Philosophy TV posted several reflections on issues related to Christmas during Christmas week last year. Jason Brennan’s contribution presents the Christmas story (i.e. the gospel) as a bad story about an immoral divinity.
I chose not to post this actually near Christmas, but when I saw this I thought it would be a great exercise to identify exactly where Brennan gets the gospel message wrong (and Brennan’s final question actually invites that).
In particular, there seem to be two general kinds of responses to a criticism like Brennan’s. You might disagree with his portrayal of what the gospel message actually says, or you might think he gets the message right but applies a problematic moral framework. (And you might think he makes mistakes in both arenas). But if you’re a Christian, you ought to think he does at least one of the two. The question is exactly which elements does he get wrong in what the gospel says or in the moral theory he applies to it, and I’m curious what people would say about that. What do you think?
[cross-posted at Parableman and Prosblogion]
March 28th, 2011 | 4:36 pm | #1
It seems the two most common arguments against God go like this:
1) How can God allow evil to exist? I thought God was good.
2) How can God seek to destroy evil? I thought God was good.
That these together are so common betrays “common sense” as a deeply problematic moral framework.
But that’s not to say with the right framework Jason’s “Uncle Theo” would be revealed as holy. Rather his portrayal of the gospel message is also deeply problematic. To begin, here’s just one point where his allegory deviates from the true gospel:
- Uncle Theo delays reconciliation
- God began reconciliation before the creation of the world
March 28th, 2011 | 8:49 pm | #2
“1) How can God allow evil to exist? I thought God was good.
2) How can God seek to destroy evil? I thought God was good.”
To me, the logical and empirical problem of evil does little to disprove God’s existence. It may show He betrays his words and that he is inconsistent, but not that he doesn’t exist.
As Dr. Greg House once put it, “Either God doesn’t exist or he’s unimaginably cruel.”
I disagree, of course, but still….
March 29th, 2011 | 12:40 am | #3
Yeah, that’s why I didn’t call them necessarily “arguments against the existence of God” but just “arguments against God”.
The point is that the “common sense” response to God’s dealing with evil is not very different from the generation depicted in Matthew 11:16-19.
March 29th, 2011 | 8:37 am | #4
Actually, I think the lack of evidence is much more common as an argument against God’s existence than any claim about God’s character, so the latter would at best be third place. But I’m not sure that’s usually used as an argument against God as much as an argument against particular conceptions of God (at least among those who have any remote care toward distinguishing things that are distinct).
On the delay issue, there’s certainly a sense in which there’s a delay. It’s not as if God delayed in working out the solution. But the solution seems to have taken a lot longer than our limited understanding of things would make us expect. But we do have to take into account that any finite time is short compared with the eternity of the afterlife.
March 29th, 2011 | 11:39 am | #5
There are just a lot of ways in which this deviates from the story as fully fleshed out in scripture, in ways that affect the moral position. It would be a huge undertaking to break it down.
But the single most glaring absence is the Trinity. “The kid” is also Uncle Theo himself.
April 1st, 2011 | 12:04 am | #6
Pentamom, that first point is my exact thought. My original idea was to take some time to break down all the disanalogies, but on my second listen it just seemed as if the number of them the seriousness of their uncharitability, and the entanglement with criticisms that are fair but just moral disagreements (i.e. they get the content right but just disapprove) would have made it a time-consuming venture. That’s why I thought it might be nice to leave it as a cooperative venture among commenters at three different blogs.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact