Comments on: The Gospel According to Jason Brennan

By: Jeremy Pierce

Jeremy Pierce — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:04:42 +0000

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.

By: pentamom

pentamom — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 15:39:13 +0000

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.

By: Jeremy Pierce

Jeremy Pierce — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:37:11 +0000

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.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 04:40:27 +0000

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.

By: Nikolai Volk

Nikolai Volk — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:49:22 +0000

“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….

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:36:58 +0000

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