A friendly conversation

Published on 12 March 2023 at 09:00

This post is going to be a bit different than usual, as it is a series of emails that’s a pseudo-debate between myself and a friend, Rob. This was not a debate in that we are trying to get points or win anything. We were both hoping to just exchange ideas and learn something. This is also going to be a long post, as some of these replies got lengthy. I am not going to add commentary to any of this, but rather just copy and paste the emails here after this brief introduction.

The topic of this conversation was “is god a moral monster” which focused on the god of classical theism, the Abrahamic god. These are some of the topics either only touched on, or not mentioned. Reasoned Suffering, principled suffering, god’s redemptive plan, sufficient reasoning for suffering. Logica and emotional problems of evil (formerly), evil done in gods name, evil done without god. Ethics and morality as a topic themselves (we were glad to be able to come to a working definition of morality for this conversation). These weren’t discussed, because Rob and I were both honest enough to avoid most of these tropes that this conversation usually devolves into. I also greatly appreciate Rob just wanting to have this conversation, the actual one, and not trying to change the conversation to what is moral, or where do they come from. All of this came together to make this one of my favorite conversations about this, ever. To be clear, this may not be easy to follow, and that is okay! This is just simply to archive one of my favorite conversations.

Rob::

So, I opted for a provocative title (though, granted, it would more likely be provocative to Christians than Atheists!). I figured it would grab your attention and make you WANT to wade through what is likely to be a rambling message full of incoherency (or at least pray for the next joke - and if I can get you praying then that's half the battle won...! I'm just kidding. Obviously.)

Okay, so I've had a good triple-shot of whisky, which, honestly, is the best way to get me to open up and talk about this kind of stuff, but I'll try as hard as I can to keep on point.

My chosen subject was "The Problem Of Evil" (which I quickly semi-regretted, given your experience in this question). So, here goes...

A quick History of Me: I was raised Catholic. I went to church every Sunday; around age 10 or 11 I became an Altar Boy (never molested); at age 15 I dropped out of church; had a private crisis of faith, one that I never really admitted to my family; around that time, everyone else stopped devoutly going to church, too (I don't know what was "cause" and what was "effect"). Regardless, I spent many years examining my faith. At age 20 I got married at my family's Catholic church. Since then I have been... searching. I still identify as a Christian - I still identify, more or less, as a Roman Catholic. But my understanding of God, Christ, the Bible have been in a state of perpetual flux for many years. I'm now 45 years old and I still broadly identify as Catholic, but I am fully aware of how divergent my beliefs have become from the Catholic Church.

About 9 or 10 years ago I became aware of the Nag Hammadi texts, and that's when things got REALLY interesting for me. I bought the complete texts (edited by Marvin Meyer and with an introduction by Elaine Pagels) and read quite a lot of it (cut me some slack - it's pretty heavy-going! I do intend to study it in more detail.) Various things became clearer to me; other things became more obscure. As of this moment, my faith is all over the place, but with one consistent feature: I still BELIEVE. This, to me, is kind of astonishing - to be faced with such a wealth of conflicting information, but to find myself still believing in some fundamental Truth, some fundamental God. I do wonder whether the notion of "God" is something that I cannot shake due to a childhood of indoctrination, but I find myself more and more thinking that, no, there is something more to it.

I welcome any questions you may have about my past (or even my present) faith, but I won't take up any more of your time here with it - I think that just about covers the basics of it. And so, onto the topic at hand: the problem of Evil.

To be entirely honest, I hadn't even *considered* the question until my late teens (maybe even my early twenties) - it just wasn't something that I had ever really realised was an issue. I think, perhaps, it is one of the things that drove me into my exploration of my own faith, of Christianity, and that still drives me to this day. It is certainly a perplexing issue - how can an "All-Loving God" allow such evil in the world, such horrors, such suffering?

Numerous potential "solutions" have occurred to me over the years, but few have ever fully satisfied (which is precisely why I was interested in discussing the issue with you). So let's look at a few of them:

1) Suffering is God's "Divine Retribution" for transgressions against Him.

Okay, so this is one argument that I NEVER believed, I must confess. Even as a child, I can recall events that supposed "Christians" claimed were evidence of God's Retribution for supposed slights against Him, or some such (even way back then, I recall some Evangelicals claiming that the Challenger disaster was Divine Retribution for something - modern science's questioning of God, or some such bullcrap). Any suggestion that hurricanes in Florida are "retribution" for the State's acceptance of homosexuality or whatever, I have no time for whatsoever. It suits certain cross-sections of the population to believe that <that thing they hate> is the cause of <that thing that happened> and it's quite obviously projection and bullshit. So the "God's Retribution" argument just doesn;t work for me (nor, I suspect, God). A true God would never indiscriminately punish the many to teach the few.

2) Suffering is an unfortunate by-product of Life.

Honestly, this one has a lot more legs than option 1. I concede that there is a possibility that a Divine Creator (God, The One, or Whatever one might opt to name Him), is not as Personal as many of us would like to believe. There is the very real possibility that some God created the Universe and... just let it happen - and what follows on from that is random and chaotic. Perhaps He intended for humans to eventually evolve, or perhaps not (I suppose His Intent is tied into the concept of His Omniscience - if He is all-knowing then He *knew* that humanity would or would not develop.... honestly, I still find all that a bit of a mind-bender). But, having Allowed for humanity to evolve, He then chooses to step back and let Nature take its course...? Maybe.

That may sound like a cop-out, but I genuinely mean it - Maybe. Maybe God's Love, God's Benevolence, is a Post-Mortem thing. It sounds genuinely horrific to lay it out in black and white, but perhaps the fullness of God's love is experienced only AFTER we have passed on to some spiritual realm. I am still struggling to figure out what that means for the concept of a "Benevolent" God.

3) Suffering is an INTRINSIC part of Life.

Without intending to sound callous, *everyone* suffers in life. I mean, honestly, is there a single person who doesn't suffer in some way? Even those born with silver spoons wedged firmly up their arses - they have likely never known the love of an honestly open and loving parent, even if they have had everything that money can buy. Suffering exists on a WIDE spectrum, from those who have never known the nurturing love of a parent all the way down to the starving child in a third-world country who is cursed to die before they reach double-digits. Not to diminish the quite obvious and quantifiable suffering of the latter, the suffering of the former is also very real (if not so devastatingly fatal). Re-reading that, it sounds horrific that I would try to diminish such awfulness that occurs in places like Ethiopia on a daily basis by comparing it to the comparatively mild abuse of children in first-world countries - I don;t mean to diminish or belittle the tragic suffering of those FAR worse off than us, but my point is that "suffering" is "a thing" - it happens to many different degrees, on many different levels, and in many different places. Suffering is, in many important ways, the Human Condition.

Think of art and literature - there is no story without Conflict; there is no thought or emotion without Challenge. Perhaps the way that God (Whoever or Whatever that might be) imparts Experience upon His Creation is by inflicting them with Crises, with Problems that require solving. Certainly, some of Mankind's greatest achievements have been in the pursuit of helping those in need. For better or for worse, humanity requires the needy in order that they may learn to rise above themselves and aid those worse off than themselves.

4) God's ways are inexplicable to us.

I confess that I have swayed to and from this point of view many, MANY times. Tongue only *slightly* in cheek, let's play Devil's Advocate here - if there IS a God, He (It) is a Being so completely beyond our comprehension that we can't even BEGIN to understand Him. I know and I understand (even as I type this) that this sounds like the Ultimate Cop-Out, but hear me out: what WE consider to be indescribable suffering (the starving African orphan whose belly is so distended that he ends up shi**ing out his own stomach - something I heard from Bob Geldof during Live Aid that has stuck with, and haunted, me for decades) is as nothing compared to the indescribable delights and joy that are to follow in the next world.

I know that it sounds like wishful thinking, pie-in-the-sky, airy-fairy Christian bullshit, but *what if*?!

This is where things become really interesting for me, because (honestly) *what if*...?!

Why do I believe in the concept of Souls?

Because I am an inquirer. I question EVERYTHING. My mind churns away, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. I have an EXTREMELY overactive mind, a powerful Ego (in the psychological sense), a strong Id. And the idea of a Soul - something that exists within, yet independently, of the body - just strikes me as a fundamental truth.

When I think, when I cogitate, when I engage in Inner Discourse, WHERE does that happen? Is it in my head, or is it elsewhere? I struggle to answer this. Sometimes it feels as though it is entirely within the confines of my brain, but often it seems to float freely of my body - it exhibits some form of existence *around* my head, but not *within* my head. Perhaps this is simply a matter of perception, yet the sensation persists.

One of the things I have recently come to know is that Christianity is a sort of "bastard child" (forgive the expression) of Judaism, Greek Platonism and Zoroastrianism. So many contributing factors, such a breadth of understanding, and Christianity is a kind of weird amalgam of all three. We took the God from Judaism, mixed it with the concept of Soul from Greek philosophy and even threw in a bit of the resurrection and mystery from Zoroastrianism. If one looks deeper into the Gnostic texts of the Nag Hammadi library, even MORE Zoroastrianism becomes apparent - they may as well have called the Gnostic "The One" as "Ahura Mazda" and be done with it!.

This message has gone on for far too long and rambled about far too many things, so let me wrap up. God is a strange concept. Christianity is a strange belief. The idea that "God" (or whatever one seeks to name Him/Her/It) would allow suffering, allow Evil, seems on the surface of it counterintuitive. But, also, who are We to know the Mind of God? Everything is connected, nothing is irrelevant. Certainly, it is easy for someone sitting comfortably in the First World to proclaim that suffering is "All Part of God' Plan", whilst simultaneously being oblivious to the plight, the horror, of the lives of those less fortunate than themselves.

But maybe there IS some greater, deeper plan at play...

This is the conundrum with which I struggle.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading!

(I hope I haven't bored you to tears, but consider this a springboard for discussion!)

Me::

Hey Rob, I hope all is well. Thank you for the message, and the introduction to yourself. It is much appreciated. So, I am going to afford you the same courtesy. I am Anthony, I am 35 years old, from the Cincinnati area. I have an MBA and am a businessman by trade, but a philosopher at heart, originally intended to study philosophy at the formal academic level. However, after speaking several different career and academic advisors, realized that it was neither pragmatic, nor prudential to do so. I went with the easiest path to wealth, business.

You have read a few of my Blog entries, and commented on "Atheism and I; Changing Views" and " "A Reply to Darth Dawkins" . Here is another for your consideration, if you wish to know more about me, and why I am no longer a Christian. https://www.shadow-of-the-dead-god.com/blog-posts/1009970_my-deconversion-story.

How I intend to go about this "debate" is to treat it as the classical version of debate. There are no points to score, nothing to win, to me this will just be a vigorous exchange of ideas, with the hope that we both learn something from this.

I also prefer if each reply is done as a separate email with a similar subject line to what I put, that way things stay clean, and are clear to understand. I also ask if you have a clarifying question that may determine how your reply, feel free to DM me on twitter to ask those. I will do the same, this is so we fully understand each other, and are not accidently misrepresenting what the other says. I also intend to quote what you wrote, then reply to the quote. These will of course be in quotation marks, in sets of three """ so that it is clearly differentiated where you spoke, and where I am speaking.

That said, you wanted to talk about the "problem of evil". and gave some great starting material. Before I begin, I should define some of the terms that I am going to be using, and how I am using them. When I reference morality, I am referring to what is good or bad (right or wrong) in relation to human well-being. For instance, if an action taken by an agent hinders, harms, or is otherwise detrimental to human well being, it would be considered immoral (morally incorrect / wrong) in my view. If an action by an agent promotes, establishes or otherwise helps human well-being, it would be moral (or morally correct / right) in my view. There will be mention of the Abrahamic god / god of Abraham. This would be the god of Mosses, the god of the Bible (Christian), Torah (Torah) and Qur'an (Islam), these collectively are known as the Abrahamic faiths, because they are all predicated on the scriptures and teachings of Abraham, the founder of the Jewish faith, without which neither Christianity or Islam exists. This god is basically the same as the god of classical theism, a personal, creator omni god (has all omni attributes). if this is not the sort of god you mean, please address in future replies.

Let us start this off with a bit of candor, I do not believe in sin. Sin is a crime or adverse action against god, I do not believe a god exists, thus in my view sin cannot exist. I also do not have a working definition of the word "evil" as I think it is a useless term when talking about ethics. As such, I do not really think there is a problem of evil, to me the question would be something akin to "is god a moral monster". That is how I will be looking at things in this exchange. However, if you have a working definition of evil, please share it, and I might adopt it for the purposes of this exchange.

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Before I get to replying to you, I will make my case. God is an immoral, hateful being. For more detailed look at this, I would HIGHLY suggest reading the five chapters on morality that I penned in Shadow of the Dead God. god is indeed a moral monster.

God allows Genocide, and three different instances, The plains (Sodom & Gomorrah), the Genocide of the flood (flood of Noah), and the genocide of the Caninities. With a promised fourth genocide coming, the genocide of Judgment, where most of the population of planet earth will be killed by fire, brimstone, war and famine, before ultimately resorting for his most devout, and sending the rest to hell for eternity. We call Hitler, Attila, and Muhammed moral monsters for their acts of genocide. It would be special pleading to not in turn call god the same for his genocides. I look forward to the branching discussions about these, should you choose to pursue them.

Hell. If you child did not love you, would you be willing to inflict torture upon them? God who supposedly loves us is going to to sentence me and all my fellow atheists to eternal conscious torment, because he was derelict in his duties to convince us he exists. this is immorality of the highest order. There is nothing a finite being (a being that is only alive for a period of time) could possible do, to warrant being tortured and punished for an infinite amount of time. For as "evil as Hitler was, and the atrocities he committed, not even he deserves eternal punishment. Give him a year of torture for every person that died because of him, then see if he is apologetic for what he did. if he is, and his victims chose to forgive him, then he can live on with everyone else. If he is not, or his victims still cannot forgive him then simply make him cease to exist. no one deserves eternal unending punishment, much less punishment via torture in a lake of fire as per Christian and Muslim beliefs. this makes god a moral monster.

If god has a plan for everything, and all things are in accordance with his plan, that means he planned for every instance of rape, murder, torture, and more. He not only allowed it, he knew it would happen it, and then made sure the world unfolded in the exact way it needed to happen, to ensure that it did in fact happen. This makes god a moral monster.

God not only allowed slavery, but prescribed how to treat slaves. Any dictum on slavery that is not exclusively "don't own slaves" is immoral, thus god is a moral monster.

God orders the deaths of homosexuals, this itself is immoral. We do not chose who we are sexually attracted to, thus, to kill someone because the are sexually attracted to a member of the same sex, is immoral. Therefore, god is a moral monster.

I, a fallible, flawed, and "fallen" human can create a better set of commandments than this supposedly perfect god. I can prove that too, if I were god, here are my ten commandments:

I: Do not Kill, less it be in self-defense.

II: People are not property and should not be owned, enslaved, or subjugated.

III: Do not oppress your fellow humans.

IV: Do not worry yourself about the sexuality of consenting adults.

V: Women are equal to men.

VI: Do not rape anyone, ever.

VII: Avoid violence whenever possible.

VIII: Do not mentally or physically hurt children, ever.

IX: Do not lie unless there is a need to save another with a lie.

X: Do not steal without good reason to.

We can expand on all of this, once we really get into the conversation, and I look forward to it. For the moment, it is time to address your points here.

"""1) Suffering is God's "Divine Retribution" for transgressions against Him.

I would need to question your reasons for not believing this, as this is biblical doctrine. the flood of Noah, the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah, and the eventual apocalypse of John of Patmos (book of revelations). This is also part of what he did in the Jewish holiday that Jesus himself practiced, Passover (the last supper was a traditional Passover meal). I assume you are familiar with Passover, and the Exodus of the book of Exodus? If not, at a glance, the Passover was the last judgement of god upon the Pharaoh of egypt. When Pharaoh would not let Israelite (Jewish) slaves free from their bondage in Egypt. Because of that, god decided he was going to kill all the first born of the entirety of Egypt, and for some reason, the spirit of god's wrath was not able to differentiate god's own people, from Egyptians the Isrealites needed to mark their doorways with sheep's blood so that the spirit of god's wrath knew which households to Passover and not kill the first born of. This is a belief shared by the Abrahamic faiths, and affirmed by all three. So, the Abrahamic god (god of the bible, Torah, and Qur'an) most certainly did punish the many to teach the few (in the case of Pharaoh the one) several different times. Moreover, this is direct evidence that the Abrahamic god is a moral monster, because of the mass genocides, and the killing of innocence in Egypt. Let us remember that the only reason Pharaoh did not let the Isrealites free before this final judgment, is because the Torah tells us directly that God hardened Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh would not let them go. God condemned an untold number of innocent people in Egypt, because God manipulated Pharaoh to not let Isrealites out of slavery, even when the Torah directly tells us that Pharaoh tried thrice before the final plague, the killing of the Egyptian first born.

Based on your statement that no true god would ever indiscriminately punish the many to teach the few; the only way around this, would be to admit that that the abrahamic god, is no true god. That would mean you do not believe in that god any longer.

"""2) Suffering is an unfortunate by-product of Life.

There is a lot to unpack there. We seem to both agree that suffering is an unfortunate byproduct of life. One issue I would raise is that there could not be randomness and chaoticness in that scenario. This is because if that was the case, there is the chance humans did not develop, the universe would have to have been kicked off with certain parameters that would ensure the arrival of humans. Unless, he made it simply so some life would spring forth, and we just happen to be part of that life. In that case, why would we even care if that god exists? So let's say I granted fully that the Aristitilian prime-mover existed. Kicked off the universe and either ceased to exist, or "f**ked off somewhere as to not bother or be bothered after. What difference does that make? Would there still be an afterlife? it obviously would not care if we went there or not in this situation. So, if it does not care, why would or should we? It Also would not make a bit of difference in the lives of mankind, our future, the future of any possible other life, or the universe itself.

As for the fullness of love... that is indeed a cop-out. Let us use an analogy for this. We have children, they live with us for roughly eighteen years, before moving out. We care for their basic needs, and once in a while we imply that we love them, but never fully express that love until they move out. Why would we wait until they moved out to show our full love to them? This to me seems nonsensical. It should be the other way around. We should express the fullness of our love to them, before they move out, and continue on that expression long after they have. If a god makes us live for up to ten decades, and sometimes suffer for most of that before expressing the fullness of its love, I don't think we can rightly call that love. Think about the analogy, would you wait to full express your love to your kids until they moved out? I certainly would hope not. Why on earth should we hold god to a different standard than us, when we would correctly push back on other humans acting like that with their children?

"""3) Suffering is an INTRINSIC part of Life.

Without intending to sound callous, *everyone* suffers in life. I mean, honestly, is there a single person who doesn't suffer in some way? Even those born with silver spoons wedged firmly up their arses - they have likely never known the love of an honestly open and loving parent, even if they have had everything that money can buy. Suffering exists on a WIDE spectrum, from those who have never known the nurturing love of a parent all the way down to the starving child in a third-world country who is cursed to die before they reach double-digits. Not to diminish the quite obvious and quantifiable suffering of the latter, the suffering of the former is also very real (if not so devastatingly fatal). Re-reading that, it sounds horrific that I would try to diminish such awfulness that occurs in places like Ethiopia on a daily basis by comparing it to the comparatively mild abuse of children in first-world countries - I don't mean to diminish or belittle the tragic suffering of those FAR worse off than us, but my point is that "suffering" is "a thing" - it happens to many different degrees, on many different levels, and in many different places. Suffering is, in many important ways, the Human Condition."""

Indeed. Everyone suffers in life, this is certain. I do not think suffering is an important part of the human experience. Imagine you are god, had all it's knowledge, and all it's powers and abilities. Would YOU create a world like this? would you allow genocides, rape, murder, racism? If I were god, I would make a world void of those things. I am almost certain you are going to counter this with some sort of appeal to free will. So, let me preempt that. You can still allow people to try those things, realizing and actuating upon their free will, but have a system in place that does not punish them ex post facto, but rather prevents the action from happening. Such as a "forcefield" or shield around the potential victim, or the inability for the rapist to get an erection. or even make it like a video game character, if someone kills someone, they simply respawn. the potential here is quite literally limitless, because you are god, right? Those are rather easy, lets look at something more emotional. You are god, Rob Almighty. would you Rob Almighty allow children to be raped? would you allow children to be murdered, or to starve to death? Would you allow children to get cancer? I do not think you would. Though if you said yes to any of those, I no longer have interest in speaking to you at all. this debate is not one about if god exists, but that if it did, would it be a moral monster. God allows those things, when he could have made a better world that does not allow those things, thus god is in-fact a moral monster if it exists. What we seen from the world, from existence, from the universe when it comes to suffering, is exactly what we would expect to see in a universe devoid of a benevolent god, and the exact opposite of what we would expect to see if a being that is the epitome of love and goodness by nature does exist. This does not prove there is no god, there could be a god that is maximally "evil". Yet, this does defeat the idea of a loving god, and by extension the god that Jesus proclaimed. A god that allows the previously mentioned things, is contradictory to a god that does not just love and is good, but is love and is epitomic goodness. At most, god would be indifferent, and that undermines the entire message of Jesus...

"""Think of art and literature - there is no story without Conflict; there is no thought or emotion without Challenge. Perhaps the way that God (Whoever or Whatever that might be) imparts Experience upon His Creation is by inflicting them with Crises, with Problems that require solving. Certainly, some of Mankind's greatest achievements have been in the pursuit of helping those in need. For better or for worse, humanity requires the needy in order that they may learn to rise above themselves and aid those worse off than themselves"""

Humans tend to prefer love stories.....that's why the romance section of media is much more robust than any other. However, this is also besides the point. We evolved because of ability to survive and adapt. That's why sometimes we are drawn to conflict, because it speaks to us from an evolutionary perspective. I apologize, but that line just seems incoherent to me.

"""4) God's ways are inexplicable to us.

I know that it sounds like wishful thinking, pie-in-the-sky, airy-fairy Christian bullshit, but *what if*?!""""

Why on earth do we assume this? is this because some gods in some scriptures say this? Why would a creator be so far beyond our ability to comprehend it? that line is a tired trope, that is used to justify suffering when someone has no real answer or reply to it. We are created in god's image, we ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that made us like god as proclaimed in Genesis. So why then would we not be able to comprehend this thing if we are so much like it? This is theological bull-shite of the highest order. No disrespect intended, but you are far more intelligent and rational than this. I respect you far to much to believe that you believe that god is so incomprehensible to us that it would allow an African orphan to shit out it's own stomach.

You mentioned souls, and that is a topic we can get into at some point, but it is rather irrelevant to what this topic is. Take care, and I look forward to herein back from you.

Rob::

I'll start by quickly addressing your preamble. Thank you for giving me a bit of personal background - I think it helps to have a rough picture of the person to whom one is speaking! That said, I have not yet read your deconversion story, mainly because I wanted to focus on answering your points while it's all still fresh in my mind (I tend to get distracted easily). Your intent for the debate is clear and succinct and I will make every effort to follow the same practice as you for the purposes of clarity.

With regards to your axioms, I accept your definition of "morality" as you have laid it out; when it comes to God (big "G" or little "g", I don't mind) I think it is a fair starting point to consider Him/It the "classical theist" God. I make the distinction from the "Abrahamic God" for one main reason: although you are correct that all the faiths mentioned are Abrahamic, there are arguably differences in the "character" of God presented by each faith, despite ostensibly referring to the same Supreme Being. This, in itself, is a subject of some debate - for example, in Bart Ehrman's podcast this week he argued that there was not a difference, since (among other things) Jesus clearly references abiding by the Jewish laws, and the vengeful God of the Old Testament clearly makes a major comeback in the book of Revelation. I would argue, though, that the Old Testament God is presented as a more fickle and capricious Deity than the loving, forgiving figure broadly portrayed in the New Testament. As such, I think that a crucial part of our discussion is to allow ourselves some flexibility in our description of God, but starting from the premise of an Omni God, as you put it.

I also accept your rejection of sin. It stands to reason that you cannot have an act of "sin" if you do not also have the "god" against whom you enact it! It is for precisely this reason that I do not and will not talk about sin in my interactions with you (or, indeed, anyone else who does not share my beliefs) - the concept of "sin" is irrelevant.

With regards to my wording of "The Problem of Evil", I used the phrase merely because that is how the discussion is generally titled, but I accept that "Is God a Moral Monster?" is an equally good way of putting it. (That said, I believe "Evil" can be given a useful working definition, which I would put like this: an evil act is an extreme immoral act that is undertaken with consideration and without regret. The precise distinction of "how extreme is extreme?" could be discussed and agreed upon if necessary.) However, I agree that we can safely exclude the term "Evil" from the discussion.

Two more terms I would like to add for the sake of brevity: the abbreviations OT and NT for the Old and New Testaments of the Bible respectively - it just saves a bit of time in referencing! :)

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"""God allows Genocide, and three different instances, The plains (Sodom & Gomorrah), the Genocide of the flood (flood of Noah), and the genocide of the Caninities. With a promised fourth genocide coming, the genocide of Judgment, where most of the population of planet earth will be killed by fire, brimstone, war and famine, before ultimately resorting for his most devout, and sending the rest to hell for eternity. We call Hitler, Attila, and Muhammed moral monsters for their acts of genocide. It would be special pleading to not in turn call god the same for his genocides."""

I would agree with this 100% but for one reason, and I apologise for not having explicitly mentioned this sooner: I have a perhaps unusual, certainly unorthodox, view of the Bible. As a Catholic, my Bible is primarily the NT - while we are taught some key points from the OT (the first Creation story, the basics of the Exodus, especially concerning the 10 Commandments, and bits and pieces of prophecy regarding the coming Messiah) we really don't use it all that much. That might sound crazy, but you tend to find that happens with off-shoot religions, including Islam and Mormonism especially (don't get me started on Mormonism! That's a whole different discussion, and one that I suspect we would both agree on!). Even in Mass every Sunday, we get two readings and a gospel - the first reading is often a NT passage (only occasionally do they throw in a passage from OT prophets like Isaiah or Daniel), the 2nd reading is usually from one of Paul's letters (Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, etc.) and then we get a passage from one of the four Canonical Gospels.

When I was growing up I asked my parents and my teachers about this (I went to Catholic schools). The answer seems to be that, to Catholics, the OT is viewed less as an historical document and more as a sort of "folk history" or the Israelites. If I recall correctly, the generally accepted view is that the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of the OT - is held to have been dictated to Moses by God, but wrapped in "Divine Mystery" and Parable, and the majority of the remainder is "oral tradition" rather than historical fact. As such, the specifics of God's nature in the OT are murkier than they at first appear. This being the case, my own beliefs were founded upon the principle that the OT is more like one of Aesop's Fables - a story which conveys important truths - and that the NT is a more historically accurate picture. The one major exception to this is the Book of Revelation - Revelation is the only Apocalyptic Prophecy that made it into the final NT, and it is generally viewed as something of an oddity, not least because of its bizarre and confusing imagery and symbolism. Certainly, it is one book that is never included in Church readings in a Sunday Mass! I have read Revelation in its entirety several times (perhaps I should be ashamed that it is my most-read NT book!), and it makes for a fascinating read, but I find that I concur with the theological point of view that it is not actually an "End Times" prediction, but rather a loosely-encoded allegory for what was happening at the time it was written by John - during the reign of Nero. It was intended as a Call To Arms against the oppression of Nero's Empire, signalling to the seven churches of Antiquity that God was on their side. And so, in my view, the "coming genocide" is not one that is really coming, but rather a spurring on that Good (the Christians) will overcome Evil (Nero's Roman Empire).

It is interesting, nonetheless, that (with regards to the Noah story) almost every culture has some kind of Flood Myth in their oral traditions. I have long assumed that there was a major global flood, most likely as we came out of the last Ice Age some 25,000 years ago - somehow, this story was passed orally from generation to generation, spreading to all cultures and eventually being presented by those different cultures in their own culturally distinct ways. I actually find that even more intriguing and wonderful than the actual Noah story as set out in Genesis.

Rather than quoting your next paragraph, for brevity I shall address the issue of Hell here, since you bring up the "eternal punishment" point in paragraph 1. Again, I can only speak as a Catholic, not in the broader context of "Christian" (because there are many "Christian" denominations that disagree with Catholics, and many others that are reviled and hated by pretty much everyone, Catholics included, such as the Westboro Baptist Church filth). Hell has fascinated and terrified me for many years; as a child I recall being somewhat traumatised by the traditional interpretations of Hell - a place of fiery torment, lakes of burning lava, screams and pleadings filling the air, and so on and so on. One of the wisest interpretations of Hell that I have ever heard I learnt from my father: "Hell is being in the absence of God." Further to this sentiment, I stumbled upon this beautiful reply to a Quora post by a priest, Francis Marsden:

"God made Hell for the devil and his angels, who had deliberately and knowingly refused to live with God, and had set themselves up against God.

Hell is the zone where God is not, and where those who hate Him rage impotently against Him, by their own free choice.

God wants all men to be saved, but He will not force heaven on anyone. Having given us free will, He allows us to oppose Him even to the extreme of self-damnation."

So, by that token, God does not condemn us to Hell; we condemn ourselves. I have to confess, I kind of fell in love with this explanation a long time ago. But even that seems to overlook one major point: there is no mention of Hell in the Bible. At least, not the Hell that we've all come to know and (love?). Going back once again to Bart Ehrman, translations into English of the word "Hell" (from which the broader concept sprang) primarily come from the word "Sheol" - but Sheol doesn't actually mean Hell. Sheol refers to a place - a burning pit, into which things would be cast for destruction. The fires of Sheol always burned, and anything could be thrown in for disposal. The Jews had rites and rituals for the disposal of bodies after death, and the ultimate indignity that could be forced upon a Jew was to simply have their body tossed into Sheol for disposal after death. And hence the idea of Hell began. Of course, this also means that the eternal torment of a damned soul was simply never a Thing in the Bible! Any such tangential assertion is a result of the fallibility of translation into English. (Perhaps this is why the Catholic Church resisted the translation of the Latin Vulgate until Vatican II in the 1960s - despite the fact that a lot of the Latin had already been translated from the original Greek in which the NT was written!)

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"""God not only allowed slavery, but prescribed how to treat slaves. Any dictum on slavery that is not exclusively "don't own slaves" is immoral, thus god is a moral monster.

To me, slavery is one of the most perplexing issues in the Bible. The OT speaks of slavery quite a bit, and God does seem to actively promote it in many places - and yet He also led His people out of slavery in the Exodus. Which kind of begs the question: is slavery okay so long as it's not happening to you? It is certainly a confusing paradox (or outright double standard). And so, once again, I fall down on the side of the OT being broadly-speaking a Folk History rather than actual fact. When it comes to the NT, things become even more complicated: there are issues of translation, where certain words are translated as "slave" when a more fitting translation might be "devotee" or the rather laborious "one who is committed to..." (and of course one can both commit themselves to something or be forced into a commitment). And so, once again, this is a part of my evolving understanding of God and of my exploration of my faith. Trying to ascertain the actual intent of the Supreme Being is confused by Man's attempts to express His actions. (I appreciate the fact that this sounds like a cop-out, but I have been quite upfront about the fact that I am still searching for all the answers, and I never claimed to necessarily be in possession of them - hence this discussion!)

When it comes to homosexuality I feel on slightly firmer ground. Again, referencing Dr Ehrman, the condemnation of homosexuality is not as cut-and-dried as it might at first appear. Ehrman makes the interesting point that "homosexuality" as a trait was not understood in Biblical times. It simply wasn't a Thing that some people were attracted to members of their own gender. What was a Thing was the abuse of same-gendered people by others: higher classes tended to treat lower classes as possessions; it was commonplace for Roman upper echelons, for example, to have boys in their employ (or just outright slaves) whose primary purpose was to satisfy the lusts of their master. And so the condemnation of homosexuality was less about being homosexual and more about the abuse of unwilling participants in an act that was, therefore, unholy. It wasn't about Love, it was about Relief. Foisting 21st Century understandings of sexuality upon writings in either the OT or NT is unreasonable, because our modern understanding is very different from the understanding, and hence the intent, of the authors.

Further, if a Christian is to accept that we are all God's children, we have to accept the way He made us. I believe, and science affirms, that homosexuality is innate - i.e. one is born that way. If one is born "wired up" to be attracted to their own gender (for want of a better phrase) then the Christian must accept that this is God's Will. An Apologist might argue that certain people are "born psychopaths" or "born to kill" and should we just accept that as God's Will, too? But I would counter that argument with the broad consensus that, although some people are genetically predisposed towards psychopathy, nobody is actually born a psychopath - environmental conditions play a significant and non-negligible role. In short, God doesn't make killers, but He does make homosexuals; and therefore killing is wrong, but homosexuality is just a natural (even God-Given) alternative to heterosexuality.

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Again, without quoting, I can pretty much agree with your 10 Commandments. They are Good and Just commandments, and I would think that any Supreme Being would be proud of them. But the (changing) Nature of God is something I would like to discuss separately a bit further down the line. First off, I would like to respond to your rebuttals. :)

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In response to my first point, you stated that you would like to question my reasons for not believing the "Suffering is God's Divine Retribution" schtick. I hope that my response above - particularly the point about the OT being largely a Folk History - goes some way towards answering that question. If not then I welcome any further questions you might have.

So, onto point #2 - Suffering being an unfortunate byproduct of Life. I believe that there could certainly be randomness and chaos in the Universe and yet a God could ensure the eventual emergence of humanity. You can make the active choice to throw all kinds of ingredients into a bowl to make a cake, along with some chocolate chips - your cake might turn out to be a complete disaster, but it will always have chocolate chips in it. If the eventual emergence of humanity, and a place where that humanity could survive, was God's single prerequisite for the Universe, everything else is just filler, evolving in its own way. Of course, this is all complicated by scientific understanding. Space and time evolve from within the Universe; a hypothetical being observing the Universe from the outside would see the entirety of Space and Time as a single construct, since the time within the Universe is separate and distinct from the Time (or absence thereof) of the Time outside the Universe. An outside observer could thus see the entire history of a Universe in one glimpse, without having to wait and see how it evolves. Which is a bit of a mindbender.

Regarding the "fullness of love" comment, I don't see it as a cop-out. He creates us; He allows us to live our lives; He welcomes us upon death and rewards us appropriately. If I have a child who goes wandering, travelling the world for years and years with no cellphone or internet access, no means of calling home, and when they return they reveal that they have achieved great things, won many awards, etc., then of course I hug them and applaud them and are proud of them ex post facto. It is a theological possibility that God allows us to "go wandering" and rewards us upon our eventual reconciliation, ex post facto. I see no particular problem with this as a proposition.

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This reply is growing to an absurd length, so I will make this a 2-part reply, as I have various things I would like to address for points 3 & 4.

I hope this finds you well, and I shall follow-up very soon!

Hello again! I'll try to keep this reply shorter than the last!

Point #3 - Suffering is an intrinsic part of life

"""Indeed. Everyone suffers in life, this is certain. I do not think suffering is an important part of the human experience. Imagine you are god, had all it's knowledge, and all it's powers and abilities. Would YOU create a world like this? would you allow genocides, rape, murder, racism? If I were god, I would make a world void of those things. I am almost certain you are going to counter this with some sort of appeal to free will. So, let me preempt that. You can still allow people to try those things, realizing and actuating upon their free will, but have a system in place that does not punish them ex post facto, but rather prevents the action from happening. Such as a "forcefield" or shield around the potential victim, or the inability for the rapist to get an erection. or even make it like a video game character, if someone kills someone, they simply respawn. the potential here is quite literally limitless, because you are god, right?"""

If I may posit an idea: perhaps Life is like school - a place where we learn, we grow and develop. Perhaps simply knowing everything is not fulfilling - perhaps acquiring knowledge through experience is of more value than simply the knowledge itself. Indeed, there is a school of thought that we, as conscious beings, are aspects or fragments of a single greater consciousness that has divided itself so as to explore Creation (although that is deviating massively from the concept of "God" in the traditional sense). This is one of the reasons I am reluctant to tie myself down to simply assessing the Morality of the Abrahamic God - I do not believe that any one faith has nailed down (pun intended) the specific character of the Supreme Being.

I think it is unhelpful to just "prevent" bad things from happening - a child learns more from climbing a tree if there is a risk of a grazed knee than if they are padded with bubble-wrap and face no consequences. It is how we learn the boundaries of our abilities, how we learn sense (common or otherwise), and how we improve. Conquering a mountain is more satisfying when it is difficult. Achievements mean nothing if no effort is expended, no repercussions exist. A perfect world is a pointless world - what is there to gain by existing in such a place?

And I think that's the crucial point: that adversity exists to challenge us and force us to adapt, force us to grow. For what purpose? you might ask. I can't answer that, which is why I continue to explore these questions of faith and spirituality. Perhaps God has not experienced everything - yes, I concede that God may not be Omni-Everything, that there may be something He lacks - and we were created for Him to experience things. Perhaps we ourselves are aspects of God. Again, I do not have the answers.

"""Humans tend to prefer love stories.....that's why the romance section of media is much more robust than any other. However, this is also besides the point. We evolved because of ability to survive and adapt. That's why sometimes we are drawn to conflict, because it speaks to us from an evolutionary perspective. I apologize, but that line just seems incoherent to me."""

Do they? Which humans? What proportion of humanity? Or do people buy love stories because they make for easy reading on vacation? Even then, I would argue that even romance novels have conflict in them - a love triangle, another suitor, something adverse that the lovers must overcome to be together and live happily ever after. Conflict isn't necessarily Thanos coming to wipe out half of the Universe - it can be an ocean across which your true love exists and you lack the money to traverse it. A story without conflict is the same as a perfect world: pointless.

Point #4: God's ways are inexplicable to us

"""Why on earth do we assume this? is this because some gods in some scriptures say this? Why would a creator be so far beyond our ability to comprehend it? that line is a tired trope, that is used to justify suffering when someone has no real answer or reply to it. We are created in god's image, we ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that made us like god as proclaimed in Genesis. So why then would we not be able to comprehend this thing if we are so much like it? This is theological bull-shite of the highest order. No disrespect intended, but you are far more intelligent and rational than this. I respect you far to much to believe that you believe that god is so incomprehensible to us that it would allow African orphan to shit out it's own stomach."""

I don't believe that an inexplicable God is a justification for suffering, rather an explanation for our inability to understand how God could allow suffering. I concede that it is an unsatisfactory argument, because we want to know why things are as they are. But maybe some questions are simply beyond our capacity to understand.

I don't find it unreasonable to suppose that our Creator may be beyond our ability to comprehend Him. If He exists beyond space and time (which, being external to and independent of the Universe, He must) then we are already at a disadvantage, since we are constrained to a 3-dimensional spatial plane that evolves through a single dimension of time. We cannot perceive a 4-dimensional object, but we can make a 3-d analog of that object (Carl Sagan's demonstration of a tesseract is an excellent display of this) - it gives us some inkling of what it means to be a 4-d object, but it is not something we can comprehend in its entirety; we cannot visualise such an object in its native habitat, if you like. And that's just a 4-d cube - this argument would have to be scaled up massively to come close to describing the problems of perceiving something as complicated as a Supreme Being.

Similarly, considering a timeless realm is as confusing to the human mind as considering infinity. From our temporal perspective, certain aspects of timelessness seem obvious (e.g. without time, one can see everything happen simultaneously), but even this may not be accurate or adequate. For some time now I have been fascinated by NDEs, and I have watched and read many accounts of them. Yes, there are many that can be discounted - they are not all equally convincing - but there are some interesting statements among the clamour. One recurring point that NDE-ers bring up is this idea of timelessness. They state plainly that time didn't operate like it does here, but they struggle to describe how it differs because (as some of them have explicitly stated) we lack the language to explain it. Our tools for parsing events, objects, phenomena, are by definition rooted in a 3-d, temporal reality. Interestingly, NDE-ers who bring up this timelessness say that events were discrete and could be placed in a sequence, but their recollection of this discrete sequentiality is not a wholly accurate reflection of their experience of it at the time. This may all sound horribly unconvincing, but I find it fascinating nonetheless (and I find it intriguing that many different people have described things very similarly, despite having no interactions with one another and no significant grounding in science or physics).

To summarise, I am fully aware of how unsatisfying the "Incomprehensible God" argument is, that it seems like a fobbing-off or a punt into the long grass, but at the same time I feel that it is entirely reasonable to believe that God might simply be incomprehensible to us. Which is precisely why I flip-flop on the argument!

Anyway, I hope that this has gone some way towards fleshing out my thoughts. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Take care!

Me::

Rob, I hope all is well! I thank you for your thoughtful reply.

I am glade that we have reached an agreement on several key descriptors like morality and sin. I can also accept that flexible definition of God, as long as it is indicated when used in a different way than the god of Abraham, we must make sure we are not conflating terms. I am also happy to accept your working definition of evil, “an evil act is an extreme immoral act that is undertaken with consideration and without regret”. I am also okay with using OT, and NT abbreviations for Old/New Testament for the sake of brevity.

A bit of preface here. Please do not think I am being harsh to you the person in anything I may say, if I am being harsh, it is to ideas and not you as a person. I also hope you can forgive me, if I press an issue, but there are things I feel need to be pressed. I hope you do the same in turn.

Reply Section:

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“””I would agree with this 100% but for one reason, and I apologize for not having explicitly mentioned this sooner: I have a perhaps unusual, certainly unorthodox, view of the Bible. As a Catholic, my Bible is primarily the NT - while we are taught some key points from the OT (the first Creation story, the basics of the Exodus, especially concerning the 10 Commandments, and bits and pieces of prophecy regarding the coming Messiah) we really don't use it all that much. That might sound crazy, but you tend to find that happens with off-shoot religions, including Islam and Mormonism especially (don't get me started on Mormonism! That's a whole different discussion, and one that I suspect we would both agree on!). Even in Mass every Sunday, we get two readings and a gospel - the first reading is often a NT passage (only occasionally do they throw in a passage from OT prophets like Isaiah or Daniel), the 2nd reading is usually from one of Paul's letters (Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, etc.) and then we get a passage from one of the four Canonical Gospels.”””

I apologize for my glibness here, however, regardless of if the Catholics or any other Christian denomination pays attention to the OT or not, it cannot be simply handwaved away like that. Jesus the Christ was supposedly the Jewish messiah, was a Jew, practiced Judaism, including Mosaic law, and customs. All of this in entirely predicated on the OT, (Talmud, Pentateuch and Torah). Without the Old Testament, there is no New Testament, so regardless how any particular person that is a Christian feels, the OT cannot be ignored or dismissed. Jesus himself even said he came to fulfil the law, and not a word of it would pass away. What law? The Jewish law. When Jesus, Paul, and the apostles talked about scripture, they were referring to the Jewish scriptures…the OT.

“””When I was growing up I asked my parents and my teachers about this (I went to Catholic schools). The answer seems to be that, to Catholics, the OT is viewed less as an historical document and more as a sort of "folk history" or the Israelites. If I recall correctly, the generally accepted view is that the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of the OT - is held to have been dictated to Moses by God, but wrapped in "Divine Mystery" and Parable, and the majority of the remainder is "oral tradition" rather than historical fact. As such, the specifics of God's nature in the OT are murkier than they at first appear. This being the case, my own beliefs were founded upon the principle that the OT is more like one of Aesop's Fables - a story which conveys important truths - and that the NT is a more historically accurate picture. The one major exception to this is the Book of Revelation - Revelation is the only Apocalyptic Prophecy that made it into the final NT, and it is generally viewed as something of an oddity, not least because of its bizarre and confusing imagery and symbolism. Certainly, it is one book that is never included in Church readings in a Sunday Mass! I have read Revelation in its entirety several times (perhaps I should be ashamed that it is my most-read NT book!), and it makes for a fascinating read, but I find that I concur with the theological point of view that it is not actually an "End Times" prediction, but rather a loosely-encoded allegory for what was happening at the time it was written by John - during the reign of Nero. It was intended as a Call To Arms against the oppression of Nero's Empire, signalling to the seven churches of Antiquity that God was on their side. And so, in my view, the "coming genocide" is not one that is really coming, but rather a spurring on that Good (the Christians) will overcome Evil (Nero's Roman Empire).”””

I would simply ask why then, the messiah who is said to be either wholly or in part the god of the OT, affirms the OT, if it were to be taken as parable? He at several different points, points to the OT including extra biblical scripture, the gnostic gospels (Nag Hammadi library), affirms Adam & Eve, the flood of Noah, the Passover (and by extension, the entire Exodus) and more. The glaring exception to this, is the gospel of Judas, where Jesus supposedly outright states that the God of the OT is an entirely different god than the incomprehensible great spirit that actually sent him. However, that is extra biblical, and roundly rejected even at the height of it’s popularity except by the Gnostics.

I appreciate the honesty about the book of revelation, and I generally agree with you there. However, that book was penned (as were all other apocalyptic texts regarding Jesus) because of what Jesus preached about the impending arrival of god’s judgement, his kingdom, and the “end of time”. Which was already predicated on the Jewish belief that the Messiah would bring about god’s kingdom on earth, then the Judgement of the Jewish dead could finally happen.

“””It is interesting, nonetheless, that (with regards to the Noah story) almost every culture has some kind of Flood Myth in their oral traditions. I have long assumed that there was a major global flood, most likely as we came out of the last Ice Age some 25,000 years ago - somehow, this story was passed orally from generation to generation, spreading to all cultures and eventually being presented by those different cultures in their own culturally distinct ways. I actually find that even more intriguing and wonderful than the actual Noah story as set out in Genesis”””

Regardless, unless there was a global flood, that happened entire because of incidental natural processes, this is irrelevant to the morality of a agent enacted flood that was initiated as a judgement to the reprobate human kind. Though, I did notice you did not object to that being immoral. Is there an objection to the morality of this, or do you concede that this does indeed demonstrate that god is a moral monster?

“””Rather than quoting your next paragraph, for brevity I shall address the issue of Hell here, since you bring up the "eternal punishment" point in paragraph 1. Again, I can only speak as a Catholic, not in the broader context of "Christian" (because there are many "Christian" denominations that disagree with Catholics, and many others that are reviled and hated by pretty much everyone, Catholics included, such as the Westboro Baptist Church filth). Hell has fascinated and terrified me for many years; as a child I recall being somewhat traumatised by the traditional interpretations of Hell - a place of fiery torment, lakes of burning lava, screams and pleadings filling the air, and so on and so on. One of the wisest interpretations of Hell that I have ever heard I learnt from my father: "Hell is being in the absence of God." Further to this sentiment, I stumbled upon this beautiful reply to a Quora post by a priest, Francis Marsden:

"God made Hell for the devil and his angels, who had deliberately and knowingly refused to live with God, and had set themselves up against God.

Hell is the zone where God is not, and where those who hate Him rage impotently against Him, by their own free choice.

"God made Hell for the devil and his angels, who had deliberately and knowingly refused to live with God, and had set themselves up against God.

So, your definition of Hell is just separation from God? I already live that way, so what would I care if I continue like that? Even if you go to hell, it wont be that bad, you have friends here then.

There is a logical problem with your definition of hell, however. Hell is a place in which god is not…If God is Omnipresent, there is not such possible place. It is the same issue your fellow Catholics understood, minds like Aquinas, Anselm, Augustine of Hippo among others noticed, the same issue that prompted Dante Alighieri to pen the Divine Comedy ( Dante’s Inferno ). That a place without god is not possible, because god is omnipresent.

“””"God made Hell for the devil and his angels, who had deliberately and knowingly refused to live with God, and had set themselves up against God. “””

Oh? Correct me if I am wrong, but how I remember the fall of Lucifer the Light bearer (the devil, or the supreme prince of hell in Demonology) is that after his rebellion failed, god threw Lucifer to the earth so hard that he (Lucifer) fell threw the earth and into the lake of fire underneath the Earth.

(irrelevant, but an interesting side note, until the rise of apologetics started, the widespread belief was that heaven and hell were real, tangible places that could potentially be found…though the goal posts shifted to metaphysical realms after humans “shattered the heavens” and went into space.)

That said, hell was not created, Lucifer ended up there by design, and god just though that all human rebels should join the original rebels Lucifer there, Lilith, Adams first wife, and the first human rebel is also said to be the first human there.

Keep in mind the rebellion of Lucifer, it is going to be extremely important here….for many reasons, not the least of which that Lucifer and the rebellious angels knew for a fact that god existed, and still chose to rebel. This is illustrative of a much more important point. I am going to hell because I have not accepted Jesus as my lord and Savior, because I have not been convinced that god exists, and have good reason to believe that the Abrahamic goes does not exist. The usual apologetic is that god has not made himself well known, because it would be a violation of freewill….yet, you already stated the problem there. Lucifer and his angels knew for a fact that god was real (and how powerful he is), yet still freely chose to rebel…demonstrating that god can, in fact, make himself undeniable known, without violating the free will of creatures of what to do with that knowledge. Belief that he exists should not be the standard, loving and obeying him should be. I can believe in him, and chose to still disobey him, like Lucifer. The fact that good people are damned for not believing, because god was derelict in his duties to convince people of his existence demonstrates that god is a moral monster.

“””"where those who hate Him rage impotently against Him, by their own free choice. “”” then god should make his existence undeniable, and let us damn ourselves by what we do with that information. It is wrong to damn us, because we do not think, know, or believe that we have that information. Thus, god is a moral monster.

“””So, by that token, God does not condemn us to Hell; we condemn ourselves. I have to confess, I kind of fell in love with this explanation a long time ago. But even that seems to overlook one major point: there is no mention of Hell in the Bible. At least, not the Hell that we've all come to know and (love?). Going back once again to Bart Ehrman, translations into English of the word "Hell" (from which the broader concept sprang) primarily come from the word "Sheol" - but Sheol doesn't actually mean Hell. Sheol refers to a place - a burning pit, into which things would be cast for destruction. The fires of Sheol always burned, and anything could be thrown in for disposal. The Jews had rites and rituals for the disposal of bodies after death, and the ultimate indignity that could be forced upon a Jew was to simply have their body tossed into Sheol for disposal after death. And hence the idea of Hell began. Of course, this also means that the eternal torment of a damned soul was simply never a Thing in the Bible! Any such tangential assertion is a result of the fallibility of translation into English. (Perhaps this is why the Catholic Church resisted the translation of the Latin Vulgate until Vatican II in the 1960s - despite the fact that a lot of the Latin had already been translated from the original Greek in which the NT was written!)”””

The word hell is mentioned in the bible, dependent on the translation, and version. However, the Lake of fire, is universally mentioned. Shaol was for the Jew, not the Gentile. The eternal torment is mentioned in the bible! In fact, this is why Pope John Paul II said that he thought that his predecessors did not talk about the lake of fire for dogmatic reason, but rather it would drive people away from the faith.

“””The Jews had rites and rituals for the disposal of bodies after death, and the ultimate indignity that could be forced upon a Jew was to simply have their body tossed into Sheol for disposal after death”””

This is simply false, Sheol is where Catholicism gets the idea of Purgatory, it is a place of waiting for the bodily resurrection of the Jewish faithful at Judgement day. This is why in gnostic Gospels, especially the Gospel of Thomas states that Jesus went to hell/Sheol demanded the gates open, and then took Adam, Mosses, Noah and the other OT saints to heaven after awakening them, because they were in the place of waiting. However, that is where the difference between Jewish and Christian theology is most apparent. Jewish theology teaches that even when the Messiah appeared, they would still be there until the time of Judgement. Interestingly enough, in Jewish theology those OT saints are still there, because neither the Messiah, or the time of Judgement has come.

“””To me, slavery is one of the most perplexing issues in the Bible. The OT speaks of slavery quite a bit, and God does seem to actively promote it in many places - and yet He also led His people out of slavery in the Exodus. Which kind of begs the question: is slavery okay so long as it's not happening to you? It is certainly a confusing paradox (or outright double standard). And so, once again, I fall down on the side of the OT being broadly-speaking a Folk History rather than actual fact. When it comes to the NT, things become even more complicated: there are issues of translation, where certain words are translated as "slave" when a more fitting translation might be "devotee" or the rather laborious "one who is committed to..." (and of course one can both commit themselves to something or be forced into a commitment). And so, once again, this is a part of my evolving understanding of God and of my exploration of my faith. Trying to ascertain the actual intent of the Supreme Being is confused by Man's attempts to express His actions. (I appreciate the fact that this sounds like a cop-out, but I have been quite upfront about the fact that I am still searching for all the answers, and I never claimed to necessarily be in possession of them - hence this discussion!)”””

Jesus Said “Slaves obey your masters, even the cruel ones” “Masters be kind to your slaves, for even you have a master in heaven”. This isn’t a Cop-out, it is a common rationalization, when people understand that you cannot reconcile these issues with a loving god. That’s just you struggling with the idea. Jesus, the son of god, and the “prince of peace” could have, should have said, hey…we are all servants of god, not each other, do not own slaves…..So much for him being a good dude.

“””The OT speaks of slavery quite a bit, and God does seem to actively promote it in many places - and yet He also led His people out of slavery in the Exodus. Which kind of begs the question: is slavery okay so long as it's not happening to you? “””

So, you now affirm the OT? Again, any dictum on slavery that is not exclusively “ don’t own slaves” is immoral. Do you not agree with that?

“”” When it comes to homosexuality I feel on slightly firmer ground. Again, referencing Dr Ehrman, the condemnation of homosexuality is not as cut-and-dried as it might at first appear. Ehrman makes the interesting point that "homosexuality" as a trait was not understood in Biblical times. It simply wasn't a Thing that some people were attracted to members of their own gender. What was a Thing was the abuse of same-gendered people by others: higher classes tended to treat lower classes as possessions; it was commonplace for Roman upper echelons, for example, to have boys in their employ (or just outright slaves) whose primary purpose was to satisfy the lusts of their master. And so the condemnation of homosexuality was less about being homosexual and more about the abuse of unwilling participants in an act that was, therefore, unholy. It wasn't about Love, it was about Relief. Foisting 21st Century understandings of sexuality upon writings in either the OT or NT is unreasonable, because our modern understanding is very different from the understanding, and hence the intent, of the authors.

If Dr. Ehrman said that, he is patently wrong, however he does not hold that view as stated by you. I have actually spoken with Dr. Ehrman himself about this. What you are referencing is Judeo-Christian CULTURE at the time, that was kind of incidentally forced upon them, because of Rome’s open practice of homosexuality, which included several Emperors….the Jews and Christians at the time could not openly condemn an act that was practiced by high ranking Roman officials, as it would mean certain death. Again, you are confusion cultural practices that were a survival mechanism, with what they believed with their scripture.

Leviticus 18:22 – “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

Leviticus 20:13 – “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

If those where there to prevent abuse, then it implies that the abuse is fine if it is done to a woman…

“””Foisting 21st Century understandings of sexuality upon writings in either the OT or NT is unreasonable, because our modern understanding is very different from the understanding, and hence the intent, of the authors.”””

BULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL SHIIIIIIIIIT

We are not taken about humans that constantly need to learn and grow. This is supposed to be the inspired word of a perfect omniscient god…temporal context should not be a consideration when speaking about a perfect being that has all knowledge and knows all possible outcomes of any situation. If you are willing to concede that this is just a fictional Piece of work by humans, I will accept that. However, we are talking about God, and his supposed word here. If a god wanted to convey a message, there should not be a difference in temporal context, it should be the same for everyone, in every place, at every time. So it is very fair to impose our understanding on both the OT and NT because they both come from god, and god would have already known how this would be looked upon…

“””So, onto point #2 - Suffering being an unfortunate byproduct of Life. I believe that there could certainly be randomness and chaos in the Universe and yet a God could ensure the eventual emergence of humanity. You can make the active choice to throw all kinds of ingredients into a bowl to make a cake, along with some chocolate chips - your cake might turn out to be a complete disaster, but it will always have chocolate chips in it. If the eventual emergence of humanity, and a place where that humanity could survive, was God's single prerequisite for the Universe, everything else is just filler, evolving in its own way. Of course, this is all complicated by scientific understanding. Space and time evolve from within the Universe; a hypothetical being observing the Universe from the outside would see the entirety of Space and Time as a single construct, since the time within the Universe is separate and distinct from the Time (or absence thereof) of the Time outside the Universe. An outside observer could thus see the entire history of a Universe in one glimpse, without having to wait and see how it evolves. Which is a bit of a mindbender.

Regarding the "fullness of love" comment, I don't see it as a cop-out. He creates us; He allows us to live our lives; He welcomes us upon death and rewards us appropriately. If I have a child who goes wandering, travelling the world for years and years with no cell phone or internet access, no means of calling home, and when they return they reveal that they have achieved great things, won many awards, etc., then of course I hug them and applaud them and are proud of them ex post facto. It is a theological possibility that God allows us to "go wandering" and rewards us upon our eventual reconciliation, ex post facto. I see no particular problem with this as a proposition.”””

So, just going to ignore the entire analogy that I made for this, then double down on it? Okay. There is also the false teeth analogy. Where one can demonstrate the necessity of something without suffering to the person being shown. I do not have to allow my daughter to suffer from dental problems, or at the dentist in order to show her the necessity of dental hygiene, I can simply pull my false teeth out, lay them on the table and smile opened mouth at here…to demonstrate what happens if you do not take care of your teeth. Why could a god not give us an example of this, without making us personally suffer. I did this with my daughter, because I don’t want her to suffer, because I love her. Why can’t God do this?

“””” """Humans tend to prefer love stories.....that's why the romance section of media is much more robust than any other. However, this is also besides the point. We evolved because of ability to survive and adapt. That's why sometimes we are drawn to conflict, because it speaks to us from an evolutionary perspective. I apologize, but that line just seems incoherent to me."""

Humans in general, it is evidence by the fact that love sells more than drama, that love sells more than conflict. However, we seem to be at an impasse here, and I will table this point. For now.

The problem here, is the conflict as far as a divine being is concerned is more Thanos, than long distance love.

“””I don't find it unreasonable to suppose that our Creator may be beyond our ability to comprehend Him. If He exists beyond space and time (which, being external to and independent of the Universe, He must) then we are already at a disadvantage, since we are constrained to a 3-dimensional spatial plane that evolves through a single dimension of time. We cannot perceive a 4-dimensional object, but we can make a 3-d analog of that object (Carl Sagan's demonstration of a tesseract is an excellent display of this) - it gives us some inkling of what it means to be a 4-d object, but it is not something we can comprehend in its entirety; we cannot visualise such an object in its native habitat, if you like. And that's just a 4-d cube - this argument would have to be scaled up massively to come close to describing the problems of perceiving something as complicated as a Supreme Being.”””

You don’t. and I do. How do we decide who has better standing here?

God walked on earth in the Garden, wrestled with a human (and lost until he used his powers to break the Human’s leg), came bodily as a human, ate, slept , drank, cried prayed and was killed as a human. That would mean that at least some of the time he has the physical realm of space-time…which would mean he is not fully external, and we should be able to understand him as far as he has manifested in physical space-time. I could concede many things, about the incomprehensibility of a deity, yet it is that Abrahamic god I full reject the argument for. This is because god this god is said to have come into out reality and interacted with our reality in several meaningful ways, including dying a human death. Why should I think THAT god is incomprehensible?

Your example there, is of an abstraction, which is meant to be that way, Sagan also did not understand that space-time and the universe probably is not classical…. Existing outside of space-time was already mentioned. It was common theology that god existed in space and time until we started exploring space. There is a discussion to be had here too, as existing “outside” of space time, might only apply to the A theory of time as well, where time flows like a river, with a beginning and end point. That theory of time is actually contradicted by quantum mechanics, and the B theory of time seems to be closer to the type of time we actually have. Also, Quantum fields exist outside of classical space-time, and we understand those a little more each day. This is because these quantum fields actually exist in our reality and can be demonstrated. Mathematics seem to also be abstractions that are not physical, and are not real tangible things, yet we understand mathematics quite well. We make all kinds of metaphysical propositions and can even talk about what is metaphysically impossible. It is fallacious to assert that we can understand all these other things that are outside of classical space-time, but not god….

“””Similarly, considering a timeless realm is as confusing to the human mind as considering infinity. From our temporal perspective, certain aspects of timelessness seem obvious (e.g. without time, one can see everything happen simultaneously), but even this may not be accurate or adequate. For some time now I have been fascinated by NDEs, and I have watched and read many accounts of them. Yes, there are many that can be discounted - they are not all equally convincing - but there are some interesting statements among the clamour. One recurring point that NDE-ers bring up is this idea of timelessness. They state plainly that time didn't operate like it does here, but they struggle to describe how it differs because (as some of them have explicitly stated) we lack the language to explain it. Our tools for parsing events, objects, phenomena, are by definition rooted in a 3-d, temporal reality. Interestingly, NDE-ers who bring up this timelessness say that events were discrete and could be placed in a sequence, but their recollection of this discrete sequentiality is not a wholly accurate reflection of their experience of it at the time. This may all sound horribly unconvincing, but I find it fascinating nonetheless (and I find it intriguing that many different people have described things very similarly, despite having no interactions with one another and no significant grounding in science or physics).

Infinity is not hard to understand, it is well established in mathematics, and science. The universe itself even after the “heat-death” will continue existing for an infinite amount of time. Black holes are infinite, PI is infinite, yet it is also the circumference of a circle. Infinity is not confusing to those that have studied advanced mathematics.

As far as NDEs go. We have tested this. A large portion of hospitals have notes on top of fixtures in trauma, and ICU units. And everyone who purports to have an NDE, is asked what these notes say…to date no one has gotten it correct. We can chemically induce NDEs, because we know exactly how these chemical processes of the brain impacts the mind and visual/audible perceptions of the subject of these tests. As far as feeling timeless, again that is because it is most probable that the B theory of time is correct.

We both went off on several tangents here, that moved away from morality. I apologize, but I assume we both thought these things were important for the background information.

That said, I only seen you object two points I made regarding morality and conceded one of the bigger ones. I feel I have made the case that the Abrahamic god is a moral monster.

My case is this, according to at base, Jewish scripture god either condones, or orders things that we both would find to be immoral. This, it would logically follow that god is immoral. God has personally committed several acts that if he were human, we would condemn as evil, this would entail he is a moral monster.

Some of these acts were several Genocides, the murder of thousands of people. The condoning of slavery, the condemnation of homosexuality. And other acts I have not listed, yet, because we have not gotten there. But I have 12 more examples of these things all from the OT. I am not trying to “win anything” but with you not addressing several of the bigger points, where does this leave us? I fall as you have not absolved god of his immoral acts, and that I clearly demonstrated by point over the last two emails. Were do we stand? What more what you like to discuss, my friend?

Rob::

I understand that things can be read as personal attacks when they are not meant that way, fear not! (I mentioned earlier that I have Borderline Personality Disorder, which means that I have difficulty regulating my emotions - I tend to gravitate towards seeing things as "all good" or "all bad", which has led, in the past, to me feeling attacked by every little thing. Fortunately, awareness of my condition has led to me stepping back and taking a deep breath before leaping to extreme conclusions - I still find it hard not to take things personally, but I'm still very much a work in progress! I trust you enough to know that you're not being personal when you disagree with me :) Similarly, I know I have a tendency to come across as snarky or sarcastic (I've even had "pretentious" thrown my way a few times), but this is largely unintentional and never personal.

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"""I apologize for my glibness here, however, regardless of if the Catholics or any other Christian denomination pays attention to the OT or not, it cannot be simply handwaved away like that. Jesus the Christ was supposedly the Jewish messiah, was a Jew, practiced Judaism, including Mosaic law, and customs. All of this in entirely predicated on the OT, (Talmud, Pentateuch and Torah). Without the Old Testament, there is no New Testament, so regardless how any particular person that is a Christian feels, the OT cannot be ignored or dismissed. Jesus himself even said he came to fulfil the law, and not a word of it would pass away. What law? The Jewish law. When Jesus, Paul, and the apostles talked about scripture, they were referring to the Jewish scriptures…the OT."""

It was not my intent to dismiss the OT, and I apologise if that is the way it came across. My intention was to stress that, as a Catholic, my understanding of the OT is significantly less developed than that of, say, a Jew (or a theological scholar!). I can only form opinions and reach conclusions on the basis of the information that I am aware of, which is exactly why I strive to keep an open mind, and is also one of the reasons we are having this discussion now! One could (perhaps legitimately) argue that Catholics have cherry-picked information they agree with to form their faith, quietly brushing over that with which they do not agree, but - again - I was raised Catholic and can only argue my case from the standpoint of my own religious education. That said, I am fully aware that I am lacking a lot of information and, as such, I am always keen to digest more on the subject.

You are certainly correct in stating that there is no NT without the OT. My counter-argument would be that there is no quantum-mechanical description of the atom without the Rutherford description of the atom. Was Rutherford's description wrong? Yes, it was, in many important respects - but it was broadly accurate in terms of the understanding of the period, and it gave us a starting point for deeper exploration. In schools to this day, students learn about the Rutherford experiment and his model of the atom long before they learn anything of quantum mechanics and fuzzy electron clouds. Why? Because trying to explain the true nature (insofar as we understand it today) of the atom would be too confusing for children who have no grounding in the core concepts. In education we strive to build foundations first and refine concepts as the student learns more.

Why am I going off at a scientific tangent? Well, firstly because I am a science nerd, but also because I have always seen the above explanation as a parallel to religious understanding: the Pentateuch gives us a foundation, then successive books of the OT refine our understandings; the NT then uses the OT as a basis for its own teaching, and further refines points from there. (Not a direct parallel, it must be acknowledged, but of a similar nature.) The big deviation here, of course, is that Christians are not actually taught all of the foundations of the OT - just the ones deemed "most important." Who made that judgement? Well, I suppose the Church did. In my defense, I never said the Catholic Church was perfect... :)

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"""I would simply ask why then, the messiah who is said to be either wholly or in part the god of the OT, affirms the OT, if it were to be taken as parable? He at several different points, points to the OT including extra biblical scripture, the gnostic gospels (Nag Hammadi library), affirms Adam & Eve, the flood of Noah, the Passover (and by extension, the entire Exodus) and more. The glaring exception to this, is the gospel of Judas, where Jesus supposedly outright states that the God of the OT is an entirely different god than the incomprehensible great spirit that actually sent him. However, that is extra biblical, and roundly rejected even at the height of it’s popularity except by the Gnostics."""

Counterpoint: Jesus' taught in parables. Like, a lot. The Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Mustard Seed, the Sower, and on and on. By some accounts (according to a quick Google search) he told as many as fifty parables during his Ministry. Parables are excellent ways of leading people to an answer, the intention being that a solution discovered is more valuable than a solution described. This being the case, I don't see a massive contradiction or dishonesty in affirming OT teachings as parable.

From what I have read, the so-called "Gnostic" texts were not "roundly rejected" at the time - they were broadly accepted and disseminated. In fact it wasn't until Constantine in the 4th Century that the extra-Biblical texts were finally put to rest. For at least its first 200 years, Christianity appears to have been a faith that was finding its feet - there were dozens of gospels and possibly hundreds of scriptures, and it took a long time for there to be a generally agreed-upon NT (which was enacted more through force than discussion). There were no "Gnostics" in the early Christian era - at least, not a defined group that identified itself as such - there were just Christians. Over time they appear to have broadly coalesced into two main groups, with the Christians of today ultimately winning out. Which begs the question: are the "Gnostic" texts any more or less valid or relevant than the canonical texts? Christians today would probably unanimously claim that their scriptures are the only "Divine" ones, but I find myself increasingly questioning that.

(*Side note: I actually rather like the Gospel of Judas, but that's a story for another time!)

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"""I appreciate the honesty about the book of revelation, and I generally agree with you there. However, that book was penned (as were all other apocalyptic texts regarding Jesus) because of what Jesus preached about the impending arrival of god’s judgement, his kingdom, and the “end of time”. Which was already predicated on the Jewish belief that the Messiah would bring about god’s kingdom on earth, then the Judgement of the Jewish dead could finally happen."""

I agree 100% - Revelation built upon what came before (and went a lot further, becoming at times rather gratuitous). Regarding Jesus' teaching of the "End Times," I may need to be pointed towards some specific examples. I am aware of the prophecy in Matthew, chapter 24, which was obviously the main inspiration for John's Revelation. Elsewhere in the gospels I am only aware of brief allusions to God's judgement of the righteous and the wicked. (As I have said, I'm not a very good Catholic, and I make no claims to have read the entire Bible, nor even the entire NT!)

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"""Regardless, unless there was a global flood, that happened entire because of incidental natural processes, this is irrelevant to the morality of a agent enacted flood that was initiated as a judgement to the reprobate human kind. Though, I did notice you did not object to that being immoral. Is there an objection to the morality of this, or do you concede that this does indeed demonstrate that god is a moral monster?"""

If God brought a flood to kill (almost) everyone on the planet, innocent and guilty alike, then I concede that would make him morally reprehensible (at least by human definition of morality).

But I made no judgement on the morality of the flood because I am not convinced that it was an act of Divine Retribution by God. My intent was to highlight that flood myths exist the world over, lending credence to the notion that a flood did occur, and suggesting that, in all likelihood, it happened at the end of the last ice age. Certainly, back in the days of yore, catastrophes were attributed to wrathful gods simply because people didn't understand the mechanics of why they happened - the "God of the Gaps". The question, "Why would God allow such a thing to happen?" is a separate issue, and judgements of the morality of allowing natural disasters to occur are significantly different from judgements of the morality of causing such a thing to happen.

I suppose, in that case, I am an advocate of a much less "Hands-On" God than most Catholics - and certainly not the Abrahamic God. I believe that He created the Universe and has largely remained out of things, just popping in from time to time to give us some parental advice. And, given that, I suppose it renders the question of whether or not He is a "Moral Monster" somewhat moot. Does a parent allow their child to make mistakes? Absolutely, yes, sometimes. For humans, we draw the line at allowing them to make fatal mistakes, for obvious reasons. But for a God who exists beyond time and space (on which, more later), one who knows that the human soul lives on even after death? I don't know, I honestly don't...

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"""So, your definition of Hell is just separation from God? I already live that way, so what would I care if I continue like that? Even if you go to hell, it wont be that bad, you have friends here then.

But living without God is a different concept from living separate from God. Think of that (patronising) phrase some Christians like to say: "You may not believe in God, but God believes in you." I don't particularly like the phrase because it's generally used to condescend to Atheists (which I don't think is especially helpful), but the essence of it is that you are in God's presence all the time, whether you choose to believe in Him or not. If one chooses, post-mortem, to remain without God, then you are given the "gift" of existing without his Divine Presence. The downside, as I have come to understand it, is that an existence without the Presence of God is utterly miserable - it is not possible to find any joy, not even for a moment, since joy springs from God. Or something like that. Again, I am no theologian, but that is my layman's understanding of the conceit.

With regards your second objection, if God is Omnipotent, surely He is capable of withholding His Glory, His Presence, from any region He desires? Or are you suggesting that God has no choice but to be Omnipresent?

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(This is quite a big one, so I've cut it up into two parts)

"""Oh? Correct me if I am wrong, but how I remember the fall of Lucifer the Light bearer (the devil, or the supreme prince of hell in Demonology) is that after his rebellion failed, god threw Lucifer to the earth so hard that he (Lucifer) fell threw the earth and into the lake of fire underneath the Earth.

First of all I would like to stress that the quote beginning, "God made Hell for the devil and his angels..." was not mine, though I thought it summed I my thoughts quite poetically. Regardless, your recollection of Lucifer and his Rebellion exist only in the Book of Revelation - a book that we have already discussed as being steeped in metaphor, imagery and symbolism. Nowhere else in the Bible is this "war in heaven" or "angelic rebellion" mentioned. The majority of the "Lucifer's Rebellion" mythos that we have comes from Dante and Milton, whose works were derived by reading a lot into the actual text of the Bible, broader Christian Doctrine that is outside of the Biblical texts, and a helping of vivid imagination.

There are two main OT passages that refer to the expulsion of Lucifer from Heaven - Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-18 - and they both, more likely than not, refer not to an actual Fallen Angel but rather to specific human beings (though there is some dispute between scholars). Interestingly, the Isaiah quote does not mention Hell, but rather Sheol: "Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the lowest depths of the Pit." This is not a place of eternal suffering, but rather the abode of the dead. The Ezekiel reference seems to reference not Sheol but Gehenna (which, I now realise, is a mistake that I made in my last reply - Sheol is the Jewish abode of the dead, Gehenna is the physical pit of fire): "Therefore I cast you as a profane thing Out of the mountain of God; And I destroyed you, O covering cherub, From the midst of the fiery stones."

The Jewish belief was always that there existed a Heavenly Realm where only Perfect Beings could go - the prevailing belief (and one that even Jesus alluded to) was that the Afterlife would be a physical continuation of existence on Earth after the End Times, in the 1000-year reign of the Lord. You would be dead and buried and unaware of anything between the time of your death and the time of your resurrection. Conversely, the wicked would not be given a Jewish burial: their bodies would be discarded into a burning pit - Gehenna - and hence there would be no physical body for them to be resurrected into; they would be utterly destroyed, consumed by fire.

And then the Christians came along, took Jewish beliefs, sprinkled in a bit of Zoroastrianism and a hefty dose of Greek philosophy and gave us the idea of Heaven and Hell that we know today. The Greeks had long believed that body and soul were distinct entities, the soul existing beyond the death of the physical body - this was accepted Greek thought on the matter (although it did have its detractors, primarily Epicurus). Having taken this idea and applied it to Judaism, the question became, "Where, then, does the soul go when you die?" Did it become dormant until the physical Resurrection or did it continue on? Ultimately it became a thing that the Resurrection was of the soul rather than the body. Good souls went to Heaven, so where did bad souls go? Combining the Fiery Pit of Sheol with the Greek concept of Hades, Hell was born.

Does this then mean that the entire concept of an Afterlife has been made up out of whole cloth? Perhaps. Or it could be that this is an evolution of the concept, a deeper understanding that has emerged over time, like how we went from the Rutherfordian model of the atom to the quantum mechanical model. Again, I see no problem accepting this as a legitimate possibility, given my faith.

(Here's the second part:)

"""Keep in mind the rebellion of Lucifer, it is going to be extremely important here….for many reasons, not the least of which that Lucifer and the rebellious angels knew for a fact that god existed, and still chose to rebel. This is illustrative of a much more important point. I am going to hell because I have not accepted Jesus as my lord and Savior, because I have not been convinced that god exists, and have good reason to believe that the Abrahamic goes does not exist. The usual apologetic is that god has not made himself well known, because it would be a violation of freewill….yet, you already stated the problem there. Lucifer and his angels knew for a fact that god was real (and how powerful he is), yet still freely chose to rebel…demonstrating that god can, in fact, make himself undeniable known, without violating the free will of creatures of what to do with that knowledge. Belief that he exists should not be the standard, loving and obeying him should be. I can believe in him, and chose to still disobey him, like Lucifer. The fact that good people are damned for not believing, because god was derelict in his duties to convince people of his existence demonstrates that god is a moral monster."""

I do not believe that accepting Jesus as one's Lord and Savior is a prerequisite for going to Heaven - this is largely an Evangelical belief. Jesus himself taught that honoring God's will was what led to Salvation, and one does not need to believe in God, or even know what His will is, to honor that will. God's will can be summed up as Be Kind; Be Humble. That's pretty much it. It is outlined nicely in Matthew 25:35-40:

"'For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’"

Therefore, I reject this line of reasoning as evidence that God is a moral monster.

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"""The word hell is mentioned in the bible, dependent on the translation, and version. However, the Lake of fire, is universally mentioned. Shaol was for the Jew, not the Gentile. The eternal torment is mentioned in the bible! In fact, this is why Pope John Paul II said that he thought that his predecessors did not talk about the lake of fire for dogmatic reason, but rather it would drive people away from the faith."""

Yes, I should have been more specific: what I should have said is that the word Hell does not exist in any of the original texts - it is a word that comes to us via translation. Regardless, the Lake (or Pit) of Fire is used a few times, this is true. The eternal torment, though... I can only find references to some kind of eternal punishment in two significant places: Revelation (for which I have already expressed my concerns as a source of Biblical literalism) and in one passage from Matthew (25:46). Now, the Matthew quote is interesting because it's vague in its brevity - it says "punishment", not "torment." If the punishment is the destruction of the soul (or the body and soul) and there can be no changing one's fate after the fact, then this would be an eternal punishment. This might sound like arguing semantics, but in 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10 it says, "They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction," which seems to lend this argument some veracity. Every other reference I can find talks not of eternal torment but of "eternal fire" and "the worm that does not die." To my mind, these are features of the Pit itself, not indicative of the period over which the punishment takes place. The Pit, Gehenna, will always be there to receive the bodies of the unrighteous. One exception is in Daniel 12:1-2, where it says, "And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." The wording here seems to suggest to me that the dead will be awoken to meet their Final Judgement - some will be granted eternal life, the others will not receive eternal life and shall instead be held in eternal contempt. Note that contempt is something held by others over a person - for example, I hold King Henry VIII in contempt (he was a pretty contemptible person).

With all of that said, this is all from my own reading of things; I have to admit to being embarrassingly clueless about the specific Catholic doctrinal perspective. I find that, the more I explore my faith, the more I veer away from prescribed religious dogma. My actual faith hasn't wavered much in 30 years, but the details and my understanding of it have. It may be that Pope JPII had good reasons for what he said, but it is not my understanding of Hell. (Also, Pope JPII is an excellent Rapper name. If I ever get into the Rap scene I'll have to remember that.)

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"""This is simply false, Sheol is where Catholicism gets the idea of Purgatory, it is a place of waiting for the bodily resurrection of the Jewish faithful at Judgement day."""

I haven't quoted your whole paragraph because you are absolutely correct - it was my mistake, I confused and conflated Sheol with Gehenna, as mentioned above. However, if you read my comment about the Jews having "rites and rituals" and substitute Sheol with Gehenna, it makes perfect sense... ;)

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"""Jesus Said “Slaves obey your masters, even the cruel ones” “Masters be kind to your slaves, for even you have a master in heaven”. This isn’t a Cop-out, it is a common rationalization, when people understand that you cannot reconcile these issues with a loving god. That’s just you struggling with the idea. Jesus, the son of god, and the “prince of peace” could have, should have said, hey…we are all servants of god, not each other, do not own slaves…..So much for him being a good dude."""

"""So, you now affirm the OT? Again, any dictum on slavery that is not exclusively “ don’t own slaves” is immoral. Do you not agree with that?"""

Firstly, I wasn't affirming the OT, merely highlighting an apparent paradox that existed way back even in the OT's earliest stories.

Let's be clear: I can absolutely state, unequivocally, that slavery is wrong. Human beings are not, and should never be, possessions of others.

But there was a point to my comment about the OT: the OT flip-flops all over the place on the nature of slavery; sometimes it is condemned, sometimes it seems to be lauded as a good or at least acceptable thing - except for the Israelites. According to the Exodus, God took great pains to bring the Israelites out of slavery. So why the flip-flopping? Clearly slavery is bad, or else God would have told the Israelites to suck it up, right? This is the source of my confusion, and it leads me to conclude that there is something we're missing, perhaps some element of context that has been lost over the centuries. Or maybe God is just a contrarian ("Slavery is fine so long as it's not happening to My People"). Or maybe God is a Moral Monster. Or maybe God doesn't exist. These are all potential answers, I will concede. But one wonders if there are unspoken things, now lost to the sands of time, that would clarify the issue. We must remember that language itself has evolved enormously over time, becoming increasingly nuanced and complex. Perhaps certain instances of the word "slave" would now be more adequately satisfied by the use of the word "devotee," which turns the meaning of the sub/dom relationship on its head. I don't know, and we can argue that point until the cows come home and it would likely not get any clearer - if context or intent has been lost then it is lost, and we are unlikely to get it back. But, yes, if we take the text of the Bible at face value then, by that token, God would appear to be a moral monster (or at the very least woefully inconsistent, which is hardly a laudable attribute for an Omni God).

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"""If Dr. Ehrman said that, he is patently wrong, however he does not hold that view as stated by you. I have actually spoken with Dr. Ehrman himself about this. What you are referencing is Judeo-Christian CULTURE at the time, that was kind of incidentally forced upon them, because of Rome’s open practice of homosexuality, which included several Emperors….the Jews and Christians at the time could not openly condemn an act that was practiced by high ranking Roman officials, as it would mean certain death. Again, you are confusion cultural practices that were a survival mechanism, with what they believed with their scripture.

Leviticus 18:22 – “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

Leviticus 20:13 – “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

If those where there to prevent abuse, then it implies that the abuse is fine if it is done to a woman…"""

Here's a link to a blog post by Dr Ehrman: https://ehrmanblog.org/does-the-new-testament-condemn-homosexuals/

A couple of quotes from it:

"It is commonly argued that the Bible condemns sexual “perversion” such as gay or lesbian sex. In earlier posts I discussed the relevant passages of the Old Testament, to show that they simply cannot be used in these modern debates, since their very understandings of the phenomena are completely at odds with what people think today..."

"In a later post I’ll be arguing that the New Testament has no conception at all of sexual orientation, any more than it had a conception of quantum physics. Human knowledge has advanced a lot since the first century."

"It’s true, the authors did know that sometimes men had sex with men and women with women. But they had no conception at all that it had anything to do with something we today would call “orientation” that could explain sexual desire. They saw something they weren’t used to and (in at least one passage) (in fact, in only one passage) condemned it as unnatural. The same way they condemned women with short hair as unnatural. Literally, the same way."

I have watched at least two of his lectures where he has stated the same thing, namely that "sexual orientation" - and hence "homosexuality" in the sense we use it today - were simply not a Thing!

I will, as soon as I have the money to do it, subscribe to Dr Ehrman's blog so that I can read more - he is an extremely eloquent and intelligent scholar, and it is always enlightening and a genuine joy to hear him speak (and when I read his writings I can only ever hear them in his voice!).

I won't comment on the "it would be fine if done to a woman" comment other than to say these two things:

1) Not if done by another woman! The talk here is of actions perceived to be "unnatural".

2) Did the Bible, especially the OT, not hold a fairly dim view of women? It's odd because Jesus seemed to be all for women, no issues at all (just as he was with tax collectors, lepers, Samaritans and so on), but of course we get a lot of our NT from Paul's letters, and he rather explicitly said that women should put up and shut up (another Biblical perspective with which I disagree, by the way!).

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"""BULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL SHIIIIIIIIIT

The key word here is "inspired".

Yes, Christians believe the Bible to be Divinely Inspired, but that's different from claiming that it is the literal word of God (except for the Pentateuch, and obviously the words of Jesus himself). It's all very well saying that a 2000+ year-old text should have been written to be relevant and accurate to all times and all places, or else it can't be God's Word, but I think that's extremely disingenuous.

If Richard Feynman walked into a kindergarten to teach the kids some science, he's not going to start with "particles have no discrete existence until they interact with another particle" - he probably wouldn't even start with his famous line "Everything is made of atoms," because these are kindergartners and they need to be taught some things even more basic than that. He wouldn't even finish with "particles have no discrete existence..." - it's too advanced for the kindergartners to even begin to grasp. If he were to write a book aimed at kindergartners he would follow suit - teaching them a) what they need to know and b) what they'll be able to understand. If he were to write a book that everyone could understand, it would be the same book he wrote for the kindergartners, because otherwise the kindergartners wouldn't get it. If he wanted to go into greater detail, he'd write another book.

If the OT is God's original book then Christians might argue that God did write another book - He inspired the NT. (Though why He's never given us any updates is another question - perhaps He is letting us explore His existing works first?) It seems to me that a book that made perfect sense in a bygone age is destined to lose relevance as time goes on, because understanding and experience change over time. This does not seem like a shortcoming or error on the behalf of the author, but rather a necessary feature of any recorded work.

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"""So, just going to ignore the entire analogy that I made for this, then double down on it? Okay. There is also the false teeth analogy. Where one can demonstrate the necessity of something without suffering to the person being shown. I do not have to allow my daughter to suffer from dental problems, or at the dentist in order to show her the necessity of dental hygiene, I can simply pull my false teeth out, lay them on the table and smile opened mouth at here…to demonstrate what happens if you do not take care of your teeth. Why could a god not give us an example of this, without making us personally suffer. I did this with my daughter, because I don’t want her to suffer, because I love her. Why can’t God do this?"""

I'm sorry if you thought that my "doubling-down" was me "ignoring" your analogy - on the contrary,I thought my response was a direct answer to it through the use of a counter-analogy. I also need to stress here that the "Parent/Child" analogy for humanity's relationship with God is just that: an analogy. It is similar, in many ways, but there are fundamental differences. Firstly, and most importantly, we are not of the same species - we are fundamentally different creatures. No matter how much we are "made in God's image" we will never be omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. Regardless, though, if we follow through with my analogy, if my child "goes wandering" and is incommunicado, I have to accept that any suffering that may befall her is simply something that she will have to go through and hopefully learn from, and come back stronger for the experience. And if her suffering breaks her then I will gladly be there to pick her up and guide her through recovery.

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"""Humans in general, it is evidence by the fact that love sells more than drama, that love sells more than conflict. However, we seem to be at an impasse here, and I will table this point. For now."""

Quick counterpoint to mull over: maybe love stories sell more because they are easy and disposable, something that can be read quickly and without any effort. That does not necessarily mean they are intrinsically preferred to dramatic stories.

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"""You don’t. and I do. How do we decide who has better standing here?

This may be the ultimate impasse to all of this. The best I can do is to try to explain why I think God may be beyond our ability to comprehend. We clearly are both approaching the issue with wildly divergent suppositions. For example, I don't believe that "God walked on Earth in the Garden" or "wrestled with a human" there because I don't believe there was a Garden in a literal sense (and certainly no MMA). Your perception that God has existed "some of the time" in our physical realm is not accurate - yes, in Christianity Jesus is God, but God is not just Jesus. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is obviously something that has to be taken on faith, and that faith does require the acceptance of an inexplicable conundrum: how can the Three be One and the One be Three and yet the Three are separate? I don't know how to explain that. I suppose in some way you have God, who is external to the Universe; Jesus, who is internal; and the Holy Spirit, which is the link between them? Maybe? Again, I don't have all the answers.

But I would argue that "the God that interacted in our reality" is most obviously embodied in Jesus, and Jesus is absolutely explicable. He was both God and Man, and in this way we are able to relate to Jesus in a way that may simply not be possible with God.

"""Your example there, is of an abstraction, which is meant to be that way, Sagan also did not understand that space-time and the universe probably is not classical…. Existing outside of space-time was already mentioned. It was common theology that god existed in space and time until we started exploring space. There is a discussion to be had here too, as existing “outside” of space time, might only apply to the A theory of time as well, where time flows like a river, with a beginning and end point. That theory of time is actually contradicted by quantum mechanics, and the B theory of time seems to be closer to the type of time we actually have. Also, Quantum fields exist outside of classical space-time, and we understand those a little more each day. This is because these quantum fields actually exist in our reality and can be demonstrated. Mathematics seem to also be abstractions that are not physical, and are not real tangible things, yet we understand mathematics quite well. We make all kinds of metaphysical propositions and can even talk about what is metaphysically impossible. It is fallacious to assert that we can understand all these other things that are outside of classical space-time, but not god…."""

Oh, I'm certain that Sagan knew that spacetime and the universe are not classical - I only brought up his name because it was his demonstration of a tesseract from the first episode of Cosmos that I was referring to. Quantum mechanical or classical, it makes no difference - we cannot perceive beyond our 3 spatial dimensions.

It may have been common theology that God existed in space and time, but we must now come to realise that He must exist external to them, and it has nothing to do with theories of time or a sudden Texas Switch because we went to space and God wasn't there. The reason is simple: all of spacetime began in the Big Bang. Everything that we consider space throughout all of what we consider time was created in that event. There may have been space and time beyond what became our universe (if, indeed, there is a real notion of "Beyond" in the classical sense), but it was explicitly not our space and time. If God created the Universe, and the Universe did not yet exist, then God must have been external to the Universe! One cannot be in a place that does not exist! Therefore, God is external to the Universe. Now, one can make arguments about Him later entering this Universe, but that does mean He is not an external agent. I am English - if I go to Spain I do not become a Spaniard, and even if I were to become a naturalised citizen I would still have English DNA.

When you say "classical spacetime" I assume you are using that as the alternative to "quantum mechanical spacetime"? But these are not different or separate things - they are both "Spacetime" - they are simply different ways of describing Spacetime at different scales. Quantum fields exist within Spacetime. Their usefulness for describing phenomena decreases with scale - they are excellent for describing particles, but ungainly and unnecessary for describing galaxies. Mathematics is abstract, I grant you, but it is an intrinsic part of our universe. Humans are very good at contemplating abstractions, concepts, ideas, fantasies and any number of things, but can we ever truly grasp something with which we have no experience?

"""Infinity is not hard to understand, it is well established in mathematics, and science. The universe itself even after the “heat-death” will continue existing for an infinite amount of time. Black holes are infinite, PI is infinite, yet it is also the circumference of a circle. Infinity is not confusing to those that have studied advanced mathematics."""

You misunderstand me - we can certainly evaluate infinity, play with it mathematically, consider it in that abstract way (I'm an especially big fan of the Hotel Hilbert - fun with infinities!). But I mean consider it as a real thing that you might one day encounter. Numbers become just numbers after a while - abstract. It has been found that people will be more saddened by a report of 3 people dying than by a report of 30,000 dying - it's because the numbers just don't resonate beyond a certain scale. Can you really picture 100 billion, for example? That's a BIG number. It's the number of stars in our galaxy (give or take). Now, we can picture a galaxy - that's just one thing - but can we picture 100,000,000,000 stars? Now picture infinity...

_______________________________________________________

"""As far as NDEs go. We have tested this. A large portion of hospitals have notes on top of fixtures in trauma, and ICU units. And everyone who purports to have an NDE, is asked what these notes say…to date no one has gotten it correct. We can chemically induce NDEs, because we know exactly how these chemical processes of the brain impacts the mind and visual/audible perceptions of the subject of these tests. As far as feeling timeless, again that is because it is most probable that the B theory of time is correct."""

Correction: we are still testing this.

I have been intrigued by the AWARE Study, spearheaded by Dr Sam Parnia. There's rather more to it than just "notes on top of fixtures", and Parnia himself has commented that one cannot expect somebody having an OBE or NDE to be like "this is incredible, fantastic, weird, amazing...ooh, what's that note say?" Of special interest is the fact that there was one documented case of somebody with no brain activity being able to recount events and conversation that took place in a separate hospital room at the same time. Admittedly, this is just one out of hundreds of cases, but this isn't just a case of "well, one guy got lucky and imagined something that actually happened" - this was more of a case of, "how the hell did that happen?" (Which is why the investigation continues in the AWARE II Study.) We can chemically induce out of body experiences (which are distinct from NDEs), but they are qualitatively different from NDEs.

_______________________________________________________

I've now been writing for the better part of 6 hours, so I'm glad to see I can finally wrap up here! We did go off on many tangents - tangents are good; I like tangents. Probably means I'm not very good at "debating" in its purest sense, but I think it makes for an extremely enlightening discussion!

Upon reflection, I will concede your key point:

The Abrahamic God is, indeed, a Moral Monster.

I was hoping that we might get more of an idea of what kind of Supreme Being God actually could be, but perhaps there are just too many impasses to overcome.

If nothing else, I hope I have given you some insight into the mind of someone who believes in some form of God-type Being (and I hope that insight isn't, "Gaaah! What a frickin' looney!").

If you'd like to follow up on any of my replies in this email then please feel free - my Inbox is always open!

I'm going to take a breather while I consider other topics to discuss.

Take care, my friend, and thank you for a challenging and illuminating discussion!

Me::

Rob,

Once again, thank you for the fantastic reply. This will be my closing email about this (as we both agreed) and I’ll give the last word in your final email. I do want to thank you for the great discussion. I am not going to reply to much here, but there are a few key points of contention that I want to highlight, and something I want to clarify. Again my friend, the last word belongs to you.

“””It was not my intent to dismiss the OT, and I apologise if that is the way it came across. My intention was to stress that, as a Catholic, my understanding of the OT is significantly less developed than that of, say, a Jew (or a theological scholar!). I can only form opinions and reach conclusions on the basis of the information that I am aware of, which is exactly why I strive to keep an open mind, and is also one of the reasons we are having this discussion now! One could (perhaps legitimately) argue that Catholics have cherry-picked information they agree with to form their faith, quietly brushing over that with which they do not agree, but - again - I was raised Catholic and can only argue my case from the standpoint of my own religious education. That said, I am fully aware that I am lacking a lot of information and, as such, I am always keen to digest more on the subject.

I love analogies, yet yours is not apt here, as science builds on each other, and admits when previous science was incorrect….theology seems incapable. Jesus himself said he came to fulfill the law and prophets, not to destroy them. He came to finish the story, so to speak. But, the OT should be looked at as more of a sequel, and not a remake. Whereas new scientific datum often requires a remake.

“””Counterpoint: Jesus' taught in parables. Like, a lot. The Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Mustard Seed, the Sower, and on and on. By some accounts (according to a quick Google search) he told as many as fifty parables during his Ministry. Parables are excellent ways of leading people to an answer, the intention being that a solution discovered is more valuable than a solution described. This being the case, I don't see a massive contradiction or dishonesty in affirming OT teachings as parable.”””

If that is to be the idea, could one not simply say that Jesus himself besides the physical existence was a mere parable? The reason I say this, is what if the prophecies about the messiah were mere parables? And Jesus just happened to be really good at manipulating how people perceived those? This is a rabbit hole that I do not think many Christians would want to travel down… 😊

POINT of Contention:::

“”” From what I have read, the so-called "Gnostic" texts were not "roundly rejected" at the time - they were broadly accepted and disseminated. In fact it wasn't until Constantine in the 4th Century that the extra-Biblical texts were finally put to rest. For at least its first 200 years, Christianity appears to have been a faith that was finding its feet - there were dozens of gospels and possibly hundreds of scriptures, and it took a long time for there to be a generally agreed-upon NT (which was enacted more through force than discussion). There were no "Gnostics" in the early Christian era - at least, not a defined group that identified itself as such - there were just Christians. Over time they appear to have broadly coalesced into two main groups, with the Christians of today ultimately winning out. Which begs the question: are the "Gnostic" texts any more or less valid or relevant than the canonical texts? Christians today would probably unanimously claim that their scriptures are the only "Divine" ones, but I find myself increasingly questioning that.”””

The gnostic gospels were most likely well-received in their time before the official canonization of the bible. However, even before that, the Gnostics were the only ones that accepted the gospel of Judas as more than forgery or heresy. This is one of the things the Asine, and Gnostics were persecuted for, before the crusades, where they were ultimately eradicated by the Knights Templar

“””With regards your second objection, if God is Omnipotent, surely He is capable of withholding His Glory, His Presence, from any region He desires? Or are you suggesting that God has no choice but to be Omnipresent?”””

I do indeed think that, as per how omnipresent is used. It is the same sense that in our presentation of the universe, gravity is omnipresent…it is always there, always present. Omni present means always there, I do not think even a god could escape that. Again, this is why I call an omni-omni god logically incoherent. Because the Omni properties not only are self-contradictory, they are mutually contradictory with each other as well. Read the book, I wrote a lot about this there.

“””I do not believe that accepting Jesus as one's Lord and Savior is a prerequisite for going to Heaven - this is largely an Evangelical belief. Jesus himself taught that honoring God's will was what led to Salvation, and one does not need to believe in God, or even know what His will is, to honor that will. God's will can be summed up as Be Kind; Be Humble. That's pretty much it. It is outlined nicely in Matthew 25:35-40:”””

Soteriology is a widely debated philosophical field and I can only go by what I was taught as an Episcopalian.

Jesus Said: “ I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the father but through me.

The most famous NT passage states this explicitly. John: 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Jesus said: “if you deny me before men, I shall deny you before my father”

I think it is rather clear that belief in Christ, and acceptance of him as your savior is THE prerequisite for getting into heaven.

“””Let's be clear: I can absolutely state, unequivocally, that slavery is wrong. Human beings are not, and should never be, possessions of others.”””

I know this is how you feel, and this makes you one of the few I have seen truly be honest about this, and not try to rationalize it. You, my friend, are a better Moral agent than Jesus in this regard.

“””Here's a link to a blog post by Dr Ehrman: https://ehrmanblog.org/does-the-new-testament-condemn-homosexuals/A couple of quotes from it: “It is commonly argued that the Bible condemns sexual “perversion” such as gay or lesbian sex. In earlier posts I discussed the relevant passages of the Old Testament, to show that they simply cannot be used in these modern debates, since their very understandings of the phenomena are completely at odds with what people think today...""In a later post I’ll be arguing that the New Testament has no conception at all of sexual orientation, any more than it had a conception of quantum physics. Human knowledge has advanced a lot since the first century. “It’s true, the authors did know that sometimes men had sex with men and women with women. But they had no conception at all that it had anything to do with something we today would call “orientation” that could explain sexual desire. They saw something they weren’t used to and (in at least one passage) (in fact, in only one passage) condemned it as unnatural. The same way they condemned women with short hair as unnatural. Literally, the same way."I have watched at least two of his lectures where he has stated the same thing, namely that "sexual orientation" - and hence "homosexuality" in the sense we use it today - were simply not a Thing!I will, as soon as I have the money to do it, subscribe to Dr Ehrman's blog so that I can read more - he is an extremely eloquent and intelligent scholar, and it is always enlightening and a genuine joy to hear him speak (and when I read his writings I can only ever hear them in his voice!).”””

I am aware (passively) of what Ehrman has said on his blog, but it is locked behind a paywall, and I refuse to pay for his non scholarly work. In his scholarly work, and in personal conversations that I have had with him, he has said otherwise. Not to mention, DR. Ehrman is a NT scholar, that is his specialization, and he is absolutely correct when speaking on this from a NT, and early Christian perspective. However, I vehemently disagree with his conclusions about that the OT says. Did they have an understanding of homosexuality outside of sex? I don’t know. Maybe, or maybe not. The fact of the matter is that they knew people were attracted to, and had sexual relations with those of the same sex…and then condemned that act. I will not simply agree to take temporal context into account. Disclaimer, I have nothing but admiration and respect for Dr. Ehrman. However, if we follow that line of reasoning, we would be forced to accept pedophilia and child marriage as permissible as well. The temporal context is the same that Muslims use when people (rightly) call out their prophet Muhammad for pedophilia when he had sexual relations with a nine year old, whom he married when she was six. I do not give either a free pass, especially when we consider these are people (Muhammad, Jesus, Moses) and books that are said to be from a perfect, timeless and perfectly moral being. I am not sorry.

This next part, is simply clarifying all this talk about Sagan, cosmos, and such.

“””Oh, I'm certain that Sagan knew that spacetime and the universe are not classical - I only brought up his name because it was his demonstration of a tesseract from the first episode of Cosmos that I was referring to. Quantum mechanical or classical, it makes no difference - we cannot perceive beyond our 3 spatial dimensions.”””

He did not, at the time of his published work, and Even Cosmos, relativity (general, and special) had not yet been undermined by quantum mechanics. Sagan absolutely thought that the universe operated classically, and the understanding of it working Q-mechanically is an advent of the last 25 or so years.

“””God must have been external to the Universe! ””” what if there is nothing, or it is not even possible to be external to the universe? You already answered this, my friend. “One cannot be in a place that does not exist!”.

“””When you say "classical spacetime" I assume you are using that as the alternative to "quantum mechanical spacetime"? But these are not different or separate things - they are both "Spacetime" - they are simply different ways of describing Spacetime at different scales. Quantum fields exist within Spacetime. Their usefulness for describing phenomena decreases with scale - they are excellent for describing particles, but ungainly and unnecessary for describing galaxies. Mathematics is abstract, I grant you, but it is an intrinsic part of our universe. Humans are very good at contemplating abstractions, concepts, ideas, fantasies and any number of things, but can we ever truly grasp something with which we have no experience?”””

No, it is not simply an alternative. It is an entirely different way of how it works. One describes how the universe works, according to classical understandings of relativity, the other describes how the universe works in relation to Quantum Mechanics. These aren’t simply the same things, because as of yet they can not be reconciled. The cancel each other out, and QM has the better predictive power (it has yet to be wrong in that sense) and directly conflict with classical descriptions. The one with the better predictive power, is the one that takes precedence. It is why General and special relativity was the standard for so long, because it made accurate predictions…QM simply does it better. Quantum is not just about size, it is literally the fundamental mechanics of the universe. While spacetime is the same, sort of, how it acts and what makes it go are two entirely different things between being quantum mechanical, and classical. And quantum mechanics has yet to be wrong, it is the single most successful theory in human history. Hence why we say that the universe does not behave classically (the way described by relativity (and what those previous notions they are built upon) but instead must be described quantum mechanically. That is why the big focus in both theoretical physics and QM is trying to find a proper theory of quantum gravity, and a way to unify QM with G/R relativity. I hope that clears up what I meant.

All in all, I want to thank you for your fantastic replies, and dealing with my casual aggressiveness. I fell like I have learned something, in that I may need to dive more into the theology of hell, and retool my understanding of it. I hope that this exchange was just as fruitful for you, my friend.

In the end, the only think we are not able to parse out, is our quibble over hell, but as you conceded my overall stance that the god of Abraham, is indeed a moral monster. I am happy I was able to get you to see this, as we did not have to get into the weeds about it. That shows your honesty, and willingness to learn new things. I hope I can show that same humility.

As said, the last word is yours if you choose to take it. I appreciate this conversation so much and look forward to me! Take care, Rob.

Rob::

Hi Anthony!

Thank you for your kind words. I very much enjoyed our conversation - it gave me a lot to think about and helped me to clarify some of my own questions (like the whole "Abrahamic God" thing - if you'd asked me 10 years ago if I believed in that God I would likely have said yes; in the last 3 years or so I have begun questioning myself over this, but never formed a solid conclusion; now I can firmly say "No, I do not believe in That God.") Most importantly, though, it made me think, which is something far too few people seem to be capable of anymore (Frank Turek, for example...XD). If everybody comes away from a heartfelt discussion holding the exact same views with which they went in, was the discussion even worthwhile? Discussion is such a good and valuable tool, and I fear it is something that people are losing (and I think social media - especially Facebook, Twitter and Youtube - are at least somewhat responsible for this: Don't like an opinion? Block them, delete their messages, pretend there is no dissent...).

I, too, shall be brief in my reply.

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"I love analogies, yet yours is not apt here, as science builds on each other, and admits when previous science was incorrect….theology seems incapable. Jesus himself said he came to fulfill the law and prophets, not to destroy them. He came to finish the story, so to speak. But, the OT should be looked at as more of a sequel, and not a remake. Whereas new scientific datum often requires a remake."

I accept that it was not a perfect analogy. Worse than that, reading it back I realise that I did not explain my reasoning well at all. I won't thrash that dead horse here (!), but I would be happy to discuss this point in the future if you wanted to (as, indeed, I would with any of the individual topics raised in our discussion).

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"If that is to be the idea, could one not simply say that Jesus himself besides the physical existence was a mere parable? The reason I say this, is what if the prophecies about the messiah were mere parables? And Jesus just happened to be really good at manipulating how people perceived those? This is a rabbit hole that I do not think many Christians would want to travel down… 😊"

It is, I admit, risky assigning the term "parable" to OT texts. How does one decide what is parable and what is not? I think science has proven conclusively that the OT Creation account(s) are, if not parable, allegorical. I would say the same of Noah's Ark. The Exodus is more than mere allegory, but (I suspect) something a little less than 100% fact. It's tricky deciding what is accurate and what is not, and the older the text, the harder it becomes. (On a side note, I saw a very interesting archaeological documentary about Sodom & Gemorrah a while back, which suggested it might have at least some historical validity, much to my surprise - that's a story I had always assumed was entirely parable.)

Confession time: I love rabbit holes! Sometimes I go down them just to see if there's a way out. But, seriously, if there's ever a rabbit hole argument you would like to pursue, I am game for the exploration! The issue you raise might, indeed, be a ripe discussion in and of itself, but I think the choice of topic for our next discussion should be yours to choose. :)

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"""The gnostic gospels were most likely well-received in their time before the official canonization of the bible. However, even before that, the Gnostics were the only ones that accepted the gospel of Judas as more than forgery or heresy. This is one of the things the Asine, and Gnostics were persecuted for, before the crusades, where they were ultimately eradicated by the Knights Templar"""

Point conceded :)

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"""I do indeed think that, as per how omnipresent is used. It is the same sense that in our presentation of the universe, gravity is omnipresent…it is always there, always present. Omni present means always there, I do not think even a god could escape that. Again, this is why I call an omni-omni god logically incoherent. Because the Omni properties not only are self-contradictory, they are mutually contradictory with each other as well. Read the book, I wrote a lot about this there."""

This clarifies things, thank you. I would argue that, whereas gravity is omnipresent by its nature - it is what it is - God is a conscious being, capable of choice. I think it is the capacity to choose His own nature that solves many of the Omni paradoxes.

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"""Soteriology is a widely debated philosophical field and I can only go by what I was taught as an Episcopalian.

Jesus Said: “ I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the father but through me.

Jesus said: “if you deny me before men, I shall deny you before my father”

I think it is rather clear that belief in Christ, and acceptance of him as your savior is THE prerequisite for getting into heaven."""

That is very interesting - I knew that there were passages about only getting to Heaven through Jesus, but I confess I know nothing of specific Episcopalian beliefs. As a Catholic, I don't recall that we were ever taught you had to be Catholic (or even Christian) to go to Heaven - I think the specific subject was just roundly avoided, or at least never explicitly mentioned. Certainly there are other passages in the NT which suggest Universal Salvation for anyone who has led a "good life." (Yet more contradictions in the Bible!)

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""" I will not simply agree to take temporal context into account."""

I have quoted only this sentence in the interest of brevity, I hope you don't mind. I think temporal context has to be taken into account - the Bible was written for people during a particular time period, and so one must make concessions for things which have changed societally in the meantime. From a Theistic standpoint it may seem difficult to argue (if God is God then shouldn't he have explained things better to people back in The Day?) and maybe that is true. There are explanations for it, though the validity of those explanations is for a more detailed discussion. However, if viewing the Bible in a purely secular manner the temporal context is essential for understanding the text.

On a side-note, I normally would not be willing to pay for articles behind a paywall (The Washington Post and The Onion can both kiss my butt), but I am willing to do it for the Ehrman Blog. 100% of the proceeds are donated to charities, especially children's charities, and Dr Ehrman takes nothing from it to enrich himself - it's a fundraising mechanism and nothing more, and I kind of admire that.

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"""He did not, at the time of his published work, and Even Cosmos, relativity (general, and special) had not yet been undermined by quantum mechanics. Sagan absolutely thought that the universe operated classically, and the understanding of it working Q-mechanically is an advent of the last 25 or so years."""

This is not accurate at all. Even as I write this, Relativity has not been undermined by Quantum Mechanics. The only physical theory ever developed that has had the success of QM is Relativity - although QM may have more victories, in purely numerical terms, they both have the same failure rate: precisely 0%. Science is well aware of the conflict between QM and Relativity, but the conflict is born of scale, not veracity. Both QM and Relativity are correct: QM describes the very tiny, Relativity describes the very large.

I won't get into it here, but QM and Relativity are kind of my Thing, so if you would like to have a purely scientific discussion about the subject I would very much be down for that! I loves me some science even more than I loves me some God-talk!

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You are very welcome, sir! And thank you once again, my friend! It was a very illuminating, informative and fruitful discussion. I genuinely appreciate your willingness and your civility - I have never happened upon anyone who was willing or able to debate theology with me, much less someone who did so with such candor and dignity.

I very much look forward to having discussions with you in future!

(As I said earlier, the next topic is yours to choose!)

Until next time, take care, Anthony!

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Rob

a year ago

Thank you for posting this and for the lovely introduction. I had an absolute blast with this conversation; I really enjoyed the open, frank and polite exchange of ideas, and I learned some new things, too. They say one should never discuss religion or politics. Well, I think we showed that it is possible to discuss at least one of those things without it devolving into a slanging match!

Once again, thank you, my friend, and I look forward to our next discussion!

xx