Monday, January 14, 2013

The Twofold Problem of Fairness

Christians believe, by definition, that there is but one way into heaven and that is the acceptance of Jesus Christ. From here, there are as many disagreements as there are churches. I picture a sliding scale with “live according to Christ’s teachings” on one side and “have complete faith that Jesus died for our, and, more importantly, Adam and Eve’s sins” on the other. Most Christian traditions value both ends of the spectrum, but all seem to implicitly or explicitly place more weight on one more than the other. I’d argue both premises for the most widely distributed religion in the world are flawed by something I call the problem of fairness. In fact, I will argue it, right now.

Let’s look first at “live according to Christ’s teachings.” This is already ambiguous in that the biblical carpenter sends mixed (if not contradictory) messages about how to live. While a problem in it’s own right, it doesn’t factor into my argument from fairness, so let’s imagine Christ’s message is wholly positive and consistent with modern values.

The problem of fairness lies in the fact that not every person has the same opportunity to be good. A poor child without a positive role model--say with a deadbeat dad and an alcoholic mother--statistically has a much higher likelihood to sin than an upper-class kid with an intact family. I’m talking about the BIG sins here--theft, rape, murder--harmful deeds rather than the less-than-honorable thoughts some theists claim are their equal.

Ask yourself, why would God judge someone born into a culture that doesn’t value ethics and must sin to survive as harshly as someone who wants for nothing and was raised into a compatible moral code? As the world is, the Almighty needs to grade on a curve. If He was truly fair, we’d all be put on the same playing field and terms like “the cycle of violence” would have no meaning.

On the other end of the spectrum we are more concerned with belief and less with sin, yet the problem of fairness is still in full effect. For a child born into the “correct” faith of such-and-such flavor of Christianity, indoctrination makes acceptance of Christ natural, but consider a Indian kid who dies before he is ever exposed to religion outside Hinduism. Consider people of a different place and time isolated from evangelization. Consider someone like me who has a skeptical disposition and seeks truth in the form of evidence and logical consistency. If, in fact, it’s Christ’s way or the highway to hell, God has screwed us all with a scarcity of or an aversion to the one true God.

Atheists often cite the problem of evil as a defeater of a benevolent God, but I tend to opt out of this cliche despite it’s obvious truth for two reasons. First, Christians often have a response chambered from their apologetic source of choice--usually placing the responsibility of evil on man, citing free will or the fall from Eden. While neither avenue is valid (considering that God’s omnipotence in regards to the future implies a lack of free will and the fall was preceded by evil serpents) the chambered response shows they’ve heard it all before and have defended their mind against conflicting input. Second, an atheist admitting that evil exists at all will prompt some Christian debaters to detour the conversation to the argument from morality because they only define “evil” in terms of their religion. I’d rather the debate stay on topic. Replacing “evil” with “fairness” is both more specific and more accurate for my biggest problems with religious dogma.

Sadly, the world isn’t fair. This leaves two options: the universe is unguided and shit just happens, or the universe is guided by a force unlike what the Abrahamic religions have to offer.

15 comments:

  1. Your example of the Indian kid is something I thought about when I was struggling with my religion. In my church, there was much talk about mission trips to help spread the word. Those people aren't as lucky as us to be born into the correct religion. When I was younger this all seemed reasonable, but at some point I put myself in the shoes of the other people and realized how incredibly unfair the situation was. If I had been born over there I would be surrounded my whole life by people who said that THEIR religion was correct, why would I believe some random kid from america? There would be a significantly higher chance that I would wind up going to hell. Why would a fair and loving God set up this situation?

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    1. All great questions that I think most kids have...but I guess most forget about them.

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  2. You have to remember though, fairness doesn't matter in Christian theology. We're all born sinful and deserve to burn forever, nothing we do makes a difference, you cannot possibly be good enough to override your evil nature. You have to ask Jesus for forgiveness and if you do, no matter what you've done wrong, gets wiped away.

    So being good really doesn't mean a damn thing to Christians, you might as well be a child-molesting, mass-murdering, bank-robbing animal, all you have to do is ask for forgiveness and, at least in heaven, you get away with it all scot-free.

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    1. Your statements remind me of the Christians who claim that any breech of the Ten Commandments, no matter how slight or insignificant, justifies eternal torture.

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  3. I do enjoy the arguments about evil, seriously I actually enjoy them...but you're right, they never go anywhere. It is like hitting a wall, to use the popular expression.

    I also think that the notion of your Indian kid is a great example of where the Christian concept of god goes wrong. Of course, people like WLC have their answers for this too, but like the others, they are absurd.

    The notion of fairness is a good one. I agree with what Cephus wrote in relation to some sects of Christianity, however, I view it a bit differently. To me, it is not necessarily about what the Christian believes he or she must do, but rather about their supposed "perfect" god. A perfect being could not create an unfair world, where as a result of his creating it imperfectly (ie we don't all have the same chance to believe in him), he is going to eternally punish people. It is a contradiction of what he is supposed to be. This is where it strikes to heart of belief in the Christian god, at least in my opinion.

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    1. The perfect God is a hard one to defend. If they would just downgrade their deity some, their arguments would make a little more sense.

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    2. I agree. It is a problem that Christianity in particular must deal with, and in my view, I haven't seen an effective treatment of this problem yet.

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  4. I always found it interesting that Christianity doesn't take "moral luck" (people being randomly thrown into situations where moral behavior is easy or hard) into consideration. When I asked a Christian why God puts some people in situations where it's very hard to be moral, he gave me the stock answer: that God is testing those people. Which leads to the question of why God would excessively test some and not others?

    Meh. Christianity makes no sense.

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    1. The other answer is that we are all constantly exposed to sin and all sins are equal. So if someone is pressured into gang life while someone else has a hot girl move in next door, the eventual sin of murder and lust are equal so, "fair."

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    2. He was in great peril!

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjio-F47IfM#t=4m15s

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    3. In a way, Christianity does make sense. That is, it's like one of those emails from Liberia that promise outrageous rewards, tell a somewhat incoherent story, present little or no hard evidence of their truth, and end up being a scam. (In the case of the email, the reward is tens of millions of dollar. In the case of Christianity, the reward is salvation from hell.) The reward is so great that many of us are tempted to ignore the incoherence, the lack of evidence, and the scam like nature of the offer. That's to say, Christianity makes sense as a scam.

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    4. I love the comparison to those email scams

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    5. Thanks! That's kind of you to say so.

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  5. It does seem like most of your arguments are against fundamentalism and not against Christianity in general. Catholicism does not have an issue with kids in India. Partly because there are millions of Catholics in India but also because Catholicism teaches that salvation is possible outside of an explicit connection with the church. That is you could respond to God's grace without actually becoming Catholic. Same thing with sin, from whom more is given more is expected. That means those of us who have knowledge that the bible is the word of God and access to true sacraments will be held to a higher standard. So there is a fairness there.

    There is a sense of sin that you seem to be missing. That man has a sense of good and evil (or fairness if you want) and does not do the good that he should. We get it more when we are the victim of the unfairness. If you think about it long enough you do get the notion that we sense a moral standard that none of us really meet. Once you get the idea that we are not now where we should be but need to be raised up somehow then it makes a lot more sense. If you think you are pretty good as long as you don't rape anyone then you are not going to get it.

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    1. If this doesn’t apply to your faith, great. I cover a lot of topics here, some specifically Catholic, some fundamentalist, and some vague when I don’t know which faiths believe what. There are a lot of religions out there.

      I know what you mean about the moral sense. There is always more we can do to help, but I also think most people would shut down if they spent every waking hour in service to others. It doesn’t seem humanity is wired for that.

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