Barry Brake's answers to
40 Questions To Ask A Christian
Asking Difficult Questions
Thomas Swan wrote this series of questions, posted at http://thomasswan.hubpages.com/hub/40-Questions-to-ask-a-Christian, to try to get Christians to think. It's my opinion that, since Christians are humans, the chances of getting them to think are fairly low. But many of the questions are good ones, and, more importantly, are questions that lots of atheists don't seem to have heard good answers to from a believer.
Swan says, "Asking a difficult question can achieve better results because it taps into the Christian's desire to share the wisdom they perceive themselves to have." Heh. Well, you'll decide how much wisdom I'm displaying (and I'll thank you to start with low expectations), but I'll be glad to answer these as they come. I hope that they provoke further thought and discussion.
The answers will start long as I begin to lay some ground, and then will get shorter as my way of thinking becomes clear.
40 Questions for Christians
If a hundred different religions have to be wrong for yours to be right, does this show that people from all over the world like to invent gods that don’t exist?
First, I'm not sure I'd say that a hundred different religions have to be wrong for mine to be right. That's an odd way of phrasing it. (A better one might be, "How many Messiahs does the world need? Could one be enough?") Nonetheless, the real question is about humanity's propensity to develop religion, and I'm thankful to Swan for asking it just this way because I've never really heard atheists discussing the issue of what we might call Jungian or Frazerian issues in Christianity. The 20th-century psychologist Carl Jung and the author Sir James George Frazer (who wrote "The Golden Bough," a favorite reference of mine) both noticed this seemingly universal propensity, and posited that there's something deep within us (either chemically or culturally) that brings religion forth.
Some would say, then, that for some strange reason all cultures like to develop religion, and many of those religions grow beyond their original bounds, and many of them have exclusive claims (claims that would therefore say other religions are wrong). But that's not what I say, because I don't believe that those religions are "wrong" in the most complete sense. After all, they all say that there's more going on than we can see; they all offer some degree of wisdom; they all touch upon the truth. What I say, what I ask, is this: what if there *is* truth in there somewhere? What if indeed the "God gene," to use a sloppy but convenient term that refers to some trait built into us that steers us toward some sort of belief in the divine, was put there by God? If there is a Creator, would it be so farfetched for this Creator to include in one species the capacity to perceive, in however limited a way, the divine?
This is exactly what St Paul is getting at in his speech at the Areopagus. (Oh, if only today's Christians could stop condemning everyone and imitate this guy!) "People of Athens," he says, "I see you are very religious, with all sorts of altars to gods, and even an altar (legend: built by Socrates!) to an unknown god." He goes on to say that this unknown god has revealed himself (to some degree) and is (to that degree) knowable.
So, then, I'd say that maybe, just as with my ex-girlfriends, who kept getting taller and darker-haired and paler-skinned and more smart-aleck, until I met the woman who became my wife, tallest and darkest and palest and smart-aleckest of all, humanity has a longing that it keeps filling in with its imagination, with inklings and sketches of a divine truth that's somewhere beyond our reckoning, but also filled with detours and fights and falsehoods, and that at one point we actually met the one we were supposed to meet. (And, like many of us in the romance department, didn't quite recognize that fact at first.)
My answer, then, is that it's more interesting to see what all these other religions are getting *right* than what they're getting wrong. Believing one's own religion is the right one, the perfect expression that all humanity is longing for, isn't entirely ridiculous — after all, what if one of us is right?
If your parents had belonged to a different religion, do you think you would belong to that religion too?
I asked myself that exact question in 9th grade, and, honoring my 9th-grade equivalents on other continents and in other centuries who might do the same, I embarked on a world tour of religions. My main question was, "How does this religion describe the world around us? Does that description actually fit what we see? What does it say the problem is, and what answer does it give?" I won't give you the run-down, but I found much to agree and disagree with in many faiths, much to admire in Hinduism, *tons* to admire in Buddhism, but ultimately some irreconcilable disconnects from the world of humans as it actually is. The one that best fit was a Christianity that didn't necessarily match the one of my upbringing or fit into any of the big categories.
If people from the five major religions are each told conflicting information by their respective gods, should any of them be believed?
Most certainly not, just on the face of it. If someone just gets up and makes some claim, why on earth would anyone believe it? And who are these "people" from the five major religions? Individuals? You don't have to go to five different religions to get five conflicting beliefs. Sufis and Sunnis and Shi'ites, Methodists and Calvinists and Catholics, all have differing and even conflicting beliefs without necessarily thinking that the others are listening to a god that doesn't exist. Instead, as with everything, you have to listen to everything that a person (or sect) says and weigh it against your view of the world, with both heart and mind. Regardless of what any religion or irreligion says about the truth of its claims, that fact stands as the only way a person has ever been convinced.
How can you tell the voice of God from a voice in your head?
I wouldn't know: I've never heard the voice of God (that I know of). Nor have I ever heard a voice in my head.
How can you tell the voice of God from the voice of the Devil?
Again, never heard either.
Would you find it easier to kill someone if you believed God supported you in the act?
"Easier" than what?
Having never heard the voice of God, I'll have to say it would take an awful lot of convincing to get me to believe that He was telling me to kill someone. Sure, the genocides of Joshua (to take one example) are a matter of record, but a highly disputed one among Christians, many of whom interpret those scriptures in such a way as to completely preclude following any such "instruction" today.
If God told you to kill an atheist, would you?
Same basic answer: it would take an awful lot of convincing for me to believe that that voice I'd heard was God.
Let's agree, though, that plenty of people in our planet's history have used the God-told-me excuse when killing, and plenty more haven't seen any need for that excuse when killing.
When an atheist is kind and charitable out of the kindness of his heart, is his behavior more or less commendable than a religious man who does it because God instructed him to?
Hm. Are those the only two choices? I see lots of atheists who seem to think that the only motivation a believer has for doing anything good is that that believer is slavishly obeying an instruction to do good.
The classic Christian belief is that kindness and charity are commendable in anyone, and they, and all good things, *always* come from God. Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles taught that blessings come to all people, and that all people can know the ethical from the unethical, even if they don't recognize or believe that that knowledge flows from God.
If you are against the Crusades and the Inquisition, would you have been burned alive as a heretic during those events?
I most certainly would have been burned alive as a heretic — not just because my earliest known ancestor, a Jew (and, more importantly, a property-owner whose property was ceded to his tormentors, as always), was in fact killed during the Inquisition, but because of my congregationalist Protestant faith. Furthermore, I think women should learn to read and own property and vote and marry the husbands of their choice, a belief that would put me at risk of my life just about any place and time in human history.
If your interpretation of a holy book causes you to condemn your ancestors for having a different interpretation, will your descendants condemn you in the same way?
Yes. And if my interpretation of a holy book *doesn't* cause me to condemn my ancestors, my descendants may still condemn me. It's up to them. Probably they'll condemn me for using this computer, considering all the earth's resources and energy I'm wasting in doing so. Face it: they'll spit on our graves.
Back to the topic, though, I have no condemnation for our ancestors, though it often sounds like Mr Swan does.
Rape wasn't always a crime in the Middle East two thousand years ago. Is that why `do not rape’ is not part of the Ten Commandments?
Speculating on how specific rules made it into the big 10 is risky business. Lots of reasonable laws are enumerated elsewhere in the Torah but not in the Ten Commandments.
Do lions need `god-given' morality to understand how to care for their young, co-operate within a pack, or feel anguish at the loss of a companion? Why do we?
There you go again. Here, my answer is "Yes." Lions' capacity to care, co-operate, and grieve is God-given. Why so many people, both believers and atheists, have trouble understanding the difference between gift and fiat is a mystery to me.
If organized religion requires a civilization in which to spread, how could this civilization exist without first having a moral code to make us civil?
This question seems to be based on a conflation between moral code and organized religion. As it happens, I think that civilization and moral code and organized religion all developed fairly well hand-in-hand, and it's probably not profitable to try to separate the phenomena too much. The discoveries at Gobekli-Tepe seem to give tantalizing evidence that it was the revelations of religion that gave rise to civilization and not the other way around, but we're only now beginning to make sense of such things.
The more present idea here, though, goes back to this concept that Christians somehow believe there can be no morality without God-revealed rules, which is different from the classic Christian teaching that all morality *is* instilled by God, regardless of whether it's acknowledged. So a civilization could very well come to be, and then develop *explicit* moral codes and *organized* religion based on those laws-written-on-the-heart.
An all-knowing God can read your mind, so why does he require you to demonstrate your faith by worshiping him?
Very revealing: the questioner here seems to think that the only reason God would want you to worship him is that that's his way of finding out whether you have faith. Better question: If there were an all-knowing God who could know your heart, does it really stand to reason that your worship would be worthless?
The whole issue of worship seems to be a stumbling-block for atheists. I can certainly understand how an atheist *would* stumble on the issue, because an atheist would think that no being is really worthy of worship by any other being. But think about it from the perspective of a believer: if there *were* really an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving Creator beyond the cosmos who generates and sustains all that is, one of the most important things you and I as humans could do would be to recognize that fact.
Look at our response to someone who's extraordinarily beautiful, or extraordinarily talented. How much more, then, should the reasonable response be to one who is the source of all beauty and talent and everything else? You may not agree with me that such a being exists, but I hope you can at least see the point here.
Then again, there's always the issue of how worship is portrayed in scripture. Right there along with all the "Worship the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt" stuff is a strong vein of instruction that says, "I take no joy in your incense and songs: instead, let's see justice and honesty and helping each other." Many of the prophets of Christian and Jewish scripture hang out on this issue so strongly it can't be ignored.
If God is all-knowing, why do holy books describe him as surprised or angered by the actions of humans? He should have known what was going to happen.
I'm not sure that Hebrew or Christian scripture ever unequivocally depicts God as being surprised at something. Anger is, of course, a different issue — we can all be angry about something we knew would happen. But even the imputation of "anger" has to be tread on lightly. Many, many believers would say that words like "anger" or — more precisely — "wrath" are anthropomorphized words that give us some glancing idea of the divine position on our human folly, and they don't really point to an emotion that we humans feel as "anger".
An all-knowing God knows who will ultimately reject him. Why does God create people who he knows will end up in hell?
Christians have been debating this for centuries without losing their faith. Some have said that He does know, and this is just the story He's writing in this universe this time around. Why does J.K. Rowling create Voldemort? Couldn't she have just created someone nice? Why on earth would she intentionally create such a tortured soul? Many authors (Rowling included) speak in terms that almost make it seem that their creations have free will of some sort, a kind of momentum or integrity in the character that has to make things turn out the way they do.
But that's just the deep issue of free will. There's also the deep issue of hell: many, many Christians don't believe that anyone *will* end up in hell. "Christ saves all men, even those who believe" is a phrase straight from the apostles.
Lots of Christians, though, do believe that some will end up in a place of eternal torment, and again free will enters: if there were no choice, there really could be no freedom. Just because God knows what you're going to do, which road you're going to take, that doesn't mean it's useless to have two roads. Ultimately, those believers don't want to make freedom meaningless.
If God is all knowing, then why did he make humans in the knowledge that he’d eventually have to send Jesus to his death?
That's assuming Jesus's death is bad? Well it *is* bad, but that doesn't mean it's not good. Think of all the great stories in which a heroic person nobly sacrifices his own life for the good of others. Why on earth did the storytellers create those stories? It might be argued that they are just stories and don't have the dire consequences of reality, but then again, there are real-life occurrences all the time in which a real person decides to sacrifice himself or herself. The idea that the only reason Jesus would die for us is that God didn't see it coming is a puzzling one to most believers, who believe that God not only saw it coming but ordained it.
Why did a supposedly omnipotent god take six days to create the universe, and why did he require rest on the seventh day?
Cause He felt like it?
If you believe in God, then you believe He's powerful enough to create the world any way He desires. (Including evolution and processes that take zillions of years.) A huge number of believers believe that the first chapters of Genesis exist to tell us a truth that has little to do with science and that doesn't contradict our growing knowledge of the scope and age and development of things.
Is omnipotence necessary to create our universe when a larger, denser universe would have required more power?
Is omnipotence necessary to create gravity? I'm not sure what the author is asking here, but I think it hinges on the idea of "necessary": is God necessary? Could my heart be beating in a universe without a God? Um, sure, but I don't believe it is.
Why are Churches filled with riches when Jesus gave all his wealth to the poor?
Because the heart of man is filled with greed.
Atheists often think that the fallibility of humans somehow disproves the Christian faith, whereas Christians think that the fallibility of humans is proof of it.
If, though, you're just complaining about hypocrisy and the inability of Christians to follow their Savior's simplest instructions, I'm right there with you.
While in the desert, Jesus rejected the temptations of the Devil. He didn't censor or kill the Devil, so why are Christians so in favor of censoring many Earthly temptations?
Again, right there with you. But, while we're on the topic of necessity, let's mention that the Christian faith isn't necessary for censorship.
In general, for many of the complaints about the church (wars, oppression of women and minorities and thinkers and poor folks, bloodthirst, hypocrisy, greed), it bears mentioning that if you're going to withdraw from groups based on their propensity for those things, you'll wind up withdrawing from the human race.
Given that the story of Noah’s Ark was copied almost word for word from the much older Sumerian Epic of Atrahasis, does this mean that our true ruler is the supreme sky god, Anu?
By this point you can predict what I'll say: [a] it may be there because it contains truth, and [b] lots of Christians don't take this passage literally.
If your desire is to convert atheists so that they become more like you; do you think that you’re currently better than them?
Probably. But my desire is *not* to convert atheists so that they become more like me, and I *don't* think I'm better. In reality, my sincere hope is that no atheist or believer would ever become more like me. Honestly, where does the author get this question? I shudder to think it, but probably from some horribly misguided believer.
My desire for my own walk is that I would shed more and more of me, and become more and more myself. That's my wish for anyone.
If religious people don’t respect their children’s right to pick their own religion at a time when they're able to make that decision, how can society expect religious people to respect anyone’s right to freedom of religion?
Again, the choice of wording here says much. I respect immensely my daughter's right to speak any language she wants, and that's not contradicted by the fact that I'm teaching her English.
In the same way, I know that she'll choose her own religious path: I know it because that's what everyone does. If you stay on the same path as your parents, it's because you chose it; if they're "making" you stay on that same path at the age of 40, it's because you're letting them make you. Ultimately, free will is really free, and my daughter is no exception. I'll teach her what I believe, and she'll believe what she wants to. It's never been any other way for any other human.
If missionaries from your religion should be sent to convert people in other countries, should missionaries from other religions be sent to your country?
Most certainly. I've had the honor of meeting Christian missionaries to the US from Rwanda. Think about how they see America as regards the Christian faith: after all, Jesus said point blank that it's harder to get an American into heaven than it is to get a Hummer into a parking space.
But the question was about missionaries from other religions, and I think the author meant other other religions and not just ones foreign to American-style Christianity. My answer is the same: most certainly. Why on earth shouldn't everyone proclaim their vision in the public square? How could there be anything but gain from it?
If children are likely to believe in Santa Claus and fairies, does this explain why religion has been taught in schools for thousands of years?
I'm not sure what the real statement is here. Religion is only for kids? Indoctrination is bad? Belief in God is no different from belief in Santa Claus and fairies?
When preachers and prophets claim to be special messengers of God, they often receive special benefits from their followers. Does this ever cause you to doubt their intentions?
Does it ever? Every single time.
When you declare a miracle, does this mean you understand everything that is possible in nature?
Another disconnect here between many atheists and many believers. Atheists seem to think that in order to be a miracle something must have no naturalistic explanation, and that therefore finding out the naturalistic explanation erases the claim to miraculousness. This is like going to some ancient Greek farmer and telling him that the sun isn't really the chariot of Apollo, and going into a long explanation of hydrogen and helium. After you're done he'll marvel at your subtle knowledge of the cosmos, but he'll say that all you've really done is explain that the sun is a ball of flame, and even the village idiot knows the sun is a ball of flame — but you seem to think you've proven it isn't Apollo's chariot, which you still haven't done.
Similarly, and on a much less exalted scale, I thank God when someone is healed, but not because I think there's no possible natural explanation for it. Indeed, God created nature, and gave us the tools to observe and exploit our knowledge of it, and at least rich Westerners can benefit from that so that we don't die of dysentery or AIDS.
If a woman was cured of cancer by means unknown to us, and everyone declared it a miracle, would the chance of scientifically replicating this cure be more or less likely?
Precisely: go and find out, study the tissue, see what happened. And remember that I'm answering these questions as a believer, not as the spokesperson for all believers. Nonetheless, there are millions who think the way I do.
If humans declared fire to be a miracle thousands of years ago, would we still be huddling together in caves while we wait for God to fire another lightning bolt into the forest?
That's basically a restatement of the above, so I'll say yes.
If God gave a man cancer, and the Devil cured him to subvert God’s plan, how would you know it wasn't a divine miracle? What if he was an unkind, atheist, homosexual?
Depends on whose playing field we're on. Mine? The Devil doesn't have the power either to cause or cure disease. Mr Swan's? There is no Devil. Mine? The Devil is part of God's plan and can't subvert it.
As for part 2, I'm not sure exactly the question, but it seems he's asking what I'd think if God gave cancer to an unkind homosexual atheist and the Devil cured that person. I don't know, but I know that besides being straight I'm at times unkind, and that God gifted me with cancer, if it was a gift. It could be that God *allowed* me to have cancer — I'm not sure there's really a difference. But I'll say from experience that I'd rather have cancer and God than neither, and I may never give you a reason for that that satisfies you.
As for the unkind homosexual atheist, what a combination: it seems that the loudest Christians care a great deal when someone's gay, and care a great deal when someone's atheist, but don't really care whether they themselves are, or anyone else is, kind. I'd be all on board for God striking people for being unkind, except that it's a slippery slope and I'd eventually be struck down for something.
Should an instruction to convert to your religion upon the threat of eternal torture in hell be met with anything other than hostility?
Perhaps, but hostility would be a perfectly understandable reaction. Many Christians think in those terms and speak in those terms (converting to a religion to avoid eternal torture), but many completely reject those terms and speak in others, like accepting a gift of life from life's maker.
Can a mass murderer go to heaven for accepting your religion, while a kind doctor goes to hell for not?
Interestingly, most nurses will tell you that lots of doctors aren't kind at all but rather unpleasantly cocky, and full of themselves, and don't treat nurses well. Nonetheless, there are surely kind doctors, and the question is whether one would go to hell for not accepting a certain religion.
You could ask a Catholic, a Presbyterian, and a Universalist that question and get three different answers. Mine is that no one goes to hell for not accepting a religion. The only people in hell are those who didn't want heaven. And in answer to the next question, there are a *lot* of people who would rather reign in hell (to use Milton's insightful phrase) than serve in heaven — you and I know people who would rather wear their sufferings as a badge than give them all up and decide upon happiness. Through Christ, the gift of life is offered, and not everyone will accept it; I believe that it's even offered after death, and that even then not everyone will accept it.
Did the mass murdering Crusaders and Inquisitors make it into the Christian heaven?
I am sternly warned against speculating about who made it into heaven and who didn't — sternly warned by Jesus of Nazareth himself, who again and again told people not to start sorting each other out, that he'll do the sorting. It's safe to say we'll be surprised.
How can we know what is right when we don’t know for sure who makes it into heaven and hell?
Finally, an interesting question! I interpret it to mean that, since we aren't capable of doing any meaningful sorting, and are therefore warned against it, how will we know how to go about moral and good action? Fortunately, for the most part, the above discussion of common grace covers it — the idea that, no matter what your label or upbringing, you do have the ability to distinguish right and wrong written on your heart.
If aliens exist on several worlds that have never heard of your god, will they all be going to hell when they die?
If aliens with mental and moral equivalence to humans exist on other worlds, it is my confidence that they'll have some knowledge (probably as incomplete as ours) of the divine. The most beautiful expression of this that I've heard was on Easter of 1995, when Hugh Dickinson, the Dean of Salisbury Cathedral, spoke about the reverberations of Christ on the cosmos, in a devastating sermon called "Easter Island Planet." http://barrybrake.com/eastersermon.html
If someone promised you eternal life, the protection of a loving super being, a feeling of moral righteousness, a purpose for living, answers to all the big questions, and a rule book for achieving the pinnacle of human potential… and all in exchange for having faith in something that wasn't proven, would you be suspicious?
Most certainly. Especially the bit about the protection of a loving super being, a feeling of moral righteousness, a purpose for living, answers to all the big questions, and a rule book for achieving the pinnacle of human potential, none of which are actual promises of classic Christianity. Protection: the fates of the martyrs should put an end to any thoughts about whether God provides us with any "protection" worthy of the name. Righteous feeling: through the centuries, the most convincing Christians have been the ones who didn't seem to feel too righteous but rather were all too aware of their human flaws. Answers: again, the most convincing Christians have been ones who came up with great questions rather than claiming to have all the answers. Rule book for achieving the pinnacle of human potential? Whoever's selling that will do well in 21st-century America (and did quite well in 20th- and 19th- and 18th-century America) but would immediately be recognized by St Peter as a fake.
If someone promised to give you a billion dollars after ten years, but only if you worshiped them until that time, would you believe them? If someone promised to give you eternal life upon death, but only if you spent your life worshiping a god, would you believe them?
[a] No; [b] No. But if someone attempted to convince me that we are here at the hand of a powerful and loving creator who desires us to live in harmony with him and with his creation, and who has offered the gift of life to all who will accept, I'd certainly pay attention to what else that person was saying.
Why does religion appeal more to poor, weak, vulnerable, young, ill, depressed, and ostracized people? Could religious promises be more of a temptation to these people?
Could the very real experience of acceptance and love be more of a balm to these people? Yes, I think so. Artists and philosophers throughout the ages have recognized that paupers have a more real view of the human condition than kings. Though Jesus of Nazareth reportedly attracted and infuriated everyone, he seems to have had great effect on those most down and out, maybe because they were uniquely vulnerable to his sweet lies, or maybe because they were uniquely able to admit what we should all admit, that we are flawed beings who are hypocrites and warmongers and liars, and we desperately need a solution.