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The Atheist’s next argument is again placing himself in the position of God. His argument is summarized thusly: If I were God, I’d make sure that everyone heard from me personally—I wouldn’t use dead languages over time. That’s just a bad job at revelation.
My Personal Theory
I believe that part of God’s mission with His people and the way that He deals with them is to prove Himself blameless with them. If you look at the recorded history in the Bible from that perspective you begin to notice some interesting things.
Look at how God dealt with people throughout time and their reaction:
- God had a relationship with the first two created beings. He loved them and communed with them daily. They chose to disobey, and communion was still there, but fractured and not the same.
- God talked with the people of the day (see Cain) and there were eyewitnesses to the creation around. Still, the people became so wicked. They sought out other “gods” and perverted themselves. God had to find someone (Noah) that was still following Him and start over.
- God chose a single nation to be His standard bearer. This nation ended up in a foreign land, and that king would not let His people go. He sent plagues on them that eventually convinced them of the fact that He was the true God. They still followed the people of Israel, having not learned their lesson.
- God judged His people, and yet still showed control over the king that took them over. Still, some did not follow.
- God sent prophets that did many signs and wonders that were beheld by all, but the people did not turn from their sin.
- God sent His Son to live among the people, living a sinless life—they tried Him and killed Him on a tree.
- When He arose, the people still did not recognize Him as God, they chose to kill His followers.
- When God uses people today to spread His message, Atheists attack the message and belittle it—same old stuff.
God will eventually deal with the world with His pent up wrath—a final set of signs that will show His power on display. The sad part is, people will still not believe.
The point is, it doesn’t matter whether He put a neon billboard in the sky or talked to everyone personally, we still rebel.
The fact that He documented Himself at work over time is exactly what is needed, because it illustrates Himself as Creator, how He acted, how He thinks, and what’s left of this world. We have all we need.
Oh, and the authors of the books of the bible weren’t primitive nomadic shepherds. Some were kings, priests, prophets, scholars, doctors, historians, learned highly trained individuals, fisherman, tax collectors, etc. They came from all walks of life, writing a book over a period of 2000 years that stands the test of time.
For a group of individuals who claim all sorts of contradictions in the Book, they should make sure to keep their facts straight.
I always hate to see people attacking atheists badly. This is a classic example of the straw man argument. Atheists realize that there is no God to communicate with his human followers either through an ancient book or through some more immediate means. Let’s take a look at some of your other assertions from an atheist perspective:
The creation myth concocted by the Israelites posited an original couple who disobeyed and were banished in order to reinforce a doctrine of fealty to the tribal god.
The flood myth was similarly designed to show how mean and nasty the tribal god was if people didn’t show proper obedience.
The Exodus myth was designed to provide a nomadic tribe with no real known history with an imagined “history” showing their need for and dependence upon the tribal god and, by extension, the priests and leaders who claimed to rule in the god’s name.
After Jesus’ death, his followers developed a story that connected him with the Messiah figure of the Jewish scripture and wrote stories designed to “fulfill” the prophecies of the Jewish scriptures as they understood them.
For as long as there has been a Christian faith, its adherents have claimed that the world would be ending soon and Jesus would come back any day now to judge the evil folks who refused to believe. Eons have passed and nothing has happened, but the fools in Christian groups keep thinking it is just around the corner – “look at this sign!” But, like every other epoch, this one will not end in miraculous raptures or anti-Christs or any of the other ridiculous nonsense believed by many Christians.
That is what an atheist would say. That and a comment on the fact that all this logic is perfectly circular. The Bible is true because it says it is. Look at your main point about God “proving himself blameless with them”. What exactly were they blaming God for in the first place? If they blamed him how does recounting their mythology about god prove anything?
Personally, I’m a little surprised because usually the atheists I’ve dealt with in the past are a little bit better researched than you seem to be.
This series is based not on an attempt to prove Christianity, but to take a serious look at an atheist’s positive assertion regarding a set of arguments he thinks are best in terms of convincing a person that Christianity is a hoax. Each post takes on a different one of his points.
You can find the links to his document at the first and the final (not yet published) article.
So, in order to prove that I’m using a strawman argument, you’d have to prove that my summarization of his premise was indeed incorrect. And I would postulate that it is indeed on the mark– the wording of the argument is such that the author is saying “If there were a God, I would expect Him to do X” X being what the author believes would be a better method to talk to people than the Bible.
Therefore, in order to best this argument, all I have to do is produce a plausible reason as to why using a book written by multiple authors over thousands of years is a better method than the one that he proffered. I believe that I’ve offered one possible arrangement, though I don’t deny that there could possibly be more.
Dissecting my possible scenario, while amusing, is entirely outside the scope of the argument. It’s extraneous, and would best be taken up in another venue.
As long as you are aware that your atheist is not representative of atheists in general. There are way stations along the road from fundamentalist Christianity to atheism and for each person the defining moments are different.
I would not say that Christianity is a hoax – that would imply some sort of master conspiracy to defraud and that is unprovable. My contention is that the orthodox and fundamentalist forms of Christianity are based on an uninformed and anti-intellectual reading of the Bible. That is probably extraneous to your point of course.
I’m well aware of many of the atheists positions. The truth of the matter is that this particular question– how a person who claims to be of faith falls away and what he uses to justify leaving the faith– is important to a blog like mine that is looking at the culture from a Biblical perspective. It is the very road, and “way stations” that I intended to refute.
Much has been done over the years to construct the atheist worldview in order to have a prayer to try to refute the Bible– I specifically choose that religion for atheism seems only to exist in countries where there is a presence of Christianity.
So, I definitely recognize that there is a whole bunch of atheist philosophy that I’m ignoring for the sake of this discussion. This is intentional– not because I don’t have answers or cannot refute specific points or present evidence to the contrary, but because of the nature of the discussion I’m intending to create.
Namely, those that are of the Christian faith that may doubt that faith because of any of these “great” arguments this atheist puts forth.
Furthermore, I take from the comments that he has received that many are encouraging him and agreeing that these are difficult “problems” for Christianity– which I intend to prove are not truly problems at all.
Seriously, it is really a difference of two different worldviews, and it is the foundational arguments that are either strong or weak.