I received more ads from Turek in my email, and one of them summarizes his position, so I respond in kind:
It's that time of year again! You're sitting around with family at the Christmas dinner table, and Uncle Joe insists on picking apart your Christian faith. What's the best way to respond? Ignore him while you play with your mashed potatoes? Or do you try to refute his objections?
I'd say play with the mashed potatoes, since otherwise, to engage him would be to enable him to listen to himself respond, which creates a vicious circle of self-validation.
You know you need to give the reason for the hope that you have, but how can you engage with his statements without starting a family feud?
No, Christians of today do NOT "know" that they need to give a reason for the hope they have. All that crap is found in the NT, and you couldn't prove that any of it applies to modern people if your life depended on it. There are perfectly sufficient purely naturalistic explanations for the survival of the bible into modern times, otherwise, you'd have to say the Apocrypha and Dead Sea Scrolls "apply to us today".
In this week's episode of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, I explain that every objection to the Christian faith assumes a standard beyond the person who is making the objection.
Then you are wrong. The criticism that god was evil in the OT arises from morality that goes no higher than the atheist's own genetic predispositions and his environmental conditioning. The only reason you succeed at this scheme of yours is because most atheists and skeptics do not have a degree in moral philosophy, and therefore are not themselves straight about why it is that a human being classifies the actions of somebody else as "evil". Your scheme doesn't work on atheists who know what they are talking about, like me, because I correctly discern that my basis for saying the Nazis were "wrong" is not "transcendant", but goes no deeper than my own genetic predispositions and environmental conditioning.
I also provide examples of simple questions you can ask Uncle Joe (and others like him!) to place a seed of doubt in his assertion that something is wrong with the Christian worldview.
I promote atheism the same way. Here's a seed of doubt for you: Why do you automatically leap from "the NT applies to 1st-century unbelievers", over to "the NT applies to 21st century unbelievers"? Exactly how "clear" is it that anything in the NT "applies to us today", and why shouldn't spiritually dead unbelievers balk at such a notion on the basis that even spiritually alive Christians have been ceaselessly embroiled in disagreements for 2,000 years on whether something in the NT does or doesn't "apply to us today" (i.e., Dispensationalism, Cessationism v. Charismatics, Lordship Salvation v. Easy Grace)?
What would be unreasonable about deducing from the fact of sincere persistent doctrinal disagreement among serious born again conservatives that if there is any god running the show, he doesn't give a shit that his people disagree about doctrine? Sure, that would fuck up a few things you believe about your classical theist god, but that's the price you pay if you criticize a reasonable viewpoint held by many unbelievers.
The show addresses some of the most common objections to Christianity, including: God does immoral things in the Old Testament
As an atheist who knows what he is talking about, as opposed to the bumbling youngsters you meet in colleges, my accusation that god did evil in the OT arises from the philosophical contention that if we don't call that god evil, then we will be forced to the absurd contention that we can no longer call pedophilia evil, NOW, we have to hedge and say "it depends on perspective: it's evil from a human perspective, but from god's perspective, maybe god knew through his ripple-effect that allowing a man to rape a child today will be necessary to make sure some yak in Ethiopia hears the gospel in the year 2805."
There's too much evil in the world
I would never make that objection, as the book of Job makes clear that God intends all the evil in the world, because its reasonable to assume from Job that the reason bad things happen to good people is because they are mere pawns in an ego-war between God and the devil. You need to stop assuming God cares, because otherwise this leads to the difficulty of why a caring god would allow evil. From Job, it is clear that God cares more about proving the devil wrong than he cares about our physical and psychological well-being. And yet Frank Turek NEVER tells anybody Job's explanation for why god allows bad things to happen to good people.
Christians are hypocrites and do evil things
That doesn't prove god doesn't exist. It only proves that God's promises of spiritual maturity to those who sincerely seek him are false, otherwise, you'd be forced to take the bigoted position that if any Christian is hypocritical in some way, this is because they aren't truly born again, or they aren't sufficiently sincere toward god. Under that logic, you'd have to accuse Paul of lacking salvation or sincerety since he confessed to having a "thorn in the flesh".
Christianity is too exclusive
That's a moral criticizm of fundamentalism. And Frank Turek says everybody gets their moral sense from god, so, what would be unreasonable in saying "Christianity is too exlcusive" seems true to a lot of people because that is precisely what god is telling them?
God doesn't show himself enough
The more refined version of the argument is that if God had anywhere near the level of concern to save me as is manifested by fundamentalist evangelists, he would NOT stay "hidden" behind this "bible is historically reliable" dogshit anymore than he would have stayed silent toward Saul and expected that Pharisaic fool to recognize the need to exegete the OT in Christ-o-centric fashion. You have your "god's ways are mysterious" trifle, but your error is in assuming that because that excuse makes YOU reasonable, it must create the logical consequence of causing those who disagree with you to become unreasonable. Reasonableness doesn't work the way accuracy does, therefore reasonableness for you doesn't dictate the limits of reasonableness for somebody else...especially if we move beyond banal modern daily life into esoteric bullshit like 3,000 year old theology. Otherwise, you could just as easily characterize the Christians who doctrinally differ from you as being "unreasonable", and there you go: you become a bigot again, and the way your brain fizzes dictates what reality says to the brains of other people. You either become a bigot, or it can possibly be reasonable to disagree with your views about theology.
The Bible doesn't recognize LGBTQ+ rights
because when the bible books were being formed, maintaining family was paramount...and that could never have been done if half the Jews were gay. In the ancient world, gay means to disappear from the gene-pool, thus apparently nature has determined that gay is no good. The fact that modern technology enables gays to thwart nature without nature's effects (to always avoid heterosexual intercourse is to disappear from the genepool) no more justifies fags than would the argument that says modern technology enables pedophiles to thwart nature without experiencing nature's intended effects (the adults in the village seeking to kill him). Gays need to learn: we can tell what would count as "defect" in the human population. Since heterosexuality is and always has been normative, gay becomes the defect no less than does the hermaphrodite. My own opinion is that modern society would have a lot less sexual sin if it never created ways to thwart nature. If you always see naked women from childhood, you tend not to lust, and ancient American indians were noted by white explorers for lacking lust. If we never enabled birth control, we'd refrain from sexual intercourse unless we intended to produce children. Modern society's clever ways at helping people avoid the consequences that naturally came with sexual activity is precisely why most people think it is ok to constantly lust and constantly use sex to sell ads.
There's no evidence for God
that's true, but I prefer to instead ask how "god" could possibly matter, given that no Christian apologist has any better than a snowball's chance in hell of showing that something in the bible "applies to us today". Thus, denying the 'truth' about god appears to be about as unacceptably dangerous as denying the existence of a jelly-stain in a landfill. God's existence cannot be argued to be a danger to those who knowingly reject the true gospel, so why should anybody worry that denying god is to deny truth, any more than they would worry that denying the existence of frozen methane on Pluto is to deny truth? If denial of a truth cannot be shown to make the least bit of difference, why should the denier care? Bigoted idiot apologists will say "because smart people care about truth", but it could just as easily be argued that it is only a stupid person who decides to believe the "gospel", join some "church", and therefore invite into their lives a shitload of extra bickering that they don't really need. The person who never gets married thinks missing out on "love" is better than to have loved and lost. The person who never bothers believing in "god" thinks missing out on such an esoteric controversial thing is better than getting caught up in heresies, church splits, apologetics disputes and moralizing crap that always seems to accompany conversion to theism.
PLUS— Hear testimonies from three people whose lives have been transformed by the Holy Spirit through the work we do here at Cross Examined!
Then go to the nearest Mormon church to hear the same thing!
Then go to the nearest JW church to hear the same thing!
Then go to the nearest KJV Only church to hear the same thing!
Then go to the nearest Cessationist church to hear the same thing!
Then go to the nearest Pentecostal church to hear the same thing!
Then go to the nearest Calvinist church to hear the same thing!
Then go to the nearest Catholic church to hear the same thing!
As you listen to these amazing stories, we hope you will prayerfully consider donating to the ministry so we can effectively reach even more people with the truth in 2023.
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