Cold Case Christianity: God causes all natural disasters

  This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Where Is God During Natural Disasters?

Posted: 06 Aug 2018 01:08 AM PDT

Hurricanes every hurricane season. Massive earthquakes in Mexico and elsewhere. Volcanoes in several locations around the globe. Record-setting fires across the country. How could an all-loving, all-powerful God allow natural disasters such as these to destroy the lives of His children?

Easy, today's Christians are a bunch of pussies who have completely lost touch with the fact that their biblical god's idea of "love" is a radical departure from the sense they get after proof-texting John 3:16 ten thousand times. The solution is easy:  the god who allows disaster, doesn't "love" disaster victims in the way that the average American person understands "love".  That's precisely why there's such a big uproar in Christianity about why God allows evil.  Once you stop saying God is infinitely loving, the problem of evil disappears.  Consider that John 3:16 might actually be wrong.

John Stonestreet, my colleague at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, recently addressed this important question in a BreakPoint Radio broadcast. While it’s difficult for finite humans to understand the infinite mind and purposes of God, there are a few important truths to consider as we ponder these natural disasters:

Genesis 6:6-7 and other passages objectively justify the open-theist Christian to say that the god of the bible is imperfect, and therefore, all talk about his ways are higher than our ways, only does more to hide the truth than reveal it.  Excuses such as God's infinite purposes cement a person more comfortably in doctrines they already believe, but at the cost of denying the true meaning of other bible passages like Genesis 6:6-7.  It's not an anthropomorphism.  God really is an emotional asshole nearly indistinguishable from the idealistic fantasy created in the minds of pre-scientific tribal mercenaries.

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Means

Which indicates you have not the least bit of concern to sound convincing to anybody except those who are already committed to god's allegedly perfect ways.  You think "may be" constitutes "argument"?  No, it constitutes the warm friendly advice you get from a fundamentalist Christian roommate. Let me know when you intend to actually start threatening the arguments of atheists and bible-critics.

God may allow and tolerate some of these events to occur because it is the necessary consequence of a free natural process that allows creatures (such as humans) to make free choices. Scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne suggests that God has created a universe governed by natural laws such that life on earth is possible and humans can experience free will.

 And there you go again, blindly presuming "freewill" is true when a) 5-point Calvinist Christians know their bibles just as well as you, if not better, and they think your idea of freeewill is unbiblical, and b) the only reason "free" appears in "freewill" for most people is because they think the will is free of any and all constraints whatsoever...because they know that if there are any constraints, then to the degree such freewill is constrained, the person is not responsible for their actions.  Since the bible simplemindedly insists everybody is responsible for their actions, most Christians necessarily worship the "free" in "freewill" and, like you, bandy about it as if the matter were a foregone conclusion.

For example, the same weather systems that create deadly tornadoes also create thunderstorms that provide our environment with the water needed for human existence.

Probably because your god thought it too much effort on his part to just use miracles to cause the earth to grow food whenever he wanted it to.  Your excuse is especially attractive to certain internet apologists who lack the Holy Spirit the way people in hell lack water.  Their god consists of nothing beyond their own personal enjoyment of debating biblical matters.

The same plate tectonics that kill humans (in earthquakes) are necessary for the regulation of soils and surface temperatures needed for human existence.

You are forgetting one small matter:  God directly kills every person that dies, Deuteronomy 32:39.  You cannot use the naturalistic mechanisms of earth to shield God from responsibility for death.  Otherwise, that would be like saying the gun that protects the family is the same one that murders them.  Well if Dad was the only person in charge of the gun and was the only person using it...then how does observing the gun can be used for both good and evil, do jack shit to get Dad off the hook for murder?

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Consequence

God may also allow and tolerate some natural evil because it is the necessary consequence of human free agency. Humans often rebuild along earthquake fault lines and known hurricane pathways, and they frequently cut corners on building guidelines to save money. Much of this activity results in the catastrophic loss that we see in times of “natural” disaster. There are times when “natural” evil is either caused or aggravated by free human choices.

That's a good answer, but even then, you'd still have to blame the stupid human choices on God:

"The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps." (Prov. 16:9 NAU)

One could also answer that if you wouldn't allow your child to dig deep holes at the beach despite their unpleasant experience at being involuntarily buried alive the last time they went to the beach, then God has a responsibility to keep watch over his intentionally disobedient kids, the ways parents have over their own kids. And if God's ways are infinitely beyond human abilities to grasp, then comparing God/adults to parents/toddlers really is appropriate. God could do a much better job at convincing adults why their sins and errors are far more significant and evil than they perceive, but he just sits on his ass, pretending "you are without excuse" becomes true after his followers repeat it about 50 million times.

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Encouragement

God may allow some natural evil because it challenges people to think about God for the first time. For many people, the first prayers or thoughts of God came as the result of some tragedy. When our present, temporal lives are in jeopardy or in question, we often find ourselves thinking about the possibility of a future, eternal life. If Christianity is true, and we are more than temporal creatures, God may use the temporary suffering of this life to focus our thoughts and desires on eternity, where God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain . . .” because “the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

 God doesn't have to do things  in such a sadistic bloody way.  In the past he has gotten even unbelievers to do what he wanted through his magically coercive telepathic control over their minds (Ezra 1:1, Daniel 4:33). If he wants mother Betty to draw closer to him, he can wave his magic wand over her mind, he doesn't have to allow her three year old Johnny get eaten alive by a bear, just so that she goes crazy from the horror and joins a small pentecostal church where screaming is mistaken for God's inspiration.

Some ‘Natural Evil’ May Be a Necessary Motivation

God may permit some natural evil because it provides humans with the motivation and opportunity to develop godly character. A world such as this requires human beings to cooperate and peacefully co-exist in order to successfully respond to its challenges. The best in humanity often emerges as people respond in love and compassion to natural disasters. It’s in the context of these disasters that moral character has the opportunity to form and develop. Good character (acts of love, compassion and cooperation) must be freely chosen. God has provided us with a world that provokes us to improve our situation, care for those who are in need, and become better human beings in the process.

Same answer

But there’s an even more important truth to be considered as we ask where God is in such situations (as I recently wrote in a Christian Post article):

All Natural ‘Evil’ Necessitates the Existence of God

The painful consequence of a deadly storm is objectively evil.

Only for those who think human life has inherent worth.  Count me out.  Inherent worth is a contradiction in terms. 

It’s not a matter of personal or cultural opinion, and it’s more than a convenient description. The existence of natural “evil” requires us to consider the existence of an overarching, transcendent standard of “good” by which we judge something to be “bad.”

No, we view a flood as "evil" for sweeping away our house, because we were born and raised to believe that life should be lived in a house in a stable fashion.  That desire is perfectly sufficient to justify why it is that the average person finds the destructive force of natural disasters "evil".

And don't forget that many non-Christian adults don't view natural disasters as evil, even if human death is involved.  It is terrible for a child to be killed by an old tree that falls down solely from age and gravity, but it doesn't make sense to call that "evil".  Trees don't do what they do because of morality.  it is only the complaining human beings who are infusing that disaster with a moral issue.

C. S. Lewis, the British novelist and Christian apologist, described in his book “Mere Christianity” how he posited evil as an argument against God until he realized that true evil required a true, objective standard of good:

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

If natural evil is simply a matter of personal or cultural opinion, we could eliminate it from the face of the earth by simply changing our minds. But changing your opinion about Harvey, Irma, or Maria won’t make them any less “evil.”

 You weren't talking about changing minds about people, you were talking about us changing our minds about why natural disasters happen. Stay on track next time.

When Lewis realized the connection between true evil and the necessity of a true standard of good, he began to turn a corner in his thinking:

“Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies.”

Contrary to Lewis, we often really only mean a standard of justice that is personal, when we call something unjust.  Or, as with many people, we falsely believe that the standards we were born and raised with, are objective.  They aren't.

Natural disasters like storms, earthquakes and fires, are objectively evil,

Wrong.  Plenty of storms, earthquakes and fires occur without destroying human life.  Fuck you.

but that requires an objective standard of good by which we can make such a judgment in the first place. God offers this objective, transcendent source of righteousness. Without him, all notions of evil are simply. . . notions.

 Your answer is dismissed because there is no such thing as objective evil.  If emotions legitimately counted in arguments about evil and morality, then because Christians can be found emotionally arguing on both sides of a moral fence, both of them must be correct.  So don't dig yourself an early intellectual grave by pretending that emotions have a legitimate place in arguments about "objective" morality and evil. But if you leave emotions aside, then suddenly, you have no more proof that any human act is 'objectively' evil.  Except perhaps the tire old saw of selectively quoting the parts of the bible you think apply to 21st century people, an impossible thing to prove.

So, as we consider the devastation we have faced in the past few weeks and months, let’s remember that none of these events preclude the existence of God.

But if they prove the existence of God, they also prove that God views humanity similarly to the way we view lower life forms in laboratories; we are test-subjects, we are pawns moved about by higher spiritual beings who pass the time playing highly unnecessary war-games with each other.  See Job chapters 1 and 2.  Fuck you.  Tell your god to get a tv and a subscription to NetFlix, maybe he'll find something more constructive to do with his time than causing natural disasters to kill little girls in the alleged hope of causing their mothers to cling to him more tightly, when even Christian common sense says you should run away from anything that is likely to cause such a disaster.

By the way, Wallace:  Why do you drive safely in traffic?  Couldn't it be that God wants your car to hit and kill a pedestrian because God knows his surviving family will turn to Christ in their emotional upheaval?

And if God really does have a part to play in the reasons why accidents that you cause end up hurting other people, do you have enough courage and conviction on this to state God's involvement to be a factual truth and therefore require God's involvement to be litigated when you are sued?

Why not?  Isn't it a "fact" that God had a part to play in negligence on your part that caused injury to others?  If so, then doesn't your Christian commitment to biblical truth outweigh the law of the secular courts that tell you to keep religious explanations out of the court (Acts 5:29)?

Maybe you are consistent in your beliefs, and therefore believe America should change its civil and criminal laws so that the jury is allowed to make a possible finding that "God made me do it" or "the devil made me do it" was the real truth of the matter?

In fact, Jesus understands our suffering better than anyone who ever lived.

More proof that you are preaching the choir, and in no sense trying to convince skeptics.

Unlike other theistic, religious systems, Christianity is grounded on the finished work of a suffering Savior who died on a cross and rose from the grave to show us that there is life beyond our pain, joy beyond our calamity, and hope beyond our worst moments. God still reigns, and he is present with us in our storms.

And if they purchase your materials right now, they can save 10% in their effort to help the Holy Spirit do a job he doesn't need any help doing.  Amen?

CrossExamined.org: Why did a "Good" God Create Hell? (and other loaded questions)

This is my reply to an article at CrossExamined.org by Al Serrato entitled

Why did a "Good" God Create Hell?

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

Many people today accuse God of unfairness.

Like me.  It is unfair for God to cause a man to rape a woman.  Deuteronomy 28:15, 30.  It's even more unfair for God to take "delight" in causing a man to rape a woman.  See v. 63.

 Since God can foresee the future, they ask, why didn’t He simply never create all those he knows to be destined to spend eternity in Hell?

If his foreknowledge of our future acts was infallible, then those acts were logically incapable of failing, so anything in God's infallible foreknowledge must come to pass.  But this is all esoteric crystal ball bullshit.

  One skeptic I know put the question like this:

God supposedly knows everything that will happen before you are ever born, so if all your choices are set beforehand, how can they possibly matter? Furthermore, if God knows you will “choose” Hell before he creates you, why does he simply not create you? Personally, I would much prefer nonexistence to eternal torment. Is God deliberately creating people knowing they will end up in Hell? Then I would call him evil. Is he compelled to create people regardless of what he sees in their future? Then he doesn’t have free will, which would certainly be an interesting interpretation, but one I doubt many people share. Is there some other explanation? If so, I can’t think of it. 

This challenge has a bit of intuitive appeal.  It seems to put God in a box, as it were, trapped between being “evil” for choosing to create rebellious creatures or lacking free will, by being unable to do otherwise.  Let’s take a closer look at the two horns of this apparent dilemma.
Good God Hell
To the Christian, “evil” is the label we give to words, thoughts or actions that deviate from God’s perfect will.

First, many bible passages forbid the distinction between the perfect/permissive will of God, which appears to be a distinction that was conjured up by Christian philosophers for no other reason than enable them to believe the bible statements on God's will are all in harmony.

Second, if there is nothing evil in God, there's no reason to create the perfect/permission distinction in god's will in the first place, all of God's acts would be good regardless of how they are categorized.  God allowing child-rape would be no less good than god positively decreeing that some atheist should be given a free bible.

 If we were created robots, there would be no evil in the world; we would operate exactly in accordance with God’s desires.

That's exactly what is taught by the metaphor of God putting a hook into your jaws and forcing you to sin, then punishing you for doing what he forced you to do, as seen in Ezekiel 38-39:

Ezekiel 38:1 And the word of the LORD came to me saying,
 2 "Son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him
 3 and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal.
 4 "I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out, and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them splendidly attired, a great company with buckler and shield, all of them wielding swords;
 5 Persia, Ethiopia and Put with them, all of them with shield and helmet;
... 16 and you will come up against My people Israel like a cloud to cover the land. It shall come about in the last days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog."
 17 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Are you the one of whom I spoke in former days through My servants the prophets of Israel, who prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring you against them?
 18 "It will come about on that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel," declares the Lord GOD, "that My fury will mount up in My anger.
 ...21 "I will call for a sword against him on all My mountains," declares the Lord GOD. "Every man's sword will be against his brother. 

Ezekiel 39:1 "And you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal;
 2 and I will turn you around, drive you on, take you up from the remotest parts of the north and bring you against the mountains of Israel.
 3 "I will strike your bow from your left hand and dash down your arrows from your right hand.

Serrato continues:

 But in creating man, God did something quite different. He gave us “free will,” the capacity to rebel against him in our thoughts, words and actions.

In other words, you think the atheist reading this has a moral obligation to spend the next 25 years investigating Christian theology to see whether your statement on freewill is actually "biblical" and why plenty of other Christian advocates of bible inerrancy disagree with you.  No thanks.  But Ezekiel 38-39, supra, justify viewing God as evil for forcing people to sin, even if your view of freewill were the "biblical" one.

And rebel we did.  God “foresaw” this development, but only in a manner of speaking – a manner focused upon the way we think.  This is because God is not bound by time.

Not being bound by time constitutes an incoherent notion, as do other words preferred by apologists like god living "outside of nature" or "above nature".  Worse, every one of the bible's descriptions of activity in heaven, describe the acts as occurring in temporal progression no less than do events down here on earth:

19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.
 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.
 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'
 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'
 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you." (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

Job 1 contains the famous dialogue of God and Satan up in heaven.  Read any description of heaven in Revelation, the same applies.  Sorry, but your premise that God isn't bound by time, is biblically false.

For him, there is no future to “foresee.”  There is only an eternal present.

You haven't the slightest fucking clue whether god experiences reality like that or not.

 All times – whether past, present or future – are accessible to him in this eternal present. Thus, at the moment of creation, God was aware that man would rebel, that he was rebelling, and that he had rebelled. He was aware of the acts and the consequences, the motivations and the ultimate end, of everyone.  

Wrong, Jeremiah says the idolatry of the Jews was a sin that had never entered God's mind:

Jer. 7:31  "They have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, and it did not come into My mind.
 Jer. 19:5  and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind;

Serrato continues:

Consistent with his nature for perfect fairness,

What fool thinks it fair for God to cause a woman to be raped (Deuteronomy 28:15, 30, 63)?  Christian apologists who think intellectual sophistry is more important that spiritual maturity, that's who.

he created a means by which man – though in rebellion and deserving punishment – could nonetheless find reunification with him.

Which was a waste of his time and makes him rather forgetful of his own abilities.  God doesn't need to create a means, he can get rid of your sin with a wave of his magic wand, not Yom Kippur or altar in sight:

 11 "Thus says the LORD, 'Behold, I will raise up evil against you from your own household; I will even take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.
 12 'Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun.'"
 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."   (2 Sam. 12:11-14 NAU) 

The highlighted part doesn't stop saying what it says merely because you point out that God caused David's baby to die.

 But in implementing this scheme, he did not force this choice upon us.

Then he was stupid and mean, because true love sometimes forces the loved one to prevent them from suffering the consequences of their own stupidity.  Mother doesn't just stand there presenting choices to her child in the street as the drunk driver speeds toward him.  And yet when compared with God, we are like "children".

He gives us the means to salvation, but remains content in allowing us to choose which path we will follow.

Like the father who remains content that his son has disobeyed the rule about playing with chainsaws.  When the parent is brought up on charges of criminal neglect after the boy cuts his hand off, perhaps the man will have a Christian apologist as a lawyer, who will thus argue that because the man made clear his prohibition on playing with chainsaws, nobody else is responsible for the calamity except the child.

Those who use their free will to turn toward him – more precisely, to accept his free gift of salvation – will find a welcoming father, ready to do the work needed to restore us.

No they will find a lying asshole who tells them the more they sin, the less reason they have to believe they are saved.  We call it legalistic grace.  

Those who use their free will to turn away from God – to reject his gift – will find that this choice too is honored.

Some would argue that true love will put forth serious effort to convince the rebellious loved one to obey.  Creating thousands of conflicting Christian denominations for the atheist to choose from in the gamble to pick the one that just happens to be the right religion, does not constitute "serious effort" by God.

 Expecting God not to create those in this latter category would have two significant effects: it would show that God’s provision of free will is really a fiction, since only those who choose to do his will are actually created,

You cannot reconcile freewill of man with God forcing people to sin in Ezekiel 38-39, so there's not much harm in saying freewill is a fiction.

and two, it would mean that Hell is a place of evil.  But Hell is a place – or perhaps more precisely a condition – which was created by God to serve a purpose.

An atheist would have to decide how much time to spend researching Christian fundies and liberals on the nature of hell, and since there are fatal problems with God's existence and the bible being the word of God, it is rational to turn away from this tempting opportunity to impress my girlfriend.

Since God does not create evil – i.e. he does not act against his own nature

Fuck you, God not only causes women to be raped (Deut. 28:15, 30), but will take "delight" to cause that curse no less than he takes delight in prospering those who obey (v. 63).  Gee, you never knew that rape was morally good until just now, eh?

– then Hell cannot be a place of evil. Like a human prison, it may be inhabited by those bent on doing evil, but the place itself – and the confinement it effectuates – is actually a good, just as separating hardened criminals from society is a net positive for both the evil-doer and the society that is victimized.

Sorry, but it does not seem the least bit feasible that the horrific realities of hell would fail to convince those there to repent in sincereity.  And if there comes a time when God no longer responds to sincere repentance, then you just found a limitation in one of God's "eternal" attributes.  And if God hardens those who are in hell so they don't wish to repent, he is not too different from the parent who withholds the Ritlan from the disobedient child, knowing the child will just rebel more and more as a result.

Some will be tempted to argue that God should have forced this choice upon us anyway. Isn’t it better to be forced to love God then to spend eternity in Hell? Only, I suppose, if one believes it is better to be a robot than a thinking, self-aware and self-directed being.

Ask the people now in hell, they'll kindly disagree and tell you being a robot forced to love god would have been better.  Your opinion is nowhere near controlling or persuasive.

 There is no middle ground. Either free will is something real – with consequences attendant to the choices we make – or it’s a fiction.  One cannot have it both ways.

It's a fiction, Ezekiel 38:4.

To recap: God is not trapped in an either/or dilemma. God is not “evil” for having created, because in the end he treats his creation fairly, giving each what he or she deserves.

Then you must agree with Deut. 28:15, 30 that circumstances can arise which would make a woman "deserving" of being raped.  You must also agree that when God causes pagans to beat Hebrew children to death (Hosea 13:15-16), those children "deserved" it.  Is this the part where we email Dr. Copan and ask him if its possible that God had morally sufficient reasons for causing pagan armies to beat children to death?

 Since he values free will enough to have given it to us, he apparently intends to make that gift real by allowing some to reject him.

Like the mother who allows her three year old to stay in the street according to his will, despite her knowledge that if not forced out of the street, he will be run over.  Apparently any who would call that woman unloving, never took Apologetics 101.

Likewise, God is not lacking in free will, because he is not “compelled” to create against his will.

That's also bullshit.  If God infallibly knows that he will cause a hurricane tomorrow, well, "infallible" means "incapable of failing", in which case God would not have the ability to deviate from this infallibly predicted event.  But again, infallible foreknowledge, living outside of time, maybe it can be loving to beat a child to death, etc, etc. is nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Since Hell is not a place for eternal torture,

Then apparently you don't know your bible well enough to justify your commentary on it:

 23 "In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment (Greek: basanos, torture), and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. (Lk. 16:23 NAU).

 46 "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matt. 25:46 NAU)

 11 "And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name." (Rev. 14:11 NAU)

Some would argue that being on fire and yet unable to extinguish it, is "torture".

but an appropriate destination for all rebellious human beings, God does not violate his own nature – does not engage in “evil” – when he separates himself from some of his creation.

You have already settled in your mind that God is synonymous with good.  That's precisely why you'd never call God evil no matter what horrific atrocity you believed God caused.  Your assurances that God doesn't do evil are about as stupid and ill-informed as any Nazi who says Hitler wasn't able to do evil, who then proceeds to hem and haw and "explain" that massacring the Jews in WW2 was actually a "good" thing in the long term.  Fuck you.

What this challenge brings into focus is not some internal inconsistency in our conception of God. No, what it highlights is just how different our thinking is as compared to God’s.

Giving us justification to wonder whether you got jack shit right anywhere in this article.

For like the skeptic, many would view the decision to create nothing all – neither good nor bad people – to be a better – a more noble – alternative.  Yet God sees things quite a bit differently, it seems.

Not according to the Christian liberal theologians who deny all of your bullshit and assert everybody will be saved.  How long do you recommend atheists spend invenstigating why Christian fundies disagree with Christian liberals?  And why should we feel the least bit compelled to do so?  My atheism justifies me to not worry about the truth of Christian hell, just like your Christianity justifies you to not worry about Muslim hell.

In the end, that he views things differently should not really surprise us. Our judgment as to right and wrong, good and evil, has been corrupted by our rebellion.

Yeah, if only we'd become spiritually alive and born again by accepting Jesus into our hearts, we'd then recognize that sometimes women "deserve" to be raped (Deut. 28:15, 30) and that children "deserve" to be beaten to death (Hosea 13:15-16, Isaiah 13:15-16.

Since we all share this fallen nature,  we should realize that we are not in the best position to render judgment as to the way eternal things “ought to be.”

A criticism that applies with equal force to the theology written down by the sinful imperfect biblical authors.

We wouldn’t ask a group of incarcerated rapists for guidance on issues of sexual mores;

But you'd certainly ask your raping-god for guidance on issues of sexual mores!

nor would we consult death row inmates for advice on how best to treat one another.

But you certainly consult a god who allows non-fatal beatings (Exodus 21:20-21), on how best to treat one another.

Perhaps, in the same way, God has little need to consult with us to determine what ultimate “fairness” demands.

That's a possibility, but not likely, since even God has to sometimes accept correction from his creatures.  Exodus 32:9-14, a story that you always thought was literally true history until you discovered that taking it as literally true history would produce a conflict in biblical theology.  Anthropomorphisms, to the rescue!

No, the Creator of the universe may occupy a slightly better position to judge matters eternal. We might be wise to heed him, rather than try to ensnare him in a “logical” trap.

We also might be wise to do whatever we're asked by powerful space aliens, but that hardly argues that they are good.