“The Lord spoke to Moses, ‘Go down at once! For your people you brought up from the land of Egypt have acted corruptly. They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them; they have made for themselves an image of a calf. They have bowed down to it, sacrificed to it, and said, “Israel, these are your gods who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”‘ The Lord also said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone, so that my anger can burn against them and I can destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever known someone who liked to play the Devil’s advocate in a debate setting? Are you that person? Some people just like taking the other side in a debate. Even if they don’t really believe in the position, they’ll stake it out simply because they like arguing. I bring that up because this next part of our story is hard to understand. All the players switch roles in ways that are confusing at best. If we are not sufficiently grounded in our understanding of their character outside of this story, we are going to struggle to make any positive sense out of it. Let’s take a look at God’s getting angry with Israel.
The other day, one of my boys was asking me some theological questions. Actually, he was making some theological points to me. He had been watching YouTube videos from a Christian apologist, and was processing some of the arguments he had heard while explaining to me why he thought atheism is such an illogical position to hold. I listened carefully, and then started countering his arguments against atheism, one by one, showing him why they weren’t quite as strong as he thought, and why atheism may better account for reality than Christian theism.
Now, before you freak out, or wonder what is wrong with me, fear not: I haven’t changed my personal positions on anything related to the faith. And, I didn’t do any damage to his own faith. He knows where I stand. He came back almost every time with a counter to my counter. I also helped him fill in the gaps he couldn’t. My goal was to strengthen his faith, and to help him make better arguments. He rose to the challenge beautifully.
I tell you all that as an exercise in trying to make sense of what we see here. From everything we have seen about God so far to this point in the Scriptures, He is pretty tolerant of people making really bad decisions that are wildly out of sync with His character. There are a couple of notable examples of His exercising a nuclear option when it comes to bringing judgment against sin, but those are the exceptions to the rule. And the rule is a great deal more patience on His part than would seem to be warranted if He really is the sovereign Lord of all creation who spoke all we see and don’t into existence with a word.
What Israel has done here, though, is pretty egregiously bad. They didn’t merely violate the covenant they had made with Him. They violated it at almost the first opportunity they had, and in about as dramatic a way as they possibly could. They violated the first two commandments. All of the commandments were important, but the first two really set the stage for properly understanding all the rest. They broke things in a way that was foundational. They proved themselves to be singularly unworthy of His time or attention. What’s more, as we will see later on in the chapter in a couple of weeks, they were totally out of control. They were firmly in the grip of sin and had lost their minds to it.
God had just finished giving Moses the instructions for how to build the space that would allow Him to be in their midst as fully as He possibly could so they could dwell in a relationship with Him. He was setting them up to be able to enjoy the blessings of His presence in ways that were powerful and personal. While all of this was happening, the people got tired of waiting and so metaphorically ran off in the complete opposite direction He had had them going before.
If you are a parent, you can perhaps remember a time when your kids did not merely what you didn’t want them to do, but the exact opposite thing you wanted and after you had just finished telling them explicitly not to do it. My guess is that you were absolutely livid in that moment. You had to give yourself quite a bit of time to calm down before you could even process the thought of interacting with them without losing your mind on them. I know it’s politically incorrect to say so, but Bill Cosby has a wonderful sketch about this called “Brain Damage.”
The Israelites seemed to have that kind of brain damage. They didn’t just violate the first two commandments in flagrant disregard for the covenant they had just made, they attributed to these gods they just made up for themselves actions that had been accomplished by God. Everything about this was as bad as it could have possibly been. And in response, God seems to just about lose His mind in frustration with them. This is where the humor of the story here picks up again. Just look at the language God uses with Moses when describing the situation. “Go down at once! For your people you brought up from the land of Egypt have acted corruptly.” This is like one parent complaining to the other about misbehaving children. “Would you listen to what your children just did?!?” God is so angry He won’t even claim them anymore. They are Moses’ problem now. Moses should have left them in Egypt, then neither of them would be having this kind of trouble.
God’s solution, pitched to Moses v. 10, is to wipe them out and start over with Moses as His beginning stock. He’s going to take a page out of His flood playbook, but not go quite that far. The people were broken. They needed to be unplugged and plugged back in and given a hard reset back to factory condition. And as much as we are meant to be chuckling along with the story, this last part makes us stop in our tracks and ask a hard question: Really? Was God really going to wipe them out and start over fresh? And the uncomfortable answer to this question is a confident, “Maybe?”
Sin has consequences. When we live in ways that are out of sync with God’s character, there are going to be consequences for that. Sometimes – most often even – those consequences in this life are going to be natural. If you are unloving to a friend, that relationship is going to be wounded. If you give control of your body and mind over to foreign substances, they will rule over you and negatively affect your life. If you are selfish with other people, they are going to be selfish toward you as well. God doesn’t have to do much of anything to bring active judgment for sin in those times. He just has to step back and let the natural consequences of our sin be judgment all to themselves.
Sometimes, though, in His wisdom, He sees fit to bring more eternally minded consequences to bear immediately. When and why He does this, we don’t fully know. We trust that He has sufficient wisdom as the God who created the world and everything in it to know which situation warrants which kind of consequence, when, and why. This doesn’t necessarily mean we should cheer the arrival of those consequences, but it does mean we can trust that He delivers them in righteousness, justice, and love. This is because those things are fundamental to His character. Everything He does is done in righteousness, justice, and love because it is in His nature to love righteousness, walk with justice, and to show love to echo His stated expectations for His followers in Micah 6:8.
The hard truth here that we will talk about in a couple of weeks is that there would be judgment unleashed on the people for this grievous sin. Whether or not it was really His intention to wipe them out entirely, though, is another matter. I say this because He didn’t wipe them out entirely. And He didn’t wipe them out entirely because Moses disregarded His instruction to leave Him alone to do this and instead, as we will talk more about tomorrow, stood in the gap to intercede on the people’s behalf. Moses’ doing this and God’s responding to it like He did by forgiving the people rather than destroying the people leaves me wondering if that wasn’t God’s plan all along.
As much as God was rightly filled with wrath toward the people because of their sin, He is capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. He was continuing to develop Moses more fully into the leader He was leading him to be; the kind of leader he would need to be for the extended journey he didn’t yet know lay ahead of him. He was inviting Moses more fully into His character which He would soon declare before him yet again. And what character is this? He is slow to anger, quick to love, and abounding in covenantal faithfulness. When He makes a promise, He fulfills that promise. Period. He does not deal with our sin as it deserves, but shows us mercy and compassion. At the same time, though, He does not fail to deal with sin and sinners justly. Sin still has consequences, but sometimes He mitigates or otherwise delays those consequences so that we have the chance to repent and avoid the eternal consequences of sin altogether.
I don’t suppose many of us are going to find ourselves in the kind of situation where our intercession for a whole nation of people is the one thing standing between them and utter annihilation. That being said, God is pretty likely to allow us to face difficult circumstances, perhaps circumstances in which we face the collateral consequences of someone else’s sinful choices, so that we have the opportunity to grow in His character in ways we would not otherwise easily develop. Perhaps you have already faced that. If you are a parent, I’m certain you have. That’s part of the gig.
In a world that is broken by sin and in which experiencing the consequences of sin – whether or sin or someone else’s – is unavoidable, God demonstrates His power and goodness by allowing us to experience those consequences in environments that He controls so that we can learn more easily just exactly who He is and grow more fully in His character. That doesn’t mean these situations are going to be easy; they won’t be. But it does mean we can trust Him in and through them until we experience abundant life on the other side of them. If you are in the midst of a difficult situation, look for the opportunities around you to reflect God’s character. It just may be that He has allowed you to experience that situation for that very reason. Grow with Him in that situation and experience His goodness both in it and through it.
The Nexus 
For clarity I stopped reading after you mentioned your son thought atheism was such an illogical position.
That truly is dissapointing.
I don’t know how old your kid is but already you seem to have him indoctrinated.
Playing devil’s advocate is simply cruel.
However, that said, maybe he will. have the nouse to realise he had been played all along.
I hope he is able to grow enough that if he realises he has, he is able to forgive you.
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Glad to hear from you. I hope all is well on your side of the globe. We’re in the midst of a wild season both nationally and locally, but great and good things are going on at the church, so that’s always fun.
I had a sneaking suspicion this post would be catnip of too strong a potency for you to resist a comment. I’m glad to see I know you at least that well after nearly a year ;~)
As for your comment, I have observed to you many times the tight limitation of your perspective on these matters. Either people agree with your position on matters of faith, or they are indoctrinated dupes. You seem to be literally incapable of fathoming why someone would profess faith in God for anything other than reasons of indoctrination or abuse of some kind. That’s too bad, but you don’t seem willing or interested in broadening your perspective, so it is what it is. As I said, such a perspective artificially limits your ability to understand the world and the people in it, but, alas, that’s the path you’ve chosen to walk.
Incidentally, I came across a podcast the other day that made me think of you. It’s called “The Christian Atheist.” It’s hosted by a guy who grew up in the church, walked away from his faith entirely for several years, and eventually made a journey back to it. The first three episodes I listened to were pretty interested and touched on several of the issues you and I have addressed together. It would be worth your time just to gain the perspective of someone who has truly been on both sides of the question.
Have a good rest of your Tuesday.
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We are dealing with a CHILD for goodness’ sake! And one who looks at his dad as the bee’s knees no doubt.
But you have done a fine job indoctrinating him with the same drivel you were exposed to.
As I said, I sincerely hope he wakes up and he forgives you.
It is unfortunate you seem too timid to venture over to my spot.
I have a number of ex’s who would thoroughly enjoy engaging with an active church minister.
Maybe you could encourage your lad to read some of my religious posts and those of former indoctrinated Christians?
You know, to get a broader perspective on these matters?
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So, you’re just making my point for me, but again, as I said, you can’t see past your own perspective, so that’s really all you were going to be able to do in response. Your invitation into a broader perspective, though, is humorous to me. I don’t suspect you mean it that way, but it is all the same.
The issue isn’t one of timidity, but time. I wonder sometimes how different your own perspective might be if you spent as much time reading the testimonies of people whose lives have been changed for the better by their embrace of the Christian faith as you do reading the minority who had a bad experience with it and walked away. Maybe not at all…maybe radically so. We tend to think like the people we surround ourselves with, though, so maybe more different than you’d like to admit. Oh well.
One last fun note on language. You appeal to “goodness’ sake” as a reason to ignore a fundamental command of the Christian worldview, not to mention every parent’s prerogative and not pass on my worldview beliefs to my kids. Who is this goodness to which you refer? What is it? Who defines it? Your appeal is to something you believe by your expression holds some kind of authority over evidently both of our lives. As an atheist, do you actually believe in such sources of authority?
I ask those questions to give you a bit of a hard time. You’re obviously borrowing a phrase from out of a Christianized cultural past that was originally configured as “for God’s sake.” You don’t believe in God, though, so you have to modify the expression a bit. But the implication of some higher authority is still there nonetheless. I’m curious: what would be a more genuinely atheistic equivalent expression to the more traditional “for God’s sake”?
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Out of interest, do you consider it a parent’s perogative to indoctrinate their children to believe the world is only six thousand years old and dinosaurs co-existed with humans?
As for you For God’s sake query. I have never given it any thought. I have used the fir goodbmness sake expression for as long as I can recall. Got it from my family. The god’s sake version is simply yet another example of the insidious nature of religion I guess.
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Your worldview is more God-haunted than you realize it seems. I would still be curious what a genuinely atheistic version of that expression would be.
Parents have a natural right (by which I mean it is granted to them by God) to teach their children what they believe to be right and true. If those beliefs fly in the face of fact, the world around them will likely offer a corrective in one way or another. Whether they accept that corrective is up to the children. Beliefs that are wildly out of sync with reality, though, don’t tend to be held. Personally, I don’t believe either of those things and haven’t taught them to my children, nor do I teach them to my congregation, so that’s not really much on my radar.
And, come on, we both know you’re not really asking that out of genuine interest, but so that you can try another line of attack on the Christian faith you’ve already used several times before because it’s where you’re ideologically comfortable to frame your arguments against the faith.
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Again, I ha e no idea what a godless version might be.
There’s something you can work on. Maybe you can think of one for me?
The reason for my question is to demonstrate to you the hypocrisy that governs you religious worldview.
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For science’s sake perhaps? As an atheist, philosophically speaking, there can’t be any authority higher than a person except maybe a collection of people. For the government’s sake then? That seems a bit too totalitarian for my liking. It could be simply for “his” sake, with “his” being my son, but I’ll be honest: I have exceptionally low confidence that you have even a molecule’s worth of sense as to what’s in his best interest more than I do as his dad, so that really doesn’t carry much weight. I’m really at a loss here. I’ll guess you’ll just have to settle for being God-haunted.
You’ve tried the hypocrisy line before. You were superlatively unpersuasive then, but it’s been a few weeks since we’ve been on the merry-go-round, so, sure, take another whack at it just for fun. How does hypocrisy govern my religious worldview?
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God haunted? Is this your new ‘thing’?
How about: For truth’s sake? Better still, “Oh, for honesty sake! ”
So if you would not dream of indoctrinating your children with wackadoodle YEC nonsense where do you draw the line between fact and fiction/myth?
Religious indoctrination is in nobody’s best interest.
Any deconvert will a knowledge this.
Every child would be far better off with a secular humanist perspective than being indoctrinated to accept they are supposedly a sinner in need of redemption via the spilled blood of a first century crucified rabbi.
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We can call it something else if that would make you more comfortable. You live in a world that is so shaped by the Christain worldview that you can’t escape it even when you try. That must be really frustrating for you.
I’m missing where the hypocrisy part comes in here.
You say “every child would be far better off with a secular humanist perspective.” Says who? Based on what research? Based on what authority? Where’s the evidence you so cherish? You seem to point to deconversion stories as evidence, but the sum of anecdotes is not evidence. I’m sure you already knew that though. Furthermore, there are way, way more conversion stories pointing in the other direction, so wouldn’t the weight here lean in my direction on the whole?
So then, what is it that makes your perspective uniquely correct, and so correct that I as someone who finds your worldview position to be lacking on almost every front should ignore the philosophical mess that is atheism and the methodological naturalism underpinning it and teach my children something I know to be wrong? Furthermore, what about research that shows that religious belief plays a positive and stabilizing role in their lives?
I want to teach my children to have a philosophically rigorous outlook on the world. Secular humanism is not philosophically rigorous. It has to be dishonest about what it is (namely a position of faith). It has to borrow on Christian ideas in order to give itself moral substance, but can’t give credit for those ideas without risking revealing its inherently self-contradictory nature. Where exactly do they benefit here?
This is all beside the fact that in continuing to harp on various Old Testament stories, you are ignoring first principles which weakens your arguments considerably. Your position is rooted in the belief that there is no God, but the various Genesis and Exodus stories you love to criticize don’t help us know whether that’s the case or not. That question is philosophically prior to the truthfulness or not of those stories.
When I have forced us to take a step back to the logically prior question, you wind up doing everything you can to retreat back to your comfort zone and otherwise do little more than wave your hands to bat away arguments you haven’t yet seemed to be able to effectively answer.
The fine-tuning argument for God’s existence is a good example of this. When we dealt with that one last time you were left finally acknowledging that your preferred position on that question is one of faith just like mine meaning you are ultimately making religious arguments. So, to plead for the imminent reasonableness of secular humanism when your origin beliefs are a matter of faith seems a bit hypocritical, no? Isn’t that where the hypocrisy lies here?
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Why would it be frustrating?
It is what it is but it won’t always be.
Hypocrisy.
You reject YEC yet still teach myth and fiction and indoctrinate your kids with said nonsense.
That hypocrisy.
Evidence for secular humanism bring better?
Why don’t you teach your kids YEC?
Your answer will tell you why secular humanism is better gut children.
My position is rooted in there is no EVIDENCE for your god. The distinction is crucial.
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Atheists have been making that argument for a long time. Meanwhile, more people claim religious identity and devotion today than 20 years ago. In the U.S., the number of “nones,” has stalled out and is starting to decrease. I wouldn’t be so confident in that assessment if I were you.
I don’t teach my kids or any kids myth and fiction. I teach them some ideas that you and other secularists disagree with. There’s a difference. In the same spirit, would you be okay with my teaching kids about the multiverse? There’s not any more evidence for that than for a global flood and yet you are willing to accept the idea as credible…on faith.
The argument in your second paragraph doesn’t make any sense to me. You don’t answer my question at all, and instead merely reassert your point. That’s not making an argument. That’s ignoring a question you don’t like or can’t answer.
Your last argument brings us back to the philosophically impoverished nature of your worldview. You make a statement of faith there. It is also a statement that is rooted in worldview thinking and not evidentiary thinking. We have talked before about the fact that the existence of God is a philosophical question that will not nor cannot be decisively solved by empirical means. To say, “there’s no evidence,” as if that somehow justifies your thinking or otherwise settles the matter is to reveal your lack of understanding of the nature of the debate you are in entirely. That there is no empirical evidence is a matter of philosophical debate, not science.
This is more evidence of the limited nature of your perspective. If we go back again to the fine tuning argument (or we could similarly shift gears to the information problem of DNA), you are forced to either claim ignorance when there are several other explanations that fall within the realm of human experience to explain the phenomenon but which you must reject on philosophical grounds, not evidentiary ones in order to maintain your position because they point to some form of theism as a reasonable explanation, or else you have to express an entirely blind faith in a comic book theory in order to get around the wildly illogical nature of the chance explanation.
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“I don’t teach my kids or any kids myth and fiction.”
Of course you do. Are they not believers/Christian?
The foundational tenets of Christianity are built enturekybupon myth and historical fiction, from Genesis to Revelation.
You cannot teach in the traditional sense about the multiverse. It is currently still a hypothesis.
I am willing to accept the possibility. No faith required.
The US has always been an oulier when it comes to religious affiliation. Look at the Arsehat running against Harris for example.
Your apologetic spin cuts no ice I’m afraid.
When I assert there is no evidence for gods, your god, Yahweh and every other I have encountered, this is a simple statement if fact and has nothing to do with worldview or my lens or perspective.
You really should be grown up enough to acknowkedge this by now and be honest enough to admit what you have is faith. That is at least truthful, and I am okay with that.
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It’s all worldview thinking. You can’t escape worldview thinking.
And then there we land where we so often do. Argument fails, so you simply have to go with some version of an accusation of dishonesty. Oh well, it was a good debate while it lasted. Enjoy your evening.
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The Christian Worldview is built upon the foundation of myth and historical fiction. This is an inescapable fact.
Without faith you are obliged to deal with evidence, fact, and commonsense.
Qualities even people such as Eusebius and Luther acknowledged were of detriment to your religion.
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That is only a “fact” when viewed through the worldview lens of secularism. That brings us back to first principles. You assume on the non-existence of God and make arguments from there. I refuse to make a similar assumption or to engage with arguments built on that assumption without first going back and questioning the assumption which I find to be invalid on philosophical grounds. Throwing around words like “evidence,” “fact,” and “commonsense,” is little more than an attempt to distract from the fact that philosophically speaking, you are on shaking ground. And given that philosophy is what forms the foundation for all the appeals to evidence and the like you make, when your foundation is weak, none of the structures you build on it are very strong either.
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Fair enough.
In that case present the evidence for the foundational tenets of the Christian religion.
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Why? You’ve not demonstrated the first bit of evidence that you are honestly interested in my doing that, nor that you would be willing to seriously consider any of those things if I did. We’ve walked that path before, and it didn’t move the needle with you at all. Why bother taking the time to do it again? I’d rather invest that energy where it seems more likely to make an actual impact.
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I have strongly disputed your claims of evidence, and always will.
But I am extremely interested in actusl evidence, which has nothing to do with worldview or lenses etc
So, again, why not present the evidence?
Seriously if you have it as you say, then how hard could it be?
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Given that you define evidence in only empirical terms thanks to your adopted philosophical limitations, presenting anything that you are going to be willing to consider evidence is a fruitless endeavor for both of us. We’ve already been down that road before. And back. And forth. And back. And so on. At this point it feels rather like a silly waste of time to bother with the effort.
Maybe let’s try switching things up. You present the evidence that the information contained in DNA, in the DNA of every living creature in fact, could have come into existence entirely by chance. Make sure you factor in the latest research on protein synthesis and the odds against a single protein folding itself into shape entirely by chance, much less the arrangement of amino acids falling into place in a chemical environment in which such a phenomenon is rendered chemically unlikely in addition to the low chance of their landing in the precise sequence needed to fold properly.
Seriously, if such evidence exists, how hard could it be?
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So you have no evidence.
This makes any claims you make to the contrary a lie.
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Again, only when operating from within the bounds of your philosophical position.
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I forgot to add this: There’s no such as evidence that “has nothing to do with worldview or lenses etc.” Worldview always matters. Philosophy is always there in the background affecting how we see what we see even when we don’t understand or recognize its impact.
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What worldview governs gravity?
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None. Gravity simply is. But different worldviews are going to process and understanding differently depending on their broader understanding of reality. Some will share a similar view on the matter. Some won’t. That’s how worldview works.
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Wtf are you prattling on about now?
We are talking about EVIDENCE.
The HGP is fact.
The archaeological evidence that refutes the Exodus narrative and the Noachian Flood tale is fact.
Evolution is fact.
If you need your “Christian Worldview” to interpret these differently because you don’t agree with the factual scientific evidence then your bloody worldview is up the creek.
That’s how evidence works.
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You still don’t understand how worldview works. Or philosophy more generally it seems. Until then, you just keep sounding like it. I can’t help you if you aren’t interested in being helped. Alas…
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I perfectlybunderstand what the term worldview means and what it encompases.
For example. Christianity has a worldview as does Secular Humanism.
Naturalism also.
Atheism, on the other hand does not.
If your Christian Worldview does not accept things such as evolution, archaeological evidence Re Noachian Flood, Exodus, HGP etc then the fault lies with your worldview.
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Your explanation here reveals that, once again, when it comes to these philosophical matters, you’re out over your skis. But you have yet to evidence any kind of a willingness to learn what you don’t know, much less acknowledge that you don’t know it, so helping you has proven nigh on impossible. As I said: Alas…
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There is no need for anything philosophical when it comes to scientific evidence.
Let me ask you.
You have acknowledged you reject YEC.
Please explain precisely why you reject it and include any or all relevent scientific data.
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Nope again. All your interactions with any raw facts of creation (what I think we are both referring to as evidence right now) are governed by your particular philosophy of science. Philosophy lies behind all of it. You simply cannot escape that.
On the other part, no. I’m not interested in taking the time to do that. Nor do I have need for it.
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I am not talking specifically about creation and Yahweh’s hand in it but the more flamboyant tenets of YEC:
The earth being no more than 10k year old, dinosaurs existing with humans, Noah’s Ark and the global flood etc
You reject such assertions.
On what evidential grounds do you reject them?
Do you incorporate scientific evidence as support for your rejection?
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I know you are. And I am not interested in explaining why I don’t accept that for your sake.
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So I reckon we can add hypocrite to your ever-growing illustrious list of titles?
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Because I won’t explain a position to you? Besides, you’ve already long since labeled me that. You’ll have to pick a new one.
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Yes. Hypocrite.
A new one?
Crumbs. Let’s think.
We’ve had liar, and science denier.
Hypocrite, indoctrinated, coward, wilfully ignorant.
Every one a factual character description.
I thought about making a reference to child abuse for indoctrinating your kids but I suspect that might be pushing it?
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Nah, you’ve already hit that one too. You’re really starting to run low in your barrel of insults.
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Good grief, not insults Jonathan! I try not to get personal
These terms are all character descriptions.
If I were to call you stupid or a wife beater or tax evader. These are insults as they are unfounded.
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Clever evasion technique there, but don’t worry too much about it (not that I expect you do), I’m a pastor. Thick skin comes with the territory. If you don’t have at least rhinoceros hide for skin as a pastor, you’re probably in the wrong line of work.
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I expect having to deny reality, ignore evidence and lie through your teeth and smile at the same time does require a thick skin.
I am surprised you don’t feel at least a twinge of guilt when you indoctrinate your children with your religion.
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See? Thick skin. And, I’m confident I’m right. No guilt necessary.
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Confident you are right? Based on what?
Not evidence, this much we can conclude.
So… Faith?
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Plenty of evidence. Your philosophical commitments just don’t allow you to accept or acknowledge or properly interpret it. But then we’re just going in circles now. That’s my last ride of the day. If you spark my curiosity, I may slip back over tomorrow. Enjoy the rest of your sentinel hours.
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See? The title liar is well deserved.
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It’s refreshing to see someone so assured they are right that they refuse to even examine the chance they are not. Or are you that assured?
The lady does protest too much, me thinks.
Just curious, you mention you hope Jonathan’s children can one day forgive him for leading them astray as Christians. I would say just the opposite. If Jonathan has led his kids astray by having them follow a religion that does not exist then he, his kids, you and I will die and one day turn to worms, fade out. If you’re wrong, and there is a God, and they don’t learn about God they are not going to be turning to worms, but instead will spend their eternity in Hell. Seems to me that’s the worse of the two outcomes, regardless whether you believe or not. Which brings us back to Pascal’s theory of religion. Granted, I’m no believer that you should “believe” to stop from going to Hades. But, from a common sense stand point, it does seem to make sense to at least examine the world from that standpoint before you slam that door on it. I’ve found myself wrong too many times to believe at this point in my life I’ve got all the answers.
Well, lunch over. Carry on.
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Aaah.. Thomas.
I am always willing to consider my position is wrong. After all acknowledging being wrong is what got you and your ilk from believing the earth was flat to accepting the scientific evidence this was not the case.
How much more biblical nonsense that science has already refuted do you still cling to, I wonder?
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I know this was to Thomas, but come on, make better arguments. That the earth was flat was once the broadly accepted scientific understanding of the nature of the earth. If there were any secularists in that day, they would have been very likely to have accepted that understanding. It was Christians who did further research pointing to the error and correcting it.
Should we talk about things like Darwin’s belief in phrenology or eugenics (supported by secularists and some Christians alike) or the fact that the universe had a beginning or the supposed medical potential of embryonic stem cells or the so-called junk DNA that ID theorists correctly predicted would eventually prove to be discovered to have function? How much more secular nonsense that science has already refuted do you still cling to, I wonder?
The argument cuts uncomfortably in both ways and not in such a way as to give your point much in the way of credibility.
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Now look who can’t keep away?
Afraid Thomas can’t stick up for himself, are we?
Can’t resist getting in your six pen’eth can you, Jonathan?
In actual fact wasn’t it a Greek who demonstrated the earth was not flat?
And sure we can talk about those things.
And yet for some reason you are reluctant to admit the Noachian flood is a myth. As is the Exodus saga. The HGP for that matter. Or for you, evolution is still missing a trick or two.
This is a game that will ultimately have you retreating to faith and a Goddidit position.
But sure, we can play.
What’s your poison?
How you handling your hypocrisy, by the way?
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Nope, your arguments were just so bad I couldn’t leave them alone. Thomas is a big boy and can respond for himself if he deems doing so as something that’s worth his time. I’m still waiting to really see where there’s any hypocrisy to my position. As for the other things, we’ve talked about them at length. And, as I already explained in the other thread, they are logically subsequent to the question of God’s existence and so are little more than an attempt to force me (or anyone else) to play by your worldview rules. I’m just not willing to do that because I think that your worldview is broken from the start.
Okay, that’s it from me today. Gotta finish next week’s sermon so I can stay ahead.
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I made no arguments in my initial reply to Thomas so there was nothing “bad” for you to leave alone.
Admit it, you just can’t keep away.
Your ego and hubris are your undoing. Defend the faith at all costs!!!
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You did indeed make an argument. You made it implicitly, but it was there all the same. You argued that one of the reasons the Christian worldview is unreasonable is because Christians have believed silly things in the past that were later refuted by subsequent scientific findings. You used the earth’s being flat as an example. That was a bad argument that could just as easily be used against secularists, as I demonstrated with a reference to phrenology, eugenics, an infinite universe, embryonic stem cells, and junk DNA. You can explain why I countered your bad argument however you need to make you feel warm and fuzzy.
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That non Christians have believed silly things, and no doubt still do ( flat earthers, moon landing conspiracists), in no way exonerates the nonsense held as sacrosanct by Christians. In fact your position is worse as many refuse point blank to accept evidence when it refutes such beliefs, because to do so would quickly cause their faith to unravel.
Consider YECs and those who refuse to accept the human genome project, the evidence that refutes the Noachian Flood or the Exodus narrative.
What apologists do when faced with such facts is go back to the bible and reinterpret the text to allay the fears of the poor indoctrinated flock.
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People believe weird and wrong things whether they are believers of one religion or another or entirely secular. When believers of varying stripes are challenged over these, they cite their faith in God or god or the gods or what have you as a justification. When secular people are challenges over these, they cite their faith in science as a justification. They’re doing the same thing, but from the standpoint of different worldview positions. This whole affair neither helps your case nor particularly hurts it. It has a similarly neutral impact on mine.
Take, for instance, your argument here about how and why my position is worse. Consider the information problem of DNA. DNA contains incredibly vast amounts of information. Complex information. Remarkably specific information. From the standpoint of methodological naturalism, this cannot be explained in any kind of a satisfactory way. The only explanation your position can hold on how all of this information came to be is chance. But as with the fine-tuning problem, chance is an embarrassingly bad explanation. The odds against a single protein forming entirely by chance are astronomically small and that’s probably being too generous. In order to get one single-celled organism, that had to happen dozens of times. For a more complex organism, hundreds. In the entire scope of human experience, we know of but one source for the existence of that kind of information: a mind. Chance has never produced anything like that. The evidence on this matter is clear. And yet, you keep denying it in favor of a natural explanation (which, again, is limited to chance)….in spite of there being no evidence for such a thing. Yours is a position of faith. And when you start to really push on it, it is a faith that seems much less reasonable than mine. It is only for reasons of worldview fidelity that you cannot and will not accept the idea that a divine being could exist who is the better explanation for the existence of this information.
This is what I’m talking about when I say you are skipping first principles and weakening your entire argument. If this supernatural, divine being exists, the idea that this supernatural God did supernatural things in the past, but in ways modern detection methods haven’t figured out how to discern really isn’t that much of a stretch to believe. And, based on the first-principles arguments, the existence of this supernatural God is made far more reasonable than not.
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Mine is an evidence based position.
It is as simple as that.
Where evidence cannot confirm the only honest response is, I don’t know. Period.
And I am perfectly happy with this.
Worldview has no say.
You cannot claim worldview determines gravity or evolution. You would be an arse for asserting such and laughed out the room.
Furthermore, it matters not how small the “chances” are re: how the universe came about, or the origin of life, you simply cannot insert your god, Yahweh into the mix.
Tut, tut… That is cheating. Worse, to assert it to be fact is a lie.
Now, we have hard evidence the hgp is fact. Ergo Adam and Eve is fiction.
We have hard evidence the Noachian Flood is fiction.
We have hard evidence the Exodus narrative is fiction.
These are foundational tenets of your faith based beliefs.
Most Jews don’t mind as the majority are secular. They accept such things as historical fiction, or myth.
Consider David Wolpe’s speech/ admission to his New York congregation.
The speech is on record so you can look it up.
But it impacts YOUR religion.
Therefore to assert these tales are anything but fiction/myth makes you wilfully ignorant, indoctrinated or a liar.
You choose.
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Yours is a position of evidence interpreted through a particular worldview lens, just like mine. I’m genuinely sorry that’s concept has proven so difficult for you to grasp over the course of our long-running debate. Most of the rest of your comment is just variations on your not grasping that concept.
I know you get stuck on the Genesis and Exodus stories, but as I have explained before, those aren’t the “foundational tenets of [my] faith based beliefs.” That’s another idea that has proven far more difficult for you to fully accept than I wish it were.
As for the opinion of most Jews on the matter, I could probably care less what that happens to be, but it would take some effort. I don’t worship the same God that modern Jews do if they worship a god at all. As you say, many are secular, and their Jewishness is a cultural designation, not a religious one. They worship a god who is unitary. I worship one who is trinitary. I may have it wrong, but to say we worship the same God is to betray a lack of understanding of the fundamental truths claims about the nature of God that each religion makes.
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Original Sin is a foundational tenet of your faith.
The character Jesus of Nazareth preached Mosaic Law.
Moses is a mythological figure.
Surely you can join the dots?
Your god is Yahweh.
Which god do the Jews worship?
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Jews worship a God they call Yahweh, but when they talk about him, they aren’t talking about the same God I worship and call Yahweh. It’s simply the law of non-contradiction. Either they’re right about who Yahweh is and what He’s like, or I am, but we can’t both be. To say Jews and Christians worship the same God is to betray a lack of understanding of the respective religions.
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They, or rather the Canaanites had first dibs on the invented god, YHWH.. or Yahweh.
To establish some form of credibility for their claim that the Bible character Jesus of Nazareth is god, they were obliged to assert he was god incarnate, and that god is Yahweh.
This is the god you worship, and the deity you claim it’s the creator god.
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While I really do appreciate the humor in your telling me about the God I worship, you’re way out over your skis here.
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Yahweh is the Canaanite god adopted by the Israelites. The god who revealed himself to the character Moses.
If you do not accept Yahweh as your god do you follow a more Marcionite approach?
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Marcion was wrong. You’re not any more right. Yahweh is never understood in the Old Testament as a Canaanite god. That’s a distinction you make. The picture of God in the Old Testament is of a universal God over all creation. That God continued to reveal more and more about Himself, especially through Jesus, such that we understand Him through the lens of the New Testament Scriptures, to be a trinitarian God. Jews today don’t worship the “God of the Old Testament” at all. They worship a fabricated unitarian deity. They call this deity Yahweh, but it’s not the same God revealed in the Scriptures.
Once again, the matter here is simple. Either God is unitary or trinitary in nature, but He’s not both. Jews and Christians don’t worship the same God. Arguing otherwise reflects a lack of understanding of the truth claims of both religions.
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Archaeology has established he was a Canaanite god and he had a wife.
The Israelites were originally part of the general Canaanite population and adopted Yahweh.
Surely your bible study classes told you this?
Yahweh is the god of Judaism and Christianity. The doctrine of Trinity is a Church construct.
And for the record, any Google search will reveal that Yahweh is the Christian god.
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Wait, you’re telling me Google is where I should have been getting my theology all this time?!? No wonder I have it all wrong? Wow, I’ll just jump right on that!
Too sarcastic?
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No Mister Dipshit
Google is where you will find links to reliable Christian sites and encyclopedia that will inform and enlighten your ignorance.
Too brutal?
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Nah. It was pretty well met 😉
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Good. Well off you go then and do the Googly thing and learn all about the history of your Canaanite god and his missus.
Then you can come back and share what you have learned. Won’t that be fun?
Perhaps you could write a sermon for church and enlighten all your currently ignorant sheep?
They will surely thank you for it
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Oh, I’m still not going to go to Google for any theological learning I’m interested in pursuing, but it was well met all the same. Lord knows, three years of seminary and the collection of books I already have in my office went and go way, way beyond anything Google has to offer.
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Anything about Yahweh’s wife or his Canaanite origins?
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Other than their being nonsense? Not particularly.
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Hilarious!
Yes, you are in full denial.
Would you like me to find you a link to show you the error of your thinking or will you deny this also?
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Nah, don’t waste your time. That’s valuable stuff right there.
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It’s there in Kings, if you aren’t interested in research.
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In the book of Kings? That God had a wife? Which one? I must have missed that passage.
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Well, well, fancy that? Must be a long time since you read Kings.
Mee too!
This will give you something to read at bedtime then, won’t it?
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Okay, you sparked my curiosity. I looked it up.
Hahahahahahahaha!
That’s truly hysterical…and a good reason why I don’t get my theology from Google. If that’s what you accept as sound biblical studies, it’s no wonder your views are so all over the place.
That really was a good laugh. I appreciate that.
But seriously, that’s about as sound scholarship as the folks who have occasionally tried to claim Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. That’s some fine vintage nonsense there.
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Then you should broaden your reading material. Read William Dever or Francesca Stavrakapoulo.
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I saw the article about Stacrakapoulo’s work. That’s what prompted the waves of hysterical laughter. No thanks on that. I’ll stick to more serious scholarship.
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The first time I came across Yahweh ‘s wife was via Devers.
As Jews acknowkedge it and I am sure some Christians as well, and therecis archaeological evidence, what about it do you find so laughable?
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It’s nonsense scholarship just like the idea that Jesus had a wife.
A handful of extremely liberal Jewish scholars may indeed give the idea some credence, but you’ll have to count me a dedicated skeptic of the idea that anything resembling most Jews accept that kind of nonsense. But again, what modern Jews think about God doesn’t have any bearing on what I think about Him.
And, I’m sure there are some extremely liberal “Christians” (who I am hesitant to actually assign that label because their understanding of the nature of God is so profoundly divergent from the historically orthodox view that calling the two groups of people by the same name is a violation of the law of non-contradiction) who are willing to embrace the nonsense as well. I mean, I’m sure the Jesus Seminar folks would be willing to latch onto it.
All of this, though, is beside the fact that the Kings narrative gives absolutely no credence to that idea. None. Zero. Zilch. Yes, it is mentioned that there was an Asherah pole erected in the temple. This is described in a context in which we are being told why and how the people had left behind the worship of the real God so thoroughly and had let themselves become so pathetically syncretized by the local pagan worship, that the judgment God was going to send on them was entirely appropriate. In other words, the couple of verses that these modern scholars took as evidence for their nonsense don’t lend any credence to the idea that this was ever something orthodox followers of Yahweh accepted. Again: it’s bad scholarship rooted in a worldview that isn’t going to be able to make positive sense out of the Scriptures.
Ideas like this come along every so often. They’re always later discredited. And they’re always laughable. What’s really sad is that there are people who are so committed to not believing there’s any truth to the Christian worldview that they lap this kind of drivel up with a spoon when it is released. It’s like when Dan Brown wrote the Da Vinci Code several years ago. There was much fawning over the “new” scholarship his work was based on. Then it was all shown to be largely ahistorical nonsense, and things quieted back down again.
That’s why it’s laughable.
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Whereas the idea that there even was a god called Yahweh is the product of highly intelligent thinkers… Like you for example.
🤦
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One of the most profound criticisms of religion I have watched in a long time.
I challenge to to find a Christian video that will go even halfway to convince me of its worthiness.
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At the risk of continuing a third thread for which I do not have time, I finally watched this. He says some things in there that are right on the money and with which I couldn’t agree more. He also says some things that reflect either a profound ignorance of religion more generally or else a willful distortion of religious claims made by different religious movements. And his specific arguments against Christianity, while undeniably clever, aren’t very compelling to someone who has actually spent time studying it and who has a pretty fair grasp of the matter.
The closing section I found to be deeply ironic as in the increasingly de-Christianized culture of the West, we find people who are willing to say that tolerance should be extended to many if not all of the beliefs he offers up as examples of beliefs that are obviously wrong and should by no means by tolerated. The vast majority of the people making these claims for tolerance are not only non-Christian, but even anti-Christian in their worldview outlook. Many claim to be secularists of varying stripes. In the absence of a strong worldview (like Christianity, for instance) they tried the philosophically weak worldview of secularism, but when it failed to satisfy, they migrated to the stronger worldview of wokism with intersectionality as its foundational philosophy.
If he is (and you are) to be believed about the rationality of secularism, you would think it would be spreading rapidly around the world. The demographics, however, don’t bear that out. Where people (especially in the cultural West) have left behind Christian theism, while many did a stopover on secularism for a season, they are increasingly leaving that behind in favor of some other more spiritually-sensitive worldview. It’s almost like they have an inherent sense that secularism doesn’t ultimately describe the world as it actually is. It describes it as a relative handful of people who are evangelistic devotees of methodological naturalism would like it to be, but that’s about it.
Harris puts on a good show, but he’s just not very convincing. And his waning global influence would suggest that I’m not the only one who thinks so. Again, he and the other “Four Horsemen” had their season in the sun, but they are fading in influence, and no one is picking up the mantle in their wake. Even Dawkins has started acknowledging that maybe Christianity isn’t really so bad, and that he prefers a Christianized culture to the alternatives offered by other worldview options because its cultural outcomes are better than its competitors.
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Why would you think secularism should spread rapidly?
It is slowly but surely usurping Christianity in Western Europe.
It will take longer in the US as your country has always been an outlier in such matters.
As Christianity is not the only religion to consider do you truly believe Islam is a better alternative than secular humanism ?
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You’re mistaken in that assessment. Christianity is fading in Western Europe, no question about that. But it isn’t being usurped by secularism. It is being usurped by various other forms of theism. As I have said, it looked for a brief season like it was on the rise, but that season quickly passed. People on the whole quickly recognized the emptiness of SH and moved on to other theistic worldviews that offer stronger and more compelling answers to the big questions of the world.
As for Islam being a better alternative to SH in the absence of Christianity, where have I ever said something that would indicate such a belief? They’re both bad and for different reasons. That being said, there is a strong cultural argument to be made that the brief time SH had in the sun in the early 2000s after 9/11 when Christianity was already very much on the decline is what has paved the way for the rapid advance of Islam across Western Europe. The weakness of the SH worldview has given way to a stronger one, in this case Islam. Stronger does not mean better, by the way, only stronger and more compelling in the robustness of its answers to the big questions of life that form the basis of a worldview.
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I never said you indicated anything about Islam. It was a straightforward question.
Why is secular humanism “bad” and Christianity better?
What evidence have you got that SH is empty and on the wane?
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