ENIGMA OF
CREDULITY
An important
series of books on Christian apologetics, The Christian View of the Bible, has
a very interesting second volume.
Entitled The Enigma of Evil it is a good laugh. The title is appropriate in an ironic sort of
way. The reason is that the Wenham book is an
Enigma of Evil.
The Wenham book uses a lot of words that never
really say anything of import. It spends
a lot of time spelling out the nasty bits in both the Old and New Testament as
if with relish.
The Wenham book admits that Jesus accepted the Old
Testament as being from God and divinely inspired (page 16). Rather than conclude from this that Jesus was
a very dangerous false prophet the Wenham book goes on to explain that the perception
of the New Testament as being nicer than the Old is wrong for it is actually
worse (page 17). The New Testament
reaffirms all the savagery of the Old that was commanded by God (page 21).
Then the Wenham book attacks the view that God is
not all-powerful and is forced to permit suffering by his lack of resources to
fight it. This view is attacked on the
grounds that this God who is not sovereign is not the God of Jesus Christ and
the Bible. Decency would require the
Wenham book to use philosophical arguments against this God but no. It uses the statements of a book, the Bible, on the
assumption that the book is from God though you can’t be sure of that until you
are sure God could have written it and be like what it says. That’s just plain old fundamentalist dogmatism.
The Wenham book then pompously assumes
that it is no comfort to tell the parents of a child who has been tragically
killed that it is not God’s will but God could do nothing about it (page 30). There is no need for parents to believe in
God to believe that some good can be made out of the situation. There is no comfort in the idea of a God when
that God could allow anything to happen for his good purpose for who is to say
that purpose will benefit the parents?
How can one be comforted by the thought of the child being in a Heaven
where happiness is like an injection from outside and the child is not supposed
to care about it but God’s will? How can
a child be happy with a God who says that morality is about rules and not
long-term happiness? Yarns about God’s
loving purpose are offensive to parents who have little or no belief in God for
their feeling will be that the child should still be alive when they don’t
believe enough.
The Wenham book rejects the theory of
the book by John Hick, Evil and the God of Love, which says that God
gradually has worked on man through evolution and life to make man holy bit by
bit and allows suffering as part of this sanctifying process (page 38). It says that this theory makes the fall excusable
as part of the process of making people grow in holiness while the Bible sees
it as an unmitigated disaster. Then this Wenham
drivel rejects the view that the first man and woman had only a vague awareness of God
that made their decision to sin understandable for Genesis says they had
intimate intercourse with God meaning their happiness was complete. Another
contradiction to Hick is that the Bible sees man as being more likely to sin
than do good and as totally depraved.
God did not make man to be good except perhaps the self-righteous
“saved”. I find Hick’s theory
objectionable from the point of view of decency. It means you can do evil
believing that the damage is a good thing for people will improve in virtue from
combating it. It means evil isn't so bad for God needs it to use it
to make us holy. But the Bible one is ten times
worse and more malicious and more obviously condones the evil ways of God.
It says that Adam and Eve brought evil and punishment on us though we weren't
even there. It condones the cruelty of God. It says that God set it
up so that it would be a disaster for us if Adam and Eve sinned and yet that it
is not his fault at all that we are in such trouble. Also, believers in the idea
that Adam and Eve brought sin and suffering and punishment on themselves and on
all their descendants still accept the idea that God uses evil to make us better
people. They still need that excuse.
In the fourth chapter praises God that
suffering follows sin like a kind of deterrent (page 45). But suffering cannot ever deter anybody from
being evil only from practicing it.
Because if you decline to do evil because of what might happen you are
only worried about yourself and not about what is right and that is an evil
attitude and still makes you evil. The
Wenham book is just lying to make God seem like a good guy.
The Wenham book argues that few
criminals want to be told that they could not help what they did (page
46). It says that to tell him he was
programmed that way is to accuse him of being a lunatic. It is not.
It is saying he is a normal person whose background caused what he
did. The criminal does not want to hear
it was not his fault if he believes in free will. We cannot say that free will exists just
because some are conditioned and deceived into thinking it does.
At least the Wenham book states that retribution must also try to deter and reform for punishment should have three elements, retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation. It argues that if you just worry about one of the last two elements the result is that you could find the need to hurt a person more than you would need to if you had to limit yourself to what was fair and what the person deserved (page 48/9). You could hurt a person who stole for life in jail if you think you haven’t succeeded in changing him or her. But this is just Christian scare-mongering. You cannot keep a person in jail just because they won’t change for hurting them to change them more than the crime would seem to require would be a worse evil than unleashing them on the world to steal again. You don’t even know if they will steal again even if they still would like to. Even if you believe in retribution and the person has paid his or her debt in jail for their crime you could insist that they be kept in jail longer if they haven’t changed but not as punishment but as rehabilitation or deterrence. Suppose you believe in the need for rehabilitation. Then you cannot prove that hurting the criminal more than he or she deserves for the crime is bad. You could keep on giving suffering to them as you await their rehabilitation and reformation. This further suffering would not be punishment but treatment. There is nothing in the Christian theory of retribution that forbids such treatment.
Page 50 states that if you
reject retribution you open the door to those who want to persecute
minorities. It says that if a government
seeing no use in a religion decided that it was a mental illness and disorder
to follow that religion and enforced rehabilitation treatment on the members
and locked them up in institutions then you cannot say it is wrong if you are
against retribution. That is slander
against those who rightly consider religion to be dependent on neurosis. I mean that even if we do consider religion to be an
illness that does not mean we consider everybody who is religious to be in need
of treatment. We all have mental disorders of one kind or
another. It is only the severe cases
that need to be taken into care.
It is alleged that if you
punish a person more than they deserve for the sake of deterrence the
punishment will not have a deterrent effect on him or others for they will be
angry (page 52). But that is because of
the way society has been conditioned.
And there will be many who will be deterred.
Many people would be deterred for they don’t want society to think that they
pulled the worst on themselves by incorrigibility.
It is then asserted that the
person who is told that his crimes were just the product of the programming his
brain got through life will find little incentive to reform (page 53). This is an insult to the millions of
law-abiding and courteous determinists who do not use the non-existence of free
will as an excuse for being evil. We
know that all people are psychologically determinists for they cannot prove
that they have free will to themselves.
How can you use free will if you cannot be sure you have it?
The Wenham book then discusses the
problem that it is so hard to work out what would be the fair punishment for
anybody for being responsible is not about doing wrong acts and being
accountable but about his character. A
drunk is not to blame for the things he does when he is drunk but he is to
blame for having got drunk knowing what it could lead to (page 54).
The Wenham book says cynically that if
God had not acted to check original sin a bit then the whole world would be a
hellhole (page 56). It says that
suffering is often caused to follow sin for the purpose of keeping some measure
of control over us. No Christian can
subscribe to this view because it implies that God does not need to make us
free to do what Hitler did and it accuses God of giving us too much freedom and
of being wrong in doing so. The Christian
has to regret that suffering deters on the grounds that freedom to sin or love
comes first.
It is not original sin that
makes people bad. We are born with minds
that are clean slates and which are progressively corrupted by those around us
unless we learn to arrest that filthy pollution. It is irrational thinking and belief that
corrupts the mind and produces evil for evil is irrationality. The doctrine of original sin leads to the
attitude, “Let us not try too hard to make people sensible for their innate
sinfulness makes success only too limited”.
The sheer evil of the Christian doctrinal system is nauseating. Only the Devil could give the grace to be a
committed believing Christian. In
fairness, there are other religions which are no better.
Then the Wenham book says that God is
often slow to punish after sin. He takes his time so that the sinner might repent for the sinner
would repent for the wrong reason, selfishness, if punishment followed sin too
closely all the time (page 61). The
sinners
would avoid sin to avoid pain and not because sin was offensive to God. But to avoid sin because of punishment is not
to avoid sin at all. It is to harbour
sinful attitudes in one’s heart which one is afraid to put into practice but
would given the right circumstances. For
example, if there was no threat of punishment the person would sin. To
do that is sneakier than sinning openly for it is sinning with less chance of
paying for it in any way. So instant
punishment would not stop sin at all but delayed punishment makes it more
likely and more serious. The Wenham book says
another reason God delays the punishment is to give the Christians a chance to
make sure they want the person punished for the right motives. They have to want them punished to please God
which means approving of God taking his time and not for the satisfaction of
their own crave to see vengeance visited.
The Wenham book says that Adam was us when he
sinned so that is how we sinned in Adam and insists that the answer to the
problem of the innocents suffering is that there are no innocents (page 64). It says we are guilty of Adam’s sin because
we feel guilty. But we can feel guilty
for what is not wrong at all and we do not feel responsible for Adam’s sin.
The Wenham book callously insults
those who have been tortured for weeks and even months by alleging that since
Jesus shared our joys and sorrows to the utmost nobody can suffer more than he
did on the cross (page 66). The Wenham
book
suggests that God kindly has arranged it that if we receive too much suffering
we pass out. Come to think of it, why
then did Jesus not pass out but was supposedly conscious all the time until he
died?
It is interesting that the
Wenham book
thinks that official orthodox theology was born in 553 AD at the Second Council
of Constantinople (page 69).
The Wenham book rejects the
traditional doctrine of Hell or everlasting torture. That is the only time any humanity appears in
it. But the fact remains that nothing in
the Bible refutes the doctrine. The
Wenham book
arbitrarily assumes that the passages in Revelation that make eternal punishing
clear are being symbolic and just because it chooses to take the references to
everlasting death literally though death is used non-literally many times in
the Bible. The safe side alone would
suggest that Hell be taken literally.
Despite being written about the
problem of evil in the world and in the Bible the Wenham book says that it is not our
business to justify the ways of God (page 102).
So we have no right to know why we suffer. If that is true then we cannot have any
rights at all and whoever treats us well is sinning. The enlightened person would be put off
loving God reading this vicious tripe.
But vicious as it is it is what believers in God are forced to say if
they want their belief in God.
It is admitted that the prophet
Jeremiah lied for the sake of obeying a king (page 107). How God could choose a man who would lie as a
prophet is not explained. God said in
Deuteronomy 18 that a prophet had to say only perfectly right things to be a
true prophet and once he made a mistake he was to be totally rejected as
inspired by God even if 999 out of a thousand things he said are right or
plausible. This obviously says that you
should not follow any prophet until you know everything about him and are
totally sure he is reliable. You don’t
follow him until you find he makes a blunder.
You follow him after he is dead when you are sure his work is done and
is perfect (another reason why Jesus Christ as portrayed in the gospels cannot
be considered a real prophet or messenger of God). When you have to be that sure that God has
spoken how can you be allowed to follow a prophet you
have caught out in a needless lie even if his lie was not claimed to have been
endorsed by God?
The Wenham book says that lying is
permitted by God when it is the only way to avoid breaking a more serious moral
law (page 116) and that the lie is still evil and should not be celebrated
though the courage to tell it should be.
And it adds that the fault of the evil is not with the liar but the evil
people who forced her or him to lie. It
argues that God through the prophetess Deborah approved of Jael
telling lies though the Bible never says that God was speaking through her
then! It is hypocrisy to praise the
courage to tell a lie and then say the lie is still a terrible thing that should
not be liked but merely stomached. Are we to
praise the desire of Jack the Ripper to save lives by slaying prostitutes who
passed on deadly disease to men? The courage to tell a lie is courage that
is warped to do evil and it is not good courage. So what praise then can a
true Christian have even for one who lies to save lives? With Wenham's
logic we must start saying that the man who knowingly drives a murderer to your house to kill you
is a good man and does not do wrong.
(See the Christian double-standard again? They would condemn the driver and then they
reverse the standard to suit themselves.
If that is love then I would hate to see hate). The courage and the lie are inseparable. The love behind the courage is the courage
for courage is an expression of love so it follows that the love was evil as
well. If we condemn everything that
depends on a little evil we will praise nothing and nobody and become callous
and cynical. This is one of the million
reasons why the idea of a good God who has the power to stop evil but who lets
it happen for a reason is anathema to informed atheists.
The Wenham book says that under the
Law of Moses a woman’s rights were guarded if she chose to remarry after a divorce
(page 111). This is another instance of
fundamentalist inability to interpret the Bible. The Wenham book allows divorce but NEVER ever allows
remarriage.
The Wenham book is frightening when it
says the Old Testament laws of God may still be relevant but we have to decide
how far God wants us to apply them today (page 112). At least it is an admission that any
Christian who wants to stone gays to death in obedience to the law is not to be
classed a heretic.
The Wenham book argues that
imprisonment is crueller than the capital punishment laws of the Bible (page
118). It deliberately omits the fact
that the capital punishment was usually carried out by stoning which was
painful and since the law never said that the stoning was to be carried out so
that death would be ensured to be as rapid as possible it follows that to spend
days on stoning somebody to death was permissible. Laws permit what their loopholes allow. You would rather go to jail than be stoned to
death. If imprisonment is so cruel that
the Old Testament law would be better then it is a
duty to keep the Old Testament law.
Imprisonment need not be excessively cruel. If it is this is an
abuse of imprisonment and not the fault of the practicing of jailing.
It is disturbing how the Wenham
book
condemns the practice of making thieves pay for stealing and letting adulterers
who wreck families and steal spouses from their husbands get away with it for
doing worse (page 123). That could lead
to adultery being made illegal. Sexual
acts between consenting adults that do not cause a public outrage or
disturbance are not the state’s business.
If we start making it the state’s business then there is nowhere to draw
the line. It is one of the areas in
which the state has to allow privacy.
The Bible infers that the state should interfere because even if the Old
Testament Law was just for a theocracy and God was head of state it is still no
reason for God considering private sexual sins his business as president of the
nation even if they are his business other ways.
The Wenham book argues that
homosexuality is often caused by overbearing mothers and absent fathers. All
fathers were distant and
mothers often domineering and/or smothering years ago which would lead one to
expect most men who grew up with that to be gay but they are not. The book
then
says the Old Testament God was right to demand that his people put those who had compulsions to engage in
gay sex to death by stoning for it was a mercy for them for they would have been filled
with distress at how they could only use their genitals unnaturally (page 127). This statement defies belief. The person with a compulsion is sick and
should not be stoned to death or punished.
And if the law only wanted compulsive gays stoned it would have said
so. It said it was enough for a man to lie with
a man to merit the death penalty. And how could stoning to death be a
mercy? Why not cut their heads off? Or more reasonably still, their
genitals? Or more reasonably still make
sure they only have sex with guys who have the same compulsion. In that case, their activity wouldn't be a sin for
they are forced by their inner defects. This Wenham book is whitewashing the bloodcurdling
evil of the gaybashing God of the Old Testament. Homosexuality is natural for sex is about
love and pleasure more than about propagating the human race. You can’t kill a gay person to put them out
of their misery just because society has made them feel unnecessarily dirty and
to be second-class citizens.
I protest vehemently against
the stereotyped assertion that for those who give up the love of God that it is
“no surprise” if they soon give up the love of spouse and parent as well (page
127). Atheists who know what they are
about more than just disbelieve in God they hate not him but the God concept.
It is a belief we oppose not a person. We don't even believe in that
person. Yet despite our hatred of the belief many of us are
wonderful caring people. Since religion
bases what it calls its morality on the love of God it has to say that those who
disbelieve in God will soon fall deeper into the cesspool
of evil. It has to make a negative stereotype of the sceptic or unbeliever. Religion is profoundly bigoted by nature
and true believers in diversity will get their names off its roll books. Then the Wenham book claims that godlessness and
lack of love for God has a cumulative affect and can nurture unnatural
tendencies that would otherwise have done no harm until the person becomes a
full-blown homosexual. To call anybody
whose tendencies can be fulfilled harmlessly unnatural is patronising and
sanctimonious.
The Wenham book justifies the Old
Testament having no concern for insane murderers but instead sentencing them
all killers to death by stoning without distinction by saying that
incarcerating insane murderers in asylums is not mercy and execution is better
(page 129). This is terrible. It is just justifying the Bible at all costs
without regard to people. The Wenham book has
the cheek to admit that it recognises that murderers are usually not right in
the head. We see how scandalous it is
that somebody can write such outrageous things and thanks to religion and the
undeserved respect it gets can get away with it. They forbid pornography and allow this filth
that is ten times worse.
It is impossible to see how God
could call himself just as he decrees that certain kinds of criminals must pay
with their lives when somebody who is dying could commit a capital crime on the
basis that he or she is not going to live anyway. Capital punishment is worse carried out on a
young person than an old one. Bible
Christians need to be lacking in humanity and a sense of decency to support the
Bible.
This stuff that Christians
teach about us deserving death is deadly because it will lead and should lead
if the person is any way normal to a lack of compassion when somebody dies or
is killed tragically. It gives everybody
the psychological grounding from which they can work on making themselves
murderers. When Christianity cannot
prove that it should say such things it is clear that it is flouting every rule
against incitement to hatred in the world.
The Wenham book says that the Bible is correct to say that if you commit murder
you should be killed (page 129). Then it
vindictively accuses all of us of being murderous Cains
and murderous Judases at heart meaning we would murder if we dared. It
says that of us just because
Christ made that same accusation. The
true atheist who denies free will is not a Cain or Judas at heart. What he is, is a
person who wants the person who bothers him to reform.
The Wenham book claims that when the Bible says
that God miraculously sent bears to tear a gang of boys to pieces for mocking
his prophet it does not say they were killed!
(page 144).
This is totally absurd. One is unlikely to be alive after being torn to
pieces.
God presumably froze the boys to the spot when the bears were able to
attack them all when there were forty-two in number torn up.
The Wenham book justifies the divine
command to Israel to destroy the Canaanites by saying that the Canaanites were
so corrupt and evil that they would have weakened themselves as a nation and so
it was best to have them exterminated (page 151).
The Wenham book glosses over the fact that
when God commanded cities that turned away from him to be burned to the ground
with their murdered inhabitants in them he stated that the city was never to be
rebuilt (page 153) indicating that the site was sacred, indicating that it was
all a human sacrifice.
The Wenham book says that the Old
Testament God was right to be so severe and that love requires severity and not
cruelty (page 160). But for those of us
who cherish our freedom the last thing we want is severe god-worshippers. There is little difference in practice
between severity and cruelty.
It evilly argues that God had
to be very strict with the Jews because they were to be the nation which would
produce the Messiah. That is utter rot
because Jesus came among an evil nation that put him to death and the severe
preparation made nothing of Israel for nearly all of its history up till then.
I give the Wenham book some
credit. It says that Paul permitted
anger but decreed that it had to be without sin and it admits that sinless
anger may be an emotion that is never felt but which is certainly extremely
rare if it is (page 183). This puts the
Christian lie that we can love the sinner and hate the sin to rest. We are told later that this lie is the truth
and only God can make me love those whose sins I hate (page 187). But perhaps there is no contradiction
intended for it may be thought that God will only succeed after we die for it
is so hard for us. In reality, the contradiction
is there and cannot be solved.
Considering how intensely Christianity feels against sin it is clear
that to call upon people to loath sin is asking them to feel the same way about
the sinners.
The statement that Jesus was
moved to tears by the compassion he felt for people with
problems (page 194) is offensive to atheist ears for the following
reason. If Jesus were God then how God
could feel sorry for people whose lives he organised in such a way as to cause
all these problems is impossible to explain.
God could have put us on a nice planet that never lets the population go
beyond a thousand in which it would be easier to be good and there would be
less bad example.
The Wenham book says that when a
person tortures an animal the worst damage is probably done to the tormentor
and not the animal (page 214) the implication being that it is not such a big
deal that the animal is hurt. In other
words, the tormentor ruins his own soul by enjoying such evil and corrupts
himself. But if the tormentor repents
this will not happen. So the Christian
cannot condemn him for hurting the animal as much as for his damaging
himself. But if he can prevent damage by
repenting then it is not damaging that is wrong and immoral but not
repenting. Christians are making the
torment of animals out to be a tolerable and minor wrong in which case it is
impossible to see how anybody maltreating animals could damage themselves in
any important way. Presumably the
closeted heretic only damages himself too.
But religion still says that heresy is a dreadful sin on its own apart
from not repenting of heresy. So if you
are a heretic for ten harmless seconds it is still a major offence. I am tired of the nonsense that Christians
foist on the unsuspecting world.
The purpose of the Wenham book trying
to minimise the crime of hurting an animal is because it hopes to rescue God
from the accusation of cruelty when he made animal to slaughter and torment and
kill animal for food and for pleasure. We are told it is a good
thing when herds kill the sick among them.
But most herds do not need to get the sick off their backs.
It is shocking that believers in God have to believe that animal pain is not that bad to get God off the hook. What right have they to believe that when they don’t know what it is like? They open the way to people who wish to say that the people who seem to suffer horrendously don’t really but are putting it on. They open the way to making people unaware of how much harm their cruel deeds can do. But people don’t matter – only God does.
The book shows that the Christian faith even when it tries to be nice fails miserably. The book is a disgrace.
BOOKS CONSULTED