Book Review: The Reason for God
Let us examine a popular book, The Reason for God, that sees to show that the Christian faith is a good thing.
Christians claim that the worst intolerance and warmongering and persecuting ever, was carried out by people who believed that religion necessarily led to bigotry. They say that the idea that religion and bigotry and intolerance all went together hand in hand led unbelievers to persecute religion (page 5, The Reason for God). But if religion really and necessarily leads to such evils then is it intolerance and warmongering to outlaw religion? Not in principle but in practice it is unnecessary to ban religion. Had those who persecuted religion been more confident in their own philosophies they would not have needed to persecute religion. It was because they didn't believe strongly enough in their own secularism and naturalistic philosophy and were scared religion might be true that they persecuted. When one religion contradicts the other in fundamental matters, it is clear that it is religion more than unbelief that should lead to insecurity and doubt and violence.
Belief in God certainly implies that intolerance is a duty in relation to sceptics and unbelievers. If there is no God looking after people, then it is plainly evil and wrong to hurt them. It isn't so bad if there is a God. Religionists claim that unbelievers can reason this way but can also reason that because there is no God they can do what they want even if it hurts others. But can the unbelievers reason that way? If they do they are being twisted. They are actually unreasoning. Christians say that Marx said that if you believe there is a life after death it can lead to you not caring much about people who have to face this life. But they counter that you can say that if there is no life but this one then why not enjoy it and refuse to sacrifice for others (page 66, The Reason for God). This is totally silly for it is in making others happy that we find happiness ourselves. So Marx then cannot be answered. He was right.
Christians often claim that evil and suffering isn't evidence against the existence of an all-powerful and all-loving God (page 23, The Reason for God). They may say that if you look inside a kennel and don't see a dog then it is reasonable to assume there is no dog inside but if you are looking for a small insect and don't see one then it is unreasonable to assume there is none inside (page 24, The Reason for God). But the analogy doesn't apply. It indicates that evil and suffering are minor things like the insects so their existence would not refute the love of God. The analogy is evil when applied to God. To honour God it is necessary to have some degree of coldness towards human suffering. Those who do not develop the coldness are acting in spite of their religion and not because of it. Religion based on God is evil.
Another complaint made by Christians against unbelievers in the existence of a loving God is that they assume that much evil and suffering is pointless. The unbelievers contend that a God who can stop pointless evil but who lets it happen would be evil. So the Christian response is that just because we see evil and suffering or some of it as pointless does not mean that it really is pointless (page 23, The Reason for God). But God can give us light to prevent us perceiving evil as pointless. In other words, he could remind you that you don't know it all so it may not be as pointless as it looks. Perceiving evil as pointless is a pointless evil!
Religion says God can bring good out of evil. But that still makes the evil pointless. Just because somebody can work to bring good out of evil does not mean that the evil is in some sense valuable. It is because the evil is vile and shouldn't happen that it is necessary to turn it to good.
If we have the right to see evil as pointless, if we have the right to our opinion at all we have this right, then clearly we have the right not to believe in God. Christianity is clear that it is a duty to believe in God.
To teach that evil has a point is to teach something really silly. Evil by its nature can't be useful. It is also to condone the evil. If God is right to hurt Amy then hurting her was not evil but good. We should follow God's example.
God is all-powerful. To seek a relationship with him is inherently one sided, exploitive, dehumanising and unhealthy. A healthy relationship between two persons or two beings requires give and take on each side. There has to be some mutual loss of independence. But God cannot sacrifice independence for us. An all-powerful being can't do that. All powerful really means infinitely independent and needs nothing at all. A God to whom we must adjust and conform to and who does not adjust to and conform to us at all would be an oppressive God and be an invitation to us to be oppressors in his name and for him. This leaves us with the problem of a God who is not worth adoring at all.
The Christian answer to this problem is that God became a vulnerable man in Jesus Christ (page 49, The Reason for God). By putting himself in danger from us, God took on our lot. He chose to suffer as we can. But God cannot really become vulnerable. He can only pretend to be vulnerable. Even if Jesus did not use his power as God to protect himself from us he still had it so he was not vulnerable. A man wearing a suit of armour who bares his chest to let the assassin strike is not vulnerable - he has protection and does not use it. You are only vulnerable if you lose your protection.
The atheist conviction that belief in God is bigoted and oppressive is vindicated! Christians want us to oppress us further by urging us to pretend that their solution is any help!
Many Christians including the author of The Reason for God, say that those who go to Hell to suffer forever put themselves there because God is letting them have their own way. They are not yelling to get out (page 79). They are thought to be blaming everybody else and to be so self-absorbed and self-pitying that they will not change. The book attempts to prove this view from the Bible but not one verse can be found to clearly say that this is the reason people stay in Hell forever. Lots of sinners are totally self-absorbed and incapable of love and still change. If dying somehow turns a person into such a permanent pit of bitterness, God could prevent this effect. The effect would mean that some other factor than the person is causing the descent into utter selfishness and obstinacy. It contradicts the Christian need to blame the sinner only for his or her damnation. The doctrine of Hell is an encouragement to violence.
Page 28, states that Jesus suffered a terrible death on the cross but that Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley who were martyred for their Protestant faith suffered worse. It says that they died with greater confidence and calmness than Jesus. But we read that Jesus was troubled a lot on the night of his arrest and later before he died on the cross yelled, "My God why have you abandoned me?" and that it means his suffering was emotionally worse than theirs. But nothing in the Bible indicates that such an idea is true. The idea that Jesus' suffering was worse than anybody else's is simply insulting to the fact that many mothers in those days endured worse than he did when they gave birth.
Science has to assume that everything has a natural cause (page 86, The Reason for God). Christians claim that this methodology does not imply that belief in miracles is unscientific. They say that nobody should say that the methodology means that science has proven that there is no other kind of cause, such as supernatural, apart from natural causes. Suppose a scientist does an experiment to show that lypocene in tomato puree has antioxidant properties. But if there may be supernatural powers in the lypocene that is fighting oxidising then the lypocene does not have antioxidant capabilities. It is the powers that have them. Then the experiment fails. The scientist should not be saying that lypocene is an antioxidant. The scientist indeed should not have the nerve to conduct the experiment and waste time and money. Thus although science does not claim to prove the supernatural never happens, it is unscientific to assume that it does. It is anti-science. It is therefore anti-truth. Miracle claims attack science even when it is claimed that science verifies them.
Some Christians claim that Christianity is not a religion for it is based on obeying God out of gratitude whereas in religion you obey God out of fear (page 180, The Reason for God). But even those who deny that we must do good works and obey God to earn salvation fear chastisements from him if they do not live as he asks.
Is it arrogant to teach that your religion is right and to try and convert others to it? John Hick would say yes. He would say this because there are people just as clever as you who believe different things and who will never convert. He would say that you are arrogant for insisting that you are right when others as clever as you if not more believe that you are wrong.
Christians reply as follows. They say that if you assume you can't tell which faith is true, you are making a religious act of faith that God has not established any true faith or that he has let the evidence disappear if he has (page 12, The Reason for God). But it is not necessarily religious. It is not religious or an act of faith if you think there is no God. You put faith in persons not in facts. Also, it is more in tune with tolerance to hold that there is no faith that can be known as true. But Christians will reply that if a faith is the one true faith, it is hardly tolerant to it to say that there is no one true faith. But the fact remains that we consider things true based on what experts say. This is true of religion as in everything else.
Christians say that it is intolerance to accuse people of arrogance for saying they have the one true faith. Christians say that if we can't call our faith the true faith because there are others who say it is wrong who are smarter than us or as smart, then we contradict ourselves if we say that there is no true faith when others as clever as us if not more say there is.
Consider this. We have to say there is a true faith or there is not. The assumption that there is not is the least narrow. The assumption that there is not is the least dangerous for we clearly cannot depend on religious experts to correctly inform us what the true faith is.
Religion says that if you assume that there is no true faith, that is an act of religious faith. Many religionists that say that it is faith, hope to persuade us that since we assume a religious faith no matter what we do, we ought to assume what they assume. They indicate that we should assume that there is a true faith and that this true faith is their version of faith or both.
If we want a true faith, we should pick the one that is the most tolerant. And this would naturally be the view that the true faith is that there is no true faith only human strivings towards truth and that all faiths have value.
Christianity commands you to forgive. Christians say forgiveness requires the refusal to make a person pay for the wrong they have done (page 188, The Reason for God). They say forgiving hurts because it involves refusing to satisfy the need you have to lash out at them and the refusal to have the consolation of making them suffer. To forgive is to love the person who has hurt you (page 189, The Reason for God). But you need to hate them first. To command a person to forgive is to order them to hate the sinner first. If you never hate the sinner, you are condoning what they do not forgiving. If hate is right at all, then how can you be doing wrong if you hurt a sinner or hate her or him?
Christians trick people to make them think that they command that they must forgive and they command this so that they will not suffer due to the pain and hatred in their hearts. But you can intend a person to suffer terribly for some evil they did to you without feeling any hatred or anger towards them. Forgiving is one thing. Forgetting the hatred and anger is a totally separate thing.
Christians believe that sin is best described as putting good things, rather than bad things, in the place of God (page 171, The Reason for God). They argue for example that if we put family first in our life then we will tend to downgrade and be cold towards the needs of other families (page 168, The Reason for God). They say that if we put God first and are willing to lose everything for him if need be then we will find that we love all families not just our own (page 168, The Reason for God). To be able to do what the Christians ask, we would need to know there is a God. Belief is not 100% certainty. In so far as you suspect that there might not be a God, the more you could put your family before him. The Christian message then cannot help the vast majority even of churchgoers who cannot honour God as required by that faith. And worse, it is not God who is helping. It is faith in God, belief.
The Reason for God (page 110) defends the Bible God for saying in Ephesians 6:5 and in other places that slaves must obey their masters. It argues that there was very little difference in those days between slaves and free persons. They looked and dressed like everybody else and were not segregated. Most could earn enough to buy their own freedom. They were not poor. It says slaves in those days were not like the slaves of the New World who were the property of the owner completely and could be cheated by the owner and raped and beaten at will. Christians say 1 Timothy 1:9-11 and Deuteronomy 24:7 forbid trafficking in slaves and kidnapping people to become slaves. The Timothy verse only forbids kidnapping. Deuteronomy only forbids the stealing of an Israelite against his will to make a slave of him. The Timothy verses only gives a general rule but exceptions were allowed. The Bible God permitted the beating of slaves. In wartime, kidnapping people to make slaves of them was permitted. The Deuteronomy verse contradicts nothing that God commanded.
No intelligent unbeliever would be won for Christianity with a book like The Reason for God.
BIBLE
QUOTATIONS FROM:
The
Amplified Bible
BOOKS
CONSULTED
A
Critical Review of Humanist Manifestos 1 & 2, Homer Duncan MC,
International Publications,
A
Shattered Visage The Real Face of Atheism,
A
Thief in the Night, John Cornwell, Penguin,
A
Woman Rides the Beast, Dave Hunt, Harvest House,
All
Roads Lead to
Apologetics
and Catholic Doctrine, Part 1, Most Rev M Sheehan DD, M H Gill & Son,
Apologetics
for the Pulpit, Aloysius Roche Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd,
Blind
Alley Beliefs, David Cook, Pickering & Inglis,
Catholicism
and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press,
Christianity,
David Albert Jones, OP, Family Publications,
Convert
or Die, Edmond Paris, Chick Publications,
Correction
and Discipline of Children, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Crisis
of Moral Authority, Don Cupitt, SCM Press,
Documents
of the Christian Church, edited by Henry Bettenson, Oxford University Press,
Does
Does
Conscience Decide? Bishop William J
Philbin, Catholic Truth Society of
Ecumenical
Jihad, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press,
European
Union and Roman Catholic Influence In
Fascism
in the
Fifty
Years in the “Church” of
God
and the Gun, The Church and Irish Terrorism, Martin Dillon, Orion,
God Is
Not Great, The Case Against Religion, Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Books,
‘God,
That’s not fair!’ Dick Dowsett, OMF Books, Overseas Missionary Fellowship,
Handbook
of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Monarch,
Human
Rights, Michael Bertram Crowe Veritas,
In God’s Name, David
Yallop, Corgi,
Is
the Roman Catholic Church a Secret Society?
John V Simcox, Warren Sandell and Raymond Winch Watts & Co
Is There Salvation Outside The
Catholic Church? Fr J Bainvel SJ, TAN,
Jesuit
Plots, From Elizabethan to Modern Times, Albert Close, Protestant Truth
Society,
Jesus
the Only Saviour, Tony and Patricia Higton, Monarch
New
Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the McGraw-Hill
Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Radio
Replies, Vol 1, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press,
Radio
Replies, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press,
Radio
Replies, Vol 3, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press,
Religion of Peace? Why Christianity is and Islam Isn't, Robert Spencer, Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington, 2007 - a curious book in that it simply doesn't mention how Christian Scriptures incited believers, eg Calvinists, to attack and destroy other believers who were thought to be heretics and doesn't mention the infallible decrees of the Roman Catholic Church commanding the violent destruction of heretics but wants to give the impression that unlike the Koran, the Christian Scriptures and the Christian religion do not make calls for religious violence
Religious
Freedom, A Fundamental Right, Michael Swhwartz, Liguori Publications,
Roman
Catholicism, Loraine Boettner, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company,
Secular
Humanism – The Most Dangerous Religion in
Sex
Education in Our Public Schools, Jack Hyles, Sword of the Lord,
Sex,
Dissidence and Damnation, Jeffrey Richards, Routledge,
Spy
in the Vatican 1941-45, Branko Bokun, Tom Stacey Books,
Summa
Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas, Part II, Second Number, Thomas Baker,
The
Case for Faith, Lee Strobel, Zondervan,
The
Christian and War, Robert Moyer, Sword of the Lord,
The
Church of Rome, Wilson Ewin,
The
Encyclopaedia of Heresies and Heretics, Leonard George, Robson Books,
The
End Of Faith, Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason, Sam Harris, Free
Press,
The Future of Atheism, Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennet in Dialogue, Robert B Stewart, SPCK, London, 2008
The
Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Henry Charles Lea, Citadel,
The
Last Temptation of Christ, Its Deception and What you Should Do About it, Erwin
T Lutzer, Moody Press, Chicago, 1988
The
Pestilence of AIDS, Hugh Pyle, Sword of the Lord,
The Reason for God, Belief in an Age of Scepticism, Timothy Keller, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2008
The
Rise of the Spanish Inquisition, Jean Plaidy, Star,
The
Sacred Executioner Human Sacrifice and the Legacy of Guilt Hyam Maccoby Thames
and
The
Secret History of the Jesuits,
The
Truth About the Homosexuals, Dr Hugh F Pyle, Sword of the Lord,
The
Truth that Leads to Eternal Life, Watchtower,
The
Unequal Yoke, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
The
The
Their
Kingdom Come, Robert Hutchison, Corgi,
Unholy
Sacrifices of the New Age, Paul de Parrie and Mary Pride, Crossway Books,
Vatican
Vicars
of Christ, Peter de Rosa, Corgi Books,
Walking
with Unbelievers, Michael Paul Gallagher SJ, Veritas Dublin 1985
War
and Politics The Christian’s Duty, Peter Watkins, Christadelphian Bible
Mission,
What
About Those Who Have Never Heard? Radio
Bible Class,
Whatever
Happened to Heaven? Dave Hunt, Harvest
House, Publishers,
THE WWW
www.infidels.org/library/historical/joseph_mccabe/big_blue_books/book_10.html
Fascist Romanism Defies
Civilisation by Joseph McCabe
www.hom.net/~angels/democracy.html
Democracy is not a good form
of Government by Citizens for the Ten Commandments
www.mindspring.com/~bab5/BIB/lessons.htm
Is Christianity a Cult?