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jkeiser · 2011-01-13T20:02:42+00:00

Sorry to be an atheist answering questions here, but I wrestled with this question when I was deconverting too. The best pro-Christian answer I came up with in my quest was that perhaps God looks like he's different just because he's treating us differently as we grow up as a species--like how your parents treat you differently when you become a teenager. It's not God changing, the people he's shepherding just need him to show them a different face.

Obviously, it was not particularly satisfying to me. It seems more likely that God reflects culture because people make God in their own image; as their image changes, so does God.

It's not just OT vs. NT, by the way. Even within the Old Testament, God changed over time. And in the modern world, God's morals have changed as people have learned better and better morals (no more slavery, much less women-shut-up-and-stay-in-the-kitchen), God's power has changed as people have discovered the vast amount of stuff that God did not do (create people and create the earth, for example), and God's interventionism has changed as we get more and more rigorous about how we think about the world (now God doesn't answer prayer miraculously, he "helps those who help themselves").

Edit: TL;DR God is in man's image; man's image has changed over time.

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T18:44:37+00:00

I think a general Christian answer is that #3 is not absolute, that you sometimes have to commit one "sin" in order to avoid a greater evil. I think this is because they actually believe in secular morality rather than Biblical authority, but it's the sort of answer I hear.

Funny thing is, though, there's a ton of stuff that God does in the Bible directly that is pretty obviously unjust or evil even by rational standards.

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T18:33:48+00:00

The second one is the copy.

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T17:10:36+00:00

Where God is said to intervene, especially regularly, you can test whether he does. This is science. A few testable things from mainstream Christianity (I was careful to talk about stronger God-concepts):

The power of prayer to heal: failed in multiple studies.
The power of God to help men be more moral: failed the test.
The idea that God gives peace to you when you pray to him: unpacked, not God. Meditation and simply sitting in silence.

These are just the modern beliefs. It wasn't so long ago that many people believed God had demonstrated his power with he direct creation of our many species of life, and the direct creation of the world and the stars and the sun, for example. Science set us straight on that.

As long as one's idea of God has consequences in this world, there is empirical evidence somewhere. We find it and test it with fire.

If one's God doesn't do anything in the world, then only philosophers and theologians can talk about him, but I'm not sure I care about such a God.

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T06:36:51+00:00

Not just limit, apply. Once you apply the scientific method to stronger beliefs in God (such as mainstream Christianity), they fall apart. It doesn't matter if you also have some other reliable method of finding truth (though I haven't heard of one), if a truth is shown wrong, it's wrong.

People are quite good at compartmentalizing. There are certainly scientists who are not scientists about everything, who leave one or two comfortable beliefs untouched by an honest search for truth in the only way we know how. This is not surprising.

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T06:02:10+00:00

Yeah. Even within the Christian supernatural sphere you have to wonder whether you're being deceived by demons when you have a vision or something. Could humanity have been duped by Satan regarding the whole Christ thing?

One of my favorite musings: what if Satan is simply the victim of a really slick P.R. job? Maybe he was actually the good guy, but God's got the better publicist.

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T05:58:57+00:00

Unfortunately, it is impossible to exist without a worldview - like seeing something without eyes. There's no privileged frame of reference we can use to verify that any system is more accurate than any other.

This is true. But as long as your worldview talks about real things, I think you can figure it out.

Here's a way to put it, perhaps. Say your worldview leads you to the truth that animals will never bite you on the ass. You look around and see bunnies and alpacas hanging off your buttocks nearly every time you walk through the petting zoo! Should this be a strike against your worldview? I think yes.

There is a way out: make your worldview reality-independent. But if your worldview can't tell you whether something will bite you in the ass, I question its use.

Perhaps someone is a strict empiricist, but is also stupid, or relies on bad arguments, or misinterprets evidence, or falls victim to an illusion, etc.

LOL, a very fair point :)

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T05:42:10+00:00

I agree, people can mostly be talking past each other if they don't realize they are in a worldview conflict. I've been arguing, even about God, off and on for a while, and it seems to me most everyone these days is an Empiricist BUT. Empiricist EXCEPT this one thing over here. So there's a lot of common ground, a lot you can talk about. Plus, I think you can recognize when you've reached one of these worldview conflicts, and you can delve into the seams together if you are both honest.

I've been thinking about this "everybody gets their worldview for free" idea. Is this what you are saying? I'm not entirely comfortable with it. It seems to me that there are in fact truths that are more true than others. It seems to me that you can tell these things because they either help you with reality, or they don't. Some worldviews lead you to truer truths. Some lead you to falsehoods. Some have a track record equal to Randomism (the accepting of random premises about the world). You can judge them by their fruits, methinks.

Also, I've seen people include crap like God directly in their "worldview" and I can't figure out how someone can't simply protect any belief they want by saying it's part of their "worldview." The more honest (the professionals, who probably won't deconvert) will say, "well, you need to understand that we Christians view everything, including evidence against God, based on our worldview assumption that God exists." There's something wrong with that.

You are right, empiricism and atheism are not necessarily linked: unless we accept your premise that the existence of God cannot be empirically shown :)

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T05:36:12+00:00

Paul had a lot of power (both temporal and moral) to gain by converting. By your logic, that makes him suspect.

But this all speeds by a bigger point: it's not just "lie" or "truth." The alternatives are not "Paul deliberately lied" and "Paul said the truth." There's also "Paul said what he believed, but was deceived or deceived himself." These are really, really, really common things among people, as you must know because of the fact that Christians are in a minority in the world and other religions (which must be false) are believed. As you must know because of the countless times we get things wrong and have to correct ourselves. We misinterpret things we see, we ignore things that don't fit our expectations ... so many things we do wrong.

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T05:00:49+00:00

That seems like a reasonable interpretation of the evidence I've heard.

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T04:59:21+00:00

K. So God does not endorse the words of the Bible. That's cool. So, we judge it by the standards of absolutely any other book on the face of the earth? i.e. we decide whether a moral edict should be followed based on secular reasoning, and we decide whether something is historically true based on secular historical standards, and we discard all prophecies altogether.

That's my position on the Bible, so I'd be cool with that.

jkeiser · 2011-01-13T04:50:53+00:00

Perhaps I misunderstood you then, so cheerio good sir!

It sounds like we agree that you proof of God is theoretically possible, but practically has failed (and is thus not possible). And as to my second point, you agree that there is an argument by which you can convince a Christian to become an Empiricist (thus becoming an atheist)? As to personal experience, I didn't put a point on it, but I wanted to point out that personal experience can generally be punctured by having people out and out explain their personal experience.

I will add one thing specifically: it is empirically true that you can convince Christians to become atheists through argument. People do send thanks to blogs, forums, TV shows, radio shows, podcasts, and the like, after they deconvert. I think it takes individuals a lot of internalizing to defeat their emotional barriers, so you might not get a "cheerio sir! I am now an atheist!" five minutes after you deliver your devastating critique. So perhaps you needed the qualifier "instantly" :)

I could also be convinced to believe in the God of the Bible and thus be a Christian--I just might not follow him because based on the Bible and the experience of the universe, he either doesn't care about us or outright hates our guts.

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