannot justify. Far from a slam dunk, this excuse just raises more and more inconsistencies because it misapplies the concept of justice!
The central idea of Christianity is that we all sin and therefore are in need of Jesus’ salvation. But if this doesn’t make sense, then the whole of Christianity is complete nonsense. That’s why every Christian you ever meet will claim, contrary to all logic, that God’s justice mandated Jesus’ death. One Christian on a TV show said, “There can be no forgiveness without a cost.” Isn’t that the opposite of forgiveness? If it costs something, then that cost is a punishment, which means that no real forgiving is being done. God just turned his wrath from us to Jesus. That’s not forgiveness! And if Jesus was meant to be punished instead of humans, then why didn’t Jesus go to hell for all eternity? He only died for three days! How is that in any way an equal punishment?
It’s no secret that Christians are ignorant of the actual intellectual basis of their religion. One person reviewing Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae said, “204 days. It’s done. Well, I say it’s done – I did skip or lightly skim over large swathes of it, and after about a third of the way through I started just ignoring the objections/replies as I found them confusing. Some parts made me cry ‘Amen, brother’ aloud; some parts were a real challenge to me personally; some parts caused serious head-desk collisions (‘how could you possibly think that??’, etc); other parts were just boggling. Still, I can now say I’ve done it, which not many people can.”
What, does thinking nauseate you, brother? Why bother to read it if you aren’t actually willing to read it? You can’t really say you’ve done it, can you? You can say you took considerable shortcuts. You really weren’t in it to learn, were you? You just wanted to be able to say you’d read it. The actual content didn’t interest you.
So it is all too often with Christians. However flawed theologians may be as philosophers (which is very), at least they put in thought. At least they think. The average Christian doesn’t think at all.
Trumpism of the Day
“‘@HoustonWelder: Donald Trump is one of the sexiest men on this planet. Every woman dreams of a good man who tells it like it is.’ So true!” – Twitter, July 16, 2015 [Link]
Sorry if you just threw up in your mouth a little bit. It’s necessary to see this in order to understand the hows and whys of Donald Trump. He would not be who he is if he didn’t have a pathetic need to “win” at everything, including in the sexiness department. Well, not if you think about the appalling taste in hairstyle, the need to wear ridiculous fake tan that’s always slightly patchy, the smug attitude, the pathological need for attention that never stops – it’s hard to picture a less sexy man.
@HoustonWelder seems to devote their entire identity to Trump. This tweet quoted above is pinned to the loser’s profile (even though it happened over 9 years ago), and they post tweets advancing ludicrous conspiracy theories like terrorists using 5G as a weapon to target Trump supporters(!). This person is clearly deranged. Clearly suffering from David Icke syndrome, well that’s not surprising.
“How long will 8 billion people allow 100 families to control them?”
Hmm, that’s a good question. But a more pertinent question right now is: How long will it take before morons like this realize that Trump is on the side of these all-important families? He’s not going to do a thing to depose them! At the end of his next term, if it happens, you’ll still be posting inane shit like this, and not a single thing will have changed!! You can be certain of that!
And guess what? – you won’t have developed the self-reflection skills or the critical thinking to figure out that Trump is not the salvation of America, so you’ll keep supporting him like an idiot! His last term didn’t put a single dent in the power structures that allow the few to rule the many in perpetuity. What makes you think things are going to be any different this time around? You are deluded if you think Trump is an enemy of the rich elite. He’s done nothing but protect their interests (including his own, by the way – you may not realize Trump is a billionaire, but the rest of the world sure does).
What’s wrong with these people? They cannot process information according to reason. Isn’t that one definition of insanity?
