Paul's Passing Thoughts

Do I have anything in common with atheists? Sure, they believe in reason. This means I will often have more in common with them than Protestants. The anti-reason sentiment of the Reformers is well documented and therefore won’t be cudgeled here, but the Protestant mentality of “faith over reason” has a long and horrific history. For example, Rudolf Hess once lectured the German people to “not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts!” The rest was history as the German people blindly followed Hitler into the abyss.

Biblical faith is always based on reason, and calls on the individual to “come and let us reason together saith the Lord.” Every bogus religion that has ever hijacked Christianity is based on elitist gnosis that demands a following by faith alone in what they say is truth. We call that “orthodoxy.”

This reality always makes me curious about how atheists perceive religion; hence, a referral on Twitter regarding the book Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith by Dr. Richard Carrier caught my attention. Prior to downloading the book to my Kindle, I took note of Amazon’s summary of the theses:

Dr. Richard Carrier, world renowned philosopher and historian, explains the four reasons he does not accept the Christian religion, describing four facts of the world that, had they been different, he would believe. He is brief, clear, and down to earth, covering the whole topic in under ninety pages of easy-to-read explanation. Those four reasons are God’s silence, God’s inaction, the lack of evidence, and the way the universe looks exactly like a godless universe would, and not at all like a Christian universe would, even down to its very structure. Dr. Carrier addresses all the usual replies to these claims, in ways you might not have heard before, relying on his wide experience in debating and studying these issues all over the world for more than fifteen years. A perfect book to introduce yourself, or your friends, to why fewer educated people are embracing Christianity than ever before. Ideal for handing out to door-to-door missionaries.

Wait a minute. At least initially, it would seem that Carrier has a problem with the idea that God did not predetermine reality in a certain way. God does not speak to every thought we have lest we would have to figure something out on our own, doesn’t intervene in every bad situation, and allows ungodliness; i.e., allows man to act on his own desires whether good or evil. Therefore, because God does not predetermine goodness, there must not be a God.

Does this not assume that a predeterminist God is the definition of God?

I have written before that this is the unfortunate inclination of mankind; a bent towards determinism. If God creates man with freewill, he has every right to expect man to choose what’s right. If man has no choice, that’s determinism by default.

I will read the book, but these are my initial thoughts based on the summary. It would seem that some kind of determinism by God is expected as a valid definition of God. Either God ordered what is here because determinism defines God, or there isn’t a God because he wouldn’t have predetermined evil.

Whether atheist or Calvinist, it would seem that determinism is the starting point for interpreting reality.

paul