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Oct 4, 2012

Well, at least this apologetics is sort-of new


Here's a response to a blog post here:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/badcatholic/2012/09/an-attempt-to-explain-christianity-to-atheists-in-a-manner-that-might-not-freak-them-out.html


My response:

Catholicism is factually untrue, in general. It simply is contradicted by observable evidence. Christianity in general follows much the same disproofs from the usual apologetics. I have written at length about this in my blog:

http://www.themindisaterriblething.com/2012/04/disproof-of-catholic-theology.html
http://www.themindisaterriblething.com/2012/09/more-disproof-of-christian-theology.html

Usually apologetics fail to grasp a fundamental point: regardless of whether or not humans COULD sin, the conditions which we were allegedly created in are stacked IN FAVOR of sin to begin with. However, it seems that Marc here won't exactly go that route, and simply acknowledges the fact that the universe is not a nice place to live overall, but that this is how it HAS to be because, of course, God is perfect:

"We are allowed to sin — and thus to suffer — because God loves us. If we could not refuse him, the fullness of perfection, we would be puppets attached to his celestial fingers. We could not not love God. But love, to be love, must be freely given. Perfection is meaningless if we have not the choice of imperfection. We are granted, in love, the opportunity to sin.)... [I] beg the atheist to read this and understand that, if there is a Christ, then suffering is granted meaning, and then decide from there whether there in fact is a God, a Christ, etc."

Yeah, that little wrap of "logic" is baffling to me, but let's assume it's true for the sake of argument.

Well, this isn't really a fair state of things, is it? Apparently, according to Marc, we're expected to follow some bizarre rules based on books written by some neolithic tribe in ancient Palestine when this "Perfect" creator finally decided, hundreds of thousands of years after humans started existing, to make himself known by dying, resurrecting, leaving zero evidence, and then having his followers write this story down decades or centuries after he actually lived. Not only that, apparently this was supposed to make things better for the 99% of humans who lived BEFORE he allegedly died, because he lives outside of time.

Firstly, this is actually entirely against Catholic doctrine. It's not the case that the universe was supposed to be imperfect even BEFORE humans existed. That's a central tenet of the dogma. It cannot be wrong, according to them, because it is the raison d'etre of Jesus. However, even assuming Marc is right and the Catholics (which he may or may not be a part of) are all wrong, I'm with George Carlin on this one:

http://rense.com/general69/obj.htm

"This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude."

or perhaps Epicurus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

Ultimately Marc falls into the fallback of "suffering" being tied to "free will". Of course, this is nonsense. Epicurus reminds us of this trilemma. There is no free will that causes horrendous events like earthquakes, asteroid collisions, supernovae, supervolcanoes, childhood leukemia, and Justin Bieber. The universe could get along just fine without them all, and still leave room for us to be punished appropriately for our disobedience (because, of course, that's what it's all about).

Instead, we see the evidence: the universe is imperfect, has always been imperfect, we are relative newcomers, and it's completely pointless to believe that, in the last 0.001% of existence, the "perfect creator of it all" decided to die and be reborn, leaving not one shred of evidence of his existence in any primary historical source.

1 comment:

Staid Winnow said...

The catch for me always has been the definition of perfect. Apologists have a more malleable definition of what constitutes perfection than Romney does of a merely good tax plan.

The same trait is both endemic to perfection and not, thereby rendering it useless. Epicurus indirectly destroys this premise.


Is evil necessary for a perfect being? Well, it exists, so it must be, otherwise a perfect being would optimize it out of the universe. Then, evil is a part of perfection. Yet we are punished for not shunning it, even as we are unable to, and the one who created it requires it.

It is not imperfection or perfection, just sheer nonsense.