God Loves You

Some Restrictions May Apply (And Many Other Christian Dilemmas)

Tony Davis

• Editorial: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781644621875
• Categoría: Theologie & Religion
• Categoría: Atheismus

God Loves You: Some Restrictions May Apply (and Many Other Christian Dilemmas) is written by a fairly well-educated, extensively travelled former Southern Baptist Bible Banger (SB3), professional layman, retired military intelligence officer, and keen observer of the human condition who happens to be fascinated with what we believe, why, and the effects of those beliefs on society. This is an appeal to honesty in the terms of epistemological disquisition, a critical analysis of the major trut

Part I

The Genesis of Doubt

Chapter 1

Devolution of Faith

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

—1 Corinthians 13:11

The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

—Delos B. McKown

What could motivate a former Southern Baptist Bible Banger (SB3) to write a book denouncing belief in, and worship of, an invisible god? After all, there is a huge difference between simply having doubts and actually going to the trouble, considerable work frankly, of writing a book explaining and defending those doubts. Also, it is quite intimidating to openly question what so many hold to be their most important and deeply held beliefs. This is especially true as someone who grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt, where public professions of love of Jesus are so much a part of daily conversations. I’m reminded of Voltaire’s cautionary observation, “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”

I receive e-mails, hear personal comments, or see posts on Facebook and other social media almost daily from friends and relatives on the importance of showing gratitude to, and praise of, God. We are, if these sentiments are to be believed, obliged to God for all the good things that happen to us daily. Conveniently, the reason for all the bad that we hear about is often attributed to those, like me, who don’t properly praise God, and as a result, atheists are among the most discriminated against and despised of all groups in the United States (Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann 2006), ranking somewhere below communists and somewhere above pedophiles according to some studies. The belief not only that God is real but that he is infinitely good and that unbelievers are inherently bad is to some a foregone conclusion. It would be easier to remain silent frankly, but to do so brings to mind another caution from Voltaire that “every man is guilty of all the good he did not do,” and I truly do feel this is a good and worthy endeavor.

Offered here are a few personal stories that may help shed light on my personal journey from faith to reason. I feel these glimpses are relevant because the question I am perhaps asked more than any other is “Why did you stop believing in God?” Perhaps the second most-asked question is “Why bother even talking about it if you don’t believe?” Both fair, if not well thought out, questions that I feel have very legitimate answers. I am often tempted to answer the first question with “Why did you ever start believing?” and the second with “Why does God need you and other believers to tell his story and defend his positions if he is real?” After all, shouldn’t the burden of proof be on the person making the claim of things unseen (this goes to the first question)? And Christians are rarely shy about telling anyone who will listen about their love for Jesus, so why should I feel shy about simply stating why I don’t share that belief? (This goes to the second question.) While I address the question of why I bother talking about this in great detail in chapters 5 and 6, I will try to address the first question, why I stopped believing in God, here in this chapter.

This book is at least partially a response to the countless attempts by others to convince me that I am wrong not to believe. My consternation lies not only in the attempts at persuasion, for those attempts are normally motivated from the best of intentions, but rather in the weakness of the arguments repeatedly presented and my surprise at learning of the weakness of all available arguments. I am troubled not only by the weakness and repetition of the arguments but also the occasional contempt displayed toward me when I have the audacity to challenge the arguments and not just blindly accept them.

I have often been, and continue to be, treated as if I am somehow unable to think rationally because I don’t see the “truth” before me when I am told that the evidence is undeniable. While I continue to respect each individual’s right to believe as they choose, I find it increasingly difficult to respect the cognitive jiu-jitsu necessary to rationalize the things in which some theists say they believe. As I have often heard Christians say, “Hate the sin but love the sinner,” my mantra has become, “Respect the believer, but challenge the belief.”

One of the things I like to do when talking to the devout is ask why they believe as they do and how they perceive God’s nature. It is amazing, to me at least, how difficult it is for the average believer to articulate what God means to them in real terms and to convey an argument for God that does not rely on circular logic, begging the question and bare assertion fallacies. Circular logic, or circulus in probando, which is Latin for “circle in proving,” was probably first discussed in Aristotle’s Prior Analytics. An example of circular logic is “Jesus is the Messiah. I know this because it says so in the Bible. I know the Bible is true because Jesus says so. I know Jesus spoke the truth because he is the Messiah.” Begging the question, or petitio principii, “assuming the initial point,” is often confused with circular logic but is different according to Aristotle, who identified it as a fallacy closely related but distinct from circular logic. An example of begging the question is seen in the cosmological argument when the claim is made that the universe could not have always been here and could not have started itself, therefore there must have been an all-powerful cause of the universe, and this we call God. The question being begged is, Where did God come from, or who created the creator? The fact is that once you get past the bumper-sticker comments and one-liners, most people who say they believe are challenged greatly when asked to say what it is that they actually believe and why.

Just as I ask the believer to consider her reasons for believing, I do not argue for an unthinking lack of belief but rather for a critical interrogation of the facts, wherever that might take you. I am simply convinced that if you honestly consider the evidence, or lack thereof, without the pressure of “wishful thinking,” or argumentum ad consequentiam—the idea that a belief should be true (or untrue) because of how much I like (or dislike) the consequences of it being true—unbelief is the natural consequence.

This idea of wishful thinking, so far as I am able to discern, is the only compelling reason to want to believe in God. Note that I did not say it is a compelling reason to actually believe in God; merely, it is a compelling reason to want to believe in God. Wishful thinking is often manifested in proclamations such as, “I don’t want to live in a world without God.” I understand the desire to want to live in a world where there is a god who looks out for you. It is a fact, however, that what we want to be true has no bearing on what actually is true. I might not want to live in a world in which Jessica Alba does not want to bear my children (and my wife might not want to live in a world in which I say such silly nonsense), but what I want in this case is irrelevant. I could also take this argument to the next level of religious excuse making and say that believing that Jessica Alba wants to run away with me gives my life meaning and purpose and is the reason I can make it through tough times. Does this sound familiar? Remember, if you believe in God because you want to see loved ones after you die, while a powerful motive for wanting God to be real, is not rational or based on evidence and is simply a bad reason for believing he actually is real.

I once believed in God. I never really had a good reason for believing it. It was not a conscious decision really. I was just told it was true when I was a child and that to believe otherwise was not only incorrect but would make me a bad person deserving of punishment. There was no evaluation of the evidence that led me to consider myself a Christian. I was simply always told this was true, and when everyone around me believed the same thing, it was easy to continue believing.

Over the years, however, a series of epiphanies brought to light certain flaws in the belief system of my childhood. I would like to offer a retelling of some of these events to lend context to the rest of this book. Some of the observations I offer are personal reflections on people of faith and their various actions; others are ideas and concepts presented by others with the intention of buttressing my faith, often with the opposite effect. Some of these are admittedly quite silly, and I offer them for entertainment value if nothing else. Keep in mind that no matter how silly these examples may seem, they were often offered by persons of authority to me and were believed by those who offered them and were offered for the purpose of reinforcing a belief in God.

This last point perhaps bears a bit of clarification. While not all Christians believe the same things, the examples I offer are not isolated beliefs no matter how nonsensical they may seem to some readers. I realize, of course, that not all Christians agree on all beliefs. In fact, religious beliefs vary from time and place even within the same religious tradition. There are a great many things that went to the very heart of Christian dogma for the vast majority of Christianity’s history that are not taken seriously today by most Christians. This does not change the fact that many people believe the things I recount here even today, and they tried to convince me to believe these things as well.

This is one of the challenges for the nonbeliever when discussing such issues with believers, isn’t it? What kind of believer are they? Fundamentalist? Evangelical? Liberal? Moderate? There are really only a few things that all have in common, most important among these, to me at least, is that they claim to have a special book given to them by God and in which he tells them how he wants us all to live. We are told that in this book is all the really important information that we need to know about the creator of the universe and all that he wants for us and from us. It is believed that this book is a very good book, a perfect book, and we know this to be true because God says so, and he says so in this book.

Like the vast majority of Christians, I never read this book when I actually was a Christian, at least not in its entirety. I was able to quote chapter and verse of some of the really heartwarming stories to be sure. These were the things that I learned in Sunday school. But have you read this book entirely? Scary stuff! In it are dragons6 and worse! It is because of this book that for much of the past two thousand years some men have felt empowered to tell other men how to live and often to torture and kill those who fail to follow the rules of this special book. Quite honestly and to my great surprise, when I actually bothered to read the book for myself, I found that not only was it not a good book, it was replete with errors, contradictions, and inconsistencies. I began to wonder, How could so many intelligent people use a book of this nature as a basis for their worldview? Certainly, this book was not the thing that made me first begin asking questions. Quite to the contrary, it was only after having questions that I turned to this book for the answers. I eventually came to believe that the Holy Bible, if read honestly, may be the single greatest force for nonbelief available to us, and I will explain why in chapter 3.

Preambles and caveats complete, what follows are just some of the things that led me to question, and ultimately reject, the idea that God is likely real. Chapters 3 and 4 will drive home why I became more confident in my lack of belief. Here I only share those simple everyday things that caused me to start to at least wonder about possibility of God’s nonexistence.

The Argument from Incomplete Annihilation (God Is so Merciful for Saving That Baby in the Plane Crash!)

What clear-thinking person doesn’t do a facepalm every time a Grammy winner thanks God for picking them over all the others. What of athletes who do the same thing? What did God have against all the opponents of Tim Tebow and the New York Jets in 2012? Tebow thanked God for his divine assistance after every successful play, so the Jets must have been God’s favorites. Right? So why wasn’t it God’s fault when Tim Tebow got sacked (pun intended) by the New York Jets in 2013? If God was responsible for Tebow’s success, wasn’t God also responsible for his failures? God gets a free pass on all the bad but credit for all the good. A pretty sweet deal!

While they may seem unconnected, these examples are related to what is sometimes referred to as the argument from incomplete annihilation (or destruction). An example of this is seen when an airplane crashes killing all aboard except for one single passenger and an outpouring of thanks for God’s great mercy results. After all, so goes the argument, only God’s intervention could have saved this lone individual. What is rarely asked is why did God cause the plane to crash in the first place? Surely, if it is only through his infinite and just love that one can be saved, it is only through his malevolent involvement or uncaring refusal to act that the tragedy occurred in the first place. Why was God not inclined to save all the other passengers on that flight? Was he angry at them? Maybe the Westborough Baptist Church folks have it almost right and God really hates frequent fliers and not fags.

Ideas such as this were among my earliest ...