Throwing Apologetics Under the Bus

Here's a line of questioning that undermines the entire field of apologetics.

1. Do you believe an all-powerful being is possible?
2. If so, can an all-powerful being deceive limited beings?
3. Are you a limited being?
4. Then how can you trust personal revelation, outside authority, historical records, physical evidence or anything that you feel supports your beliefs in a world with an all-powerful being?

Any theist, by definition, would answer "yes" to question one. The answer to question two is necessarily "yes." I think we can all agree that three is a "yes,"especially in relation to an all-powerful being. Which leads us to question four.

I recently asked this question to the Google+ community for the Christian Apologetics Alliance.

In a world where a supernatural entity exists with the power to reveal knowledge to me or others directly or indirectly, how can I be sure that the same or different supernatural entity won't reveal false knowledge?

Here is the link to the original post. The responses, for the most part, refused to acknowledge the entirety of the question. None of the comments were able to adequately answer the question in my opinion, but I encourage you to judge for yourself.

What To Give The God Who Has Everything?

I’ve written before about how the omni-traits of the Christian God make him logically impossible. We've got the common paradox asking whether God could create a stone so heavy even he couldn’t lift it. Then we've got paradoxes that show God is in some ways less capable then us puny humans. For example, I can make a sandwich so big that I couldn’t eat it, which God shouldn’t be able to do without exposing a limitation. I can also commit suicide, which is off the table for any eternal being.

Now, beyond the paradoxical, I thought of another way Jehovah can’t be omnipotent--because he either needs or wants glorification. A common theme of the bible and therefore Christianity is the call for humanity to worship the Almighty and give all glory God. This is obviously very important to the big guy. My question is: can a being who needs or wants for anything be omnipotent? I’d be interested in my readers thoughts on this.

Mortality Week: Could God Kill Himself?

Could God create a stone so heavy even He couldn’t lift it? How does God know what it is like to learn if He has always known everything? These are just a couple examples of logic busting paradoxes that an idealized deity runs into. I’ve posed these questions to apologists who explain them away as illogical...but that’s kind of the point. If they think God can hold his omnipotent title while being confined by logic, fine. Thinking about mortality this week, I thought of a new question. Could God kill himself?

There is nothing illogical about this question. Suicide is something you or I can do fairly easily (although I don’t recommend you try.) I’ve reached out to a few high-profile apologists with this question. No answers. None. I’ve never gotten such a lack of feedback from these people.* I guess it’s because they know the repercussions of the question.

I’ve come to realize that I may never be able to convince a true believer that God is imaginary, but if this question can convince them that God is either mortal or less-than-omnipotent, I’m at least making some headway.

From my understanding, the biblically accurate answer is that yes, God could kill himself. We are made in his image, so anything we can do, he should be able to accomplish. A theist might argue that God can’t sin and suicide is a sin. To this I say that He clearly sins in the bible by wiping out masses of people on more than one occasion. The theist would then either have to grant me that God sins or take the stance that anything God does is inherently not a sin, which makes suicide not a sin if and when God commits it. This isn’t a question of whether God would commit suicide, it is a question if He could.

Any theists who would like to weight in on this, please do so in the comments or by email or on Twitter or by...carrier pigeon? Anything, just show me how I’m wrong. Until then, let’s just agree that your God ain’t what He used to be.

Upon further Googling, I realize that I'm not the first to ponder this question--even though I arrived at it organically. The only answers out there from the theist perspective I have already covered or fall under the "puny humans can't comprehend God" category. These same people then go on to explain all about God...paradoxes within paradoxes.

The Penguin Post

*This is a paraphrased argument lightly massaged in favor of my atheist bias. The names and faces have been changed to protect the idiocy. Free will is a concept that theists argue explains evil in the world. It also creates a paradox for an omnipotent God. They can't have it both ways.

All Bets Are Off.

I’ve been debating a baker’s dozen of Christian Apologists and they all claim to have the logical high ground. After all, the best way to demonstrate that you are the most logical is simply by stating “I’m the most logical.” (read:sarcasm) This got me thinking, once you evoke the supernatural, does logic even matter?

Merriam-Webster defines logic as “a science that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration.” The words “science,” “validity,” “inference,” and “demonstration” all lose meaning against the supernatural. Gravity is not valid to Superman. I can’t accurately infer anything about the actions of a genie. Someone, please, demonstrate God.

If the supernatural exists, all bets are off. God can exist, but so can literally anything. You may be praying to Allah, but only because a telepath is forcing it upon your mind. Jesus could return, or he could be shapeshifter in disguise. God himself may be unwittingly doing the bidding of being that can conceal his influence even from the Lord.

If you think God is, by definition, the top dog and creator of everything thus making the above scenarios nonsensical, I ask you, how could you possibly know in a supernatural universe? Maybe an otherwise unknown mystical creature possessed the authors of the Bible just to mess with humanity. Suddenly we can’t trust our senses. We can’t even trust history since everything that once was may have been rewritten last Thursday.

An all-powerful being is capable of every deception. Just because your God wouldn’t do such things doesn’t mean a random supernatural entity wouldn’t. As a theist you must not only believe the supernatural is possible, but also that your particular flavor of the supernatural is real in the face of no evidence. Even if you suddenly you had evidence, it could be contrived by malevolent magic. All. Bets. Are. Off.

It appears as though the universe has rules that have made everything happen in a manner that is understandable, even if we don’t yet fully understand it. Sure, each rule could just be an illusion waiting to be turned on it’s head, but I choose to believe in only the natural. If a theist ever convinces me that the supernatural is possible, I’ll suddenly have many more questions...each crazier, yet entirely possible, than the last.

Omnicritical

By most accounts, God is pretty awesome. Maybe too awesome, and here’s why.

He’s omnipresent. God’s everywhere. He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good...wait, I may be confusing him with someone else. The main confusion for me here is, in Christianity at least, Jesus is God. It says so in the Bible. Colossians 2:9 “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.” How can a physical person be everywhere at once? Not even the Flash can do that and he’s, like, really fast.

He’s omniscient. God knows what it is like to learn even though he has always known everything and has never needed to learn. He knew about you before you were born. He knew before humanity was born. He knows our future, so there can’t be free will. There’s also no reason to pray, seeing how there is nothing you can tell him that he doesn’t already know and nothing you can ask of him that he doesn’t already know you desire. Confessions? Pointless. You were brought into this world predestined to live happily forever or be cast off into everlasting torture. Since the future is already written by God, there’s nothing we can do about it.

He’s omnipotent. God is all powerful. He can create a weight so heavy that even he can’t lift it...wait. He can’t lift it? That doesn’t sound omnipotent. With omnipotence comes all the paradoxes of your favorite time-travel fiction. The faithful say that God has built in fail safes for this sort of thing. God wouldn’t want to do anything that limits his power, yet his will to not act, in this case, is the limit to his power. God apparently can’t sin either because...

He’s omnibenevolent. God’s a super nice guy. His benevolence isn’t by choice, it's his very nature. The same supreme morality that is supposedly ingrained in us, is God's nature. God is the ultimate Hippocratic Oath--do no harm...except when God is being a hypocrite, of course. God killed individuals, cities, and most of the planet on separate occasions in the Bible. The faithful say these were sinners who were killed, but they also say we are all sinners. We should watch our back. If you believe Genesis, you either believe God created a talking snake for the purpose of tempting Eve--making God not omnibenevolent, or the devil found a loop-hole in God’s plan--which would be another reason God isn't omnipotent.

He’s omnitemporal. God isn’t just everywhere, he’s everywhen. He’s even when there wasn’t whens and where there weren’t wheres--like before space and time were created in the Big Bang. Chronologically, God pre-dated dates. “Omni” doesn’t even cover it. He’s ultratemporal, maybe even superdupertemporal.

He’s omnipatient. Defined as “able to endure all things,” it isn’t a trait many believers mention, but God surely has this in his omni-toolbelt. If God didn’t have this get out of boredom free card, he would certainly go insane. Eternity is a long time to micromanage. In fact, since humans have eternal souls, we will need omnipatience as well if we are expected to enjoy heaven or remain aware in hell. It better be in my afterlife welcome bag.

Any of this sound crazy to you? Good. If there is a god, and that's a big if, he/she/it can't be the idealized deity many believe in today. There are enough contradictions and paradoxes within the omnis to disprove a perfect god, without even bringing up the problem of evil. But who are we kidding? I'll still bring it up...next time.