Cold Case Christianity: Why Would a Good God Allow So Much “Christian” Evil?

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

Why Would a Good God Allow So Much “Christian” Evil?

Posted: 14 Jun 2017 06:00 AM PDT

 Whenever I start writing about morality or the existence of evil, I almost always get an email (or two) from people who point to the historic actions of alleged “Christians”. For many skeptics, Christianity is the source of much evil in the past (i.e. the Crusades and the Inquisition). For this reason, some skeptics point to “Christian” evil as evidence against the existence of a good Christian God.

That's about as fallacious as saying the evil of the Nazis argues Hitler didn't exist.

While history may include examples of “Christian” groups committing evil upon those with whom they disagreed, a fair examination will also reveal Christians were not alone in this sort of behavior.

That's right, using religion to violently promote causes is a brain fart that infects all religions, Christianity included.

Groups holding virtually every worldview, from theists to atheists, have been mutually guilty of evil behavior. Atheists point to the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition when making a case against Christians, theists point to the atheistic regimes of Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung when making a case against atheists. Death statistics are often debated in an effort to argue which groups were more violent, but all this seems to miss the point. The common denominator in these violent human groups was not worldview; it was the presence of humans.

It is also illogical.  How many people Christians killed not only cannot be used to falsify Christianity, but according to the bible, it remains a valid possibility that God inspired the Inquisition and the Crusades.  Those who think their NT god of love would never do such at thing, apparently never read Deuteronomy 28:15-63.

History has demonstrated a human predisposition toward violence.

And Jesus is no exception:

 12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. (Matt. 21:12 NAU)

(Wallace continues:)  Regardless of worldview, humans will try to find a way to justify their evil actions.

And the biblical authors were no exception, who think "shut up" is the best answer to the problem of God causing evil:

 18 So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
 19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?"
 20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? (Rom. 9:18-20 NAU)

(Wallace continues:)  The question is not which group is more violent but which worldview most authorizes and accommodates this violence.

Then the Christian theistic view wins, since it's pretty hard to find a stronger authorization for evil, than God's admitted "delight" in watching those who disobey him, raping each other and eating their own kids:

  30 "You shall betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its fruit.
 53 "Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress by which your enemy will oppress you.
  63 "It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from th (Deut. 28:30-63 NAU)

 If that's mere "Semitic exaggeration", and you don't have solid criteria for deciding what impreccatory language in the bible is literal and which is exaggeration, you open Pandora's Box:  why isn't it mere "Semitic exaggeration" also when biblical authors talk about hell or hell fire or eternal conscious suffering in the afterworld? 

Christians who commit horrific evil toward other humans actually have to act in opposition to the teaching of their Master, Jesus Christ. The Gospels repeatedly demonstrate that Jesus came to “guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:79), and Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies (Matthew 5:44). Christians who have committed atrocities over the ages have had to do so in rebellion; they ignored or were ignorant of the teachings of Jesus.

You completely ignore the well-known divine atrocities of the OT, such as God's command that babies should be slaughtered and pregnant women should be forced to endure abortion by sword or "ripped up"

NAU  1 Samuel 15:1 Then Samuel said to Saul, "The LORD sent me to anoint you as king over His people, over Israel; now therefore, listen to the words of the LORD.
 2 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.
 3 'Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" (1 Sam. 15:1-3 NAU)

 16 Samaria will be held guilty, For she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, Their little ones will be dashed in pieces, And their pregnant women will be ripped open. (Hos. 13:16 NAU)

 Copan and Flannagan, of course, say this is typical exaggeration language because the pagan nations in those days also exaggerated their divine threats and war victories.  Although I've written a strong unpublished rebuttal to this nonsense, the strongest rebuttal is the fact that we also believe a person can be guilty for allowing that which they know to be evil.  If you see a man raping your daughter, and it can be proven in court that all you did was stand there and watch, with no evidence the rapist was a danger to you or had threatened you, you become responsible for ALLOWING despite the fact that you didn't CAUSE.

As Copan and Flannagan well know, God "allows" the worst imaginable evils to take place daily in this world.  No, the "God gave us freewill" excuse doesn't work, because that doesn't get god off the hook any more than it would the owner of a dog, known to be violent, who chooses to unleash the dog and let it run loose anyway.  The owner didn't CAUSE, but the owner did ALLOW, and we still say failure to restrain dogs who bite others, makes the owner liable.  The point is that if God knew we'd do all this evil after he gave us freewill, God is not in a different moral position than the pit-bull owner who gives his dog freedom despite knowing the damage the dog will do.

So if our ALLOWING evil is not morally distinguishable from our CAUSING it, then there is no rational reason to think the matter is different with God, in which case, the undeniable fact that God ALLOWS evil, as Copan and Flannagan must admit, operates to make God just as culpable as if he had CAUSED said evil.

Indeed, what fool would say there's a moral difference between a Hitler who allows his nazis to gas Jews to death, and the Hitler who actually orders such death?  Not much!

But in an atheistic worldview (where humans are not specially designed in the image of God), there is little or no reason why any of us should feel compelled to treat other people with the respect that Jesus taught his followers to have for their enemies.

That is stupid, we are social animals, we recognize there's safety in numbers, so it only makes perfectly good sense under completely naturalistic reasoning to band together, elect leaders, vote laws over us to keep the peace, etc, so as to further promote flourishing.  Since we are civilized, that's the way we get things done, even if in nature there are less civilized life forms that get things done more barbarically.  We can obtain all the moral justification we need for our moral outlook by simply saying we were born and raised to think and act like this.  If a terrorist from another country comes to us and does criminal acts under our laws, we prosecute him because we think we are "better", but because we recognize that we need to do this in order to continue achieving our naturalistic goal of keeping the peace.  Although some atheists believe in objective morality, I don't.  The Christians are correct:  if atheism is true, then there's not going to be any objective way to prove that life in 1950's America was "better" than life under Stalin.

If the world is simply filled with species and groups competing for the same resources, and if history belongs to those species and groups who are best suited for survival and reproduction, why should we be concerned with those groups who are not “fit” enough to survive?

It is sufficient to argue that being social animals logically compels us not to just toss the sick to the side of the road and move on.  That is, we show compassion for the purely naturalistic reason that we all desire to live and flourish.  We don't need to prove that view better than the view of a psycho who wants to nuke everybody, before we can have rational justification to see things that way.

History is filled with examples of one population group replacing another in the natural struggle for resources. If atheism is true, and survival and reproduction are the only true concerns, then the struggle for resources authorizes and justifies human violence.

But we are social animals, so it's only natural that we don't automatically wish to war with each other just to weed out the weak.   

Unlike Christians, atheists can commit genocide without ignoring their worldview; atheists have the freedom to eliminate competing groups as a faithful expression of their worldview.

Indeed, America's compassion for the poor has shown the ugly consequence...the poor and degenerates and mentally ill have increased in number.  Evolution is not perfect, and we apparently evolved to have a bit more compassion than is consistent for the long-term good.  Providing for safe needle-exchange, and free STD testing, does little more than help the freeloaders flourish.  We've already decided to limit welfare more than we ever did in its' history, so apparently we are starting to discover that we need to make and enforce decisions that prioritize long-term good of the nation, over the short-term relief of suffering for individuals.  I hope we turn further and further toward meritocracy.  

God has given us the freedom to follow our own nature or to follow the teaching of Jesus.

And there you go again, talking in complete defiance of your Calvinist Christian brothers.  We can rationally dismiss your argument here until you first show the world that you and Calvinists have resolved your differences of opinion over the bible's teaching about human freewill.

Christians who have committed atrocities over the ages have simply submitted to their natural inclination rather than to the foundational teaching of the Christian Worldview:

Matthew 7:24-26

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.”

Not everyone who calls himself a Christian is listening to the words of Christ (Matthew 7:21). Those of us who have identified ourselves as Christians, yet have perpetrated evil, are willfully resisting or rejecting the words of Jesus.

 But Jesus overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the OT god's atrocities are too well known from Deut. 28:15 ff to need repeating here.  Your idea that the true Christian of modern times is one who doesn't commit "atrocities" simply denies large sections of the bible.