Monday, December 1, 2008

Using the bible as an argument against God

It is somewhat backhanded to use the bible against christian claims, or against the belief in a god, since as an atheist one sees no connection between a book written by humans and a supposed deity. However, for the sake of argument, recently I was considering the concept of a god. If you were a god, how should you behave? How should you act toward your creation (humans)? Do gods need a personality?

First, when considering the concept of a god, it is difficult to find any religion that does not personify the deity. I guess some Hindu or Buddhist deities are almost devoid of personality, in that they just sit and contemplate things. But most gods are basically human in personality, with emotional temperament. In other words, if you suddenly became immortal and had power, you would be a god. There doesn't seem to be much else to it besides power and immortality. The christian god has probably the most comprehensive set of powers, including complete knowledge of past and future, knowing everything, being everywhere at once, can create matter from nothing, can create life, created the whole universe, etc. So if you had these list of qualities, how should you act? The christian viewpoint is to chalk it up as "unfathomable" or "unknowable" to our puny human minds.

Now consider the story of creation, and of Adam and Eve as they were in the Garden of Eden, before the fall of man. It's a great, compelling story, but it has a lot of flaws. Note that throughout the bible, and also used as a selling point by christian philosophers, it is stated that although god is the creator of man, he gave man a free will to choose his own actions and his own fate. However, in the initial part of the story about Adam and Eve's fate, that is not how god is portrayed. Initially, he acts as I might expect him to act, as a creator should act. He treats Adam and Eve as children, doesn't tell them much of anything, and tries to create a perfect habitat and life for them, so that they can stupidly and blissfully live out their days, apparently so god won't be bored, or possibly be alone.

God bored?!?! Lonely?!?! I guess that would be considered blasphemy, trying to fathom the impulse of god to create humans. But, a god that has emotions and thoughts surely then has motivations for his actions. So anyway, god watches over the humans and keeps them in the dark about good and evil. Then, they are tricked by the serpent and they make a poor selfish choice as any child might make, and they doom mankind forever. Seems a little unfair to me. God creates humans, treats them like children, doesn't give them all the facts about the tree of life, and then is surprised when children do something selfish?? On what grounds do Adam and eve rest the moral rules? They were apparently simply given a list of rules by god and told "do this or you'll be punished," similar to the 10 commandment scenario, another attempt at dictatorship rule by god.

However, this goes against the idea that god has given humans free will. To me, free will requires having adequate information available to make decisions, otherwise how is it different than blindly following orders or even randomly deciding what actions to take? Also note that after this, and in a few other places in the bible, the relationship between god and man changes, or in other words, the way god acts toward his creation changes. But how should a god act toward his creation? it seems that the most realistic interaction might be more the way it is portrayed in the early garden of eden story. More the position of the scientist toward his experiment.

So, as you can see, this is not really a logically sound argument, but more of a philosophical problem I have with Christianity, one of many.

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