My friend at WholeReason responded to 40 questions for Christians by Cara at ThinkAtheist. Cara offered the answers she would have given back when she was a Christian.
The answers from Whole Reason is here. I think they’re good, but my answers are different enough from his that I will offering mine and try to be brief about it:
1. If a hundred different religions have to be wrong for yours to be right, does this show that people from all over the world like to invent gods that don’t exist?
There really aren’t a lot of options. Nothing is eternal (without beginning), or something is eternal. If something is eternal then it could be the self. Or it could be (in) the material universe. Or it could be God. That is not a lot of religions. Further divisions are made by each group’s beliefs in what that God is like, but the religions that all claim an eternal creator haven’t differed much in those claims: his justice, his love, his power, and his knowledge are all example which have been widely agreed upon. So there are not really very many basic religions, just a severe lack of understanding of how deeply they agree with each other on a God that does exist.
2. If your parents had belonged to a different religion, do you think you would belong to that religion too?
Studies confirm that religious labels are highly heritable. And I don’t see why it matters. If my parents were Buddhists or atheists then hopefully I would test those beliefs for meaning just like theism ought to be tested.
The redemptive revelation that distinguishes Christianity with its theistic counterparts is not general. And whether you receive it probably has a lot to do with your parents. But rejecting or not receiving this redemptive revelation is not the sin people are accountable for.
3. If people from the five major religions are each told conflicting information by their respective gods, should any of them be believed?
There is one God, not different ones. If people are told conflicting information by five different voices that each claim to be God, then you test their claims with reason. Do those claims make sense with what you already know about God?
4. How can you tell the voice of God from a voice in your head?
What do you mean in your head? I can distinguish my thoughts from what is not my thoughts. If I hear a voice then I test the claims it is making in light of reason.
5. How can you tell the voice of God from the voice of the Devil?
This is getting redundant. Abraham understood the significance of sacrifice, circumcision, and the manner of the birth of Isaac before he offered Isaac with the reasoning that God would raise him from the dead up to fulfill the promise God made. Abraham is an example of how to test the spirits, rather than believe any voice that pops into your head.
6. Would you find it easier to kill someone if you believed God supported you in the act?
Here we go again. My authority is reason, and that reason is used to understand what God is and is not saying.
Why in the world would I believe that God supported me in this act?
7. If God told you to kill an atheist, would you?
If the universe were such that morality constituted murder, would you murder? That’s the kind of question this is when you include the assumption that this is coming from the God who created morality and speaks truth.
These kinds of questions usurp the impossibility of accurately identifying God’s command without the use of reason. How we identify God’s command is through understanding, in this case our understanding of moral law ought to be relevant for testing the command for murder as not from God. The question itself necessarily involves a contradiction.
8. When an atheist is kind and charitable out of the kindness of his heart, is his behavior more or less commendable than a religious man who does it because God instructed him to?
More commendable. Knowing God doesn’t mean not getting to do what you want because some text told you so, it means wanting what is good.
9. If you are against the Crusades and the Inquisition, would you have been burned alive as a heretic during those events?
It is asinine to judge a claim based on the people who claim it. Would you have been burned alive in defense of innocent Christian martyrs? Maybe Christians are the worst human beings who ever lived – why would that change anything about what is true and what is false?
10. If your interpretation of a holy book causes you to condemn your ancestors for having a different interpretation, will your descendants condemn you in the same way?
Scripture has to be understood in light of natural theology. Proper interpretation is not arbitrary. Correct interpretations ought to replace false interpretations, this is no different for me, my ancestors, or my descendants. Natural theology is done through reason, which is fixed – it doesn’t change with time, or place, or culture.
11. Rape wasn’t always a crime in the Middle East two thousand years ago. Is that why ‘do not rape’ is not part of the Ten Commandments?
Two thousand years ago? Is that when the Ten Commandments were given?
The 10 commandments as stated in the OT do not exhaust moral law, so we don’t have to explain why something isn’t in it. Many of the ten commandments weren’t always a crime in the Middle East, and yet they are included.
12. Do lions need a `god-given’ morality to understand how to care for their young, co-operate within a prides, or feel anguish at the loss of a companion? If not, why do we?
What is good for a lion is not good for humans. It is good for humans to use reason to know the highest reality, and that is God. So if we don’t know God, then we’re not living moral lives. And we don’t know God by blindly following divine command, but by seeking and understanding.
13. If organized religion requires a civilization in which to spread, how could this civilization exist without first having a moral code to make us civil?
It couldn’t. But organized religion is not the foundation of morality.
Also, civilizations are not always civil.
14. An all-knowing God can read your mind, so why does he require you to demonstrate your faith by worshiping him?
Worship is the natural outgrowth of knowing God and the knowledge of his glory.
15. If God is all-knowing, why do holy books describe him as surprised or angered by the actions of humans? He should have known what was going to happen.
The “holy books” are not void of human interpretations of what is going on. There is a fair bit of anthropomorphizing in their understanding of what is going on.
16. An all-knowing God knows who will ultimately reject him. Why does God create people who he knows will end up in hell?
Moral evil deepens our knowledge of God. The prodigal son returned home to a deeper knowledge of his father and his father’s way of life. The son who was always with his father was bitter, and the father told him, “everything I have is yours”. The prodigal son wasn’t given more than his counterpart brother, he was simply lost and then found, and through that process a greater good was achieved.
Since the question is about other people, we might retell the story of the prodigal son with another, third brother, who witnessed his brother return and in that way his knowledge grew deeper as well.
17. If God is all knowing, then why did he make humans in the knowledge that he’d eventually have to send Jesus to his death?
So that the knowledge of God can one day cover the earth as the water covers the sea. The means are necessary to the ends.
18. Why did a supposedly omnipotent god take six days to create the universe, and why did he require rest on the seventh day?
It is a story which either literally or metaphorically demonstrates work, and human uniqueness in the natural order.
19. Is omnipotence necessary to create our universe when a larger, denser universe would have required more power?
Omnipotence is to be understood as all-powerful or perfectly powerful, rather than more powerful than all the power there is.
20. Why are Churches filled with riches when Jesus asked his followers to give their wealth away?
This is another question about people, not about God. If you determine your beliefs based on people, then I infer that you care about what you look like when you believe something, not about what is true.
Jesus did not require his followers to give their wealth away. That is a misunderstanding of the text. We can talk about it some time.
21. While in the desert, Jesus rejected the temptations of the Devil. He didn’t censor or kill the Devil, so why are Christians so in favor of censoring many Earthly temptations?
Sounds to me like this would lead to Christian libertarianism, not atheism.
Jesus’ actions shouldn’t be taken out of context to fit any possible application. There’s nothing inconsistent with saying that sometimes we should sensor and sometimes we shouldn’t.
22. Given that the story of Noah’s Ark was copied almost word for word from the much older Sumerian Epic of Atrahasis, does this mean that our true ruler is the supreme sky god, Anu?
No. Why would it?
Is the supreme sky God Anu eternal? Spirit? Creator? etc.? If he is then in what sense are we not talking about the same God?
The Epic of Atrahasis is nothing close to a word-for-word copy. No doubt it is one of many great deluge stories, but it is a completely different story with a few notable similarities. The text is here.
There is a general tendency for atheists to buy into far overextended or falsified similarities between biblical stories and other old stories. Smart atheists I know abandon almost all intellectual discipline when they hear about this stuff.
23. If your desire is to convert atheists so that they become more like you; do you think that you’re currently better than them?
We’re stuck on people again. I desire to convert atheist because theism is true and ignorance of God is culpable.
24. If religious people don’t respect their children’s right to pick their own religion at a time when they’re able to make that decision, how can society expect religious people to respect anyone’s right to freedom of religion?
For starters society and family are different in many ways. As it is, many (perhaps most) people don’t respect their children’s right to pick a religion, but do respect their next door neighbor’s right to pick a religion. So the question is phrased as if the two are incompatible, when they are compatible.
Authority is based on insight. Parents have an obligation to share insights with their children. That doesn’t mean cramming religion down their throats, but appealing to their reason. Teach them what you have learned.
25. If missionaries from your religion should be sent to convert people in other countries, should missionaries from other religions be sent to your country?
Sure. People I disagree with come knocking at my door all the time. I’ve never minded them.
26. If children are likely to believe in Santa Claus and fairies, does this explain why religion has been taught in schools for thousands of years?
They taught math in school for thousands of years, and that doesn’t imply anything.
27. When preachers and prophets claim to be special messengers of God, they often receive special benefits from their followers. Does this ever cause you to doubt their intentions?
Yes. Beware.
28. When you declare a miracle, does this mean you understand everything that is possible in nature?
No. Only that something is not possible in nature, which is not the same as, and does not imply that, you know everything that is possible.
29. If humans declared fire to be a miracle thousands of years ago, would we still be huddling together in caves while we wait for God to fire another lightning bolt into the forest?
No. Science would have still progressed and shown that fire is natural.
31. If God gave a man cancer, and the Devil cured him to subvert God’s plan, how would you know it wasn’t a divine miracle? What if he was an unkind, atheist, homosexual?
Natural evil is not punitive. so who was healed is irrelevant.
I wouldn’t know it wasn’t a divine miracle just like I don’t know if a lot of things are divine miracles. I would probably think that someone just got cancer and it went away.
32. Should an instruction to convert to your religion upon the threat of eternal torture in hell be met with anything other than hostility?
I’ve never threatened anyone with eternal torture, but I don’t think hostility is an appropriate response. Instead I would test the claims to see if their true rather than get all personal about it.
33. Can a mass murderer go to heaven for accepting your religion, while a kind doctor goes to hell for not?
You mean inherit eternal life? Being a kind doctor does not exclude one from sin which pays in death. Mass murder does not exclude one from eternal life if one is reborn.
34. Did the mass murdering Crusaders and Inquisitors make it into the Christian heaven?
You mean inherit eternal life? I don’t know, but people who mass murder are in sin and need redemption to escape eternal destruction.
35. How can we know what is right when we don’t know for sure who makes it into heaven and hell?
Because what we don’t know is about the people, it is not about the morality.
36. If aliens exist on several worlds that have never heard of your god, will they all be going to hell when they die?
If rational life on other planets exist then I would expect they would be morally culpable for knowing God --same as humans.
37. If someone promised you eternal life, the protection of a loving super being, a feeling of moral righteousness, a purpose for living, answers to all the big questions, and a rule book for achieving the pinnacle of human potential – and all in exchange for having faith in something that wasn’t proven, would you be suspicious?
Question everything. I’m suspicious of pretty much everything I hear coming from the mouths of Christians or anyone else. The result has been that my beliefs have changed drastically over the years.
38. If someone promised to give you a billion dollars after ten years, but only if you worshiped them until that time, would you believe them? If someone promised to give you eternal life upon death, but only if you spent your life worshiping a god, would you believe them?
No and no. I don’t believe in eternal life because someone promised it to me.
Eternal life is necessary for the Good to be achieved. If I have justified belief in God and his wisdom (knowing the good and means to it), then I have justified belief in eternal life.
39. Why does religion appeal more to poor, weak, vulnerable, young, ill, depressed, and ostracized people? Could religious promises be more of a temptation to these people?
Definitely.
40. If you have eternal life in the afterlife, with all your family and friends, don’t you feel it would be like an eternal visit to your in-laws house? Don’t you think you’d get bored after 10,000 years?
The knowledge of God is inexhaustible because God is infinite. We are also never bored because unlike other things, the knowledge of God satisfies and fills. It can continue on everlastingly.
