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Brian's asked me to look at this site: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/.
I will give this site huge credit for The unconscionable arrogance of the blessed. This is a huge problem with the Prosperity Gospel in particular. I won't reproduce it all here, because it doesn't need to be summarized or restated.
It's an interesting site, and certainly a good example if one is hoping for a rigorous proof that strict Biblical Christianity makes no sense. I'll just start at chapter one and keep going.
Chapter one! Jesus didn't save believers from bad things, even though the Bible says he can and will. How horrid!
Issue one: Theodicy. If God is all-powerful and all-benevolent, why does bad shit happen? Tired issue. The solution is to not simultaneously assume that God has both of these qualities. Wow, that was hard. If we either assume that God is not perfectly beneficent or that God does not have perfect control over human beings, the nasty little question of why a world with a God wouldn't be perfect stops being quite so hard to answer.
One repeating theme on this site is that invoking theodicy is some kind of theism-destroying silver bullet. If we quit being so determinedly Christocentric, or at least quit being Biblical literalists, theodicy isn't a problem.
I'm just going to avoid mentioning all the instances where I can answer the author's questions with, "Actually I don't believe the Bible. WHERE IS YOUR CONTRADICTION NOW?"
Fourth, we have the fact that all of the gods of the past truly were imaginary. We all know with certainty that the Egyptian gods, the Roman gods and the Aztec gods were completely fictitious. Otherwise we would not have started to worship Jesus. We would be worshiping Ra or Zeus rather than Jesus if Ra or Zeus were real.
Because this particular vision of God exists contemporarily, it discredits the existence of other versions of the divine. Because it's the most recent, clearly it's the surviving candidate of whatever religious selection chooses "the best and truest" religions. Therefore if we discredit the best tradition, we've discredited all the "inferior" ones that it replaced. Or... or something. I honestly can't even begin to fathom the thought process behind this assertion. I feel this is a clue to why the author(s) believe it is sufficient to discredit one specific self-contradicting view of God, but I need more explanation than this.
I understand now, after reading this site, that it is working to unpack--and yes, discredit--something very specific. However, there are claims made that the site can "heal" people of a much broader delusion: belief in the supernatural of any sort, other versions of the divine included. It's stated here.
So evidently it is enough to discredit the "power of prayer," as many people see it. Discrediting this particular belief is the only evident means to the goal stated here.
So why, in the hopes of disproving Religion, is it enough to discredit one religious belief? That's the question that's still unanswered for me. After all, there's more than one thing happening out there on the religious stage. This site doesn't allow for that. Just the Christocentric Biblical literalist view.
A believer might say, "You are taking the Bible literally." But how else are we supposed to take it?
Metaphorically? In pieces? There are lots of options that real live Christians have chosen if you go out and observe them in their natural habitats. However, the only alternative WWGHA presents to the existence of God (as delineated in a literalist interpretation of the Bible) is that God must not exist in any form. For me there's a leap of logic between "this belief about prayer makes no sense" and "deities are imaginary." If I found a 2,000 year old text that simultaneously claimed God was purple and also that God would strike all purple things from the Earth, that's a serious contradiction that could (and should) cause serious problems for people who claim to believe both of these things, and also in their own rationality. In fact, you could even say that this portrayal of God must be untrue. However, the fact that this definition of God clearly makes no sense does not itself disprove God's existence. Just that this definition of God makes no sense.
I sincerely hope that all the authors are claiming they've accomplished is the discrediting of one particular definition of God. Because that's all they've even talked about so far.
I'm still left with this impression: This website is a great and elaborate and well-researched, well-thought-out exploration of the theodicy question. Which I think is a tiresome question based in an unnecessarily self-contradictory definition of God. If I needed a website that existed solely to prove "the theodicy question really does exist for a lot of people, and if you don't resolve it somehow you end up believing some wacky things," WWGHA would be a fantastic resource.
Unfortunately, I don't care about the theodicy question. And that means this site ate up the last few hours of my time... for nothing.
I will give this site huge credit for The unconscionable arrogance of the blessed. This is a huge problem with the Prosperity Gospel in particular. I won't reproduce it all here, because it doesn't need to be summarized or restated.
It's an interesting site, and certainly a good example if one is hoping for a rigorous proof that strict Biblical Christianity makes no sense. I'll just start at chapter one and keep going.
Chapter one! Jesus didn't save believers from bad things, even though the Bible says he can and will. How horrid!
Issue one: Theodicy. If God is all-powerful and all-benevolent, why does bad shit happen? Tired issue. The solution is to not simultaneously assume that God has both of these qualities. Wow, that was hard. If we either assume that God is not perfectly beneficent or that God does not have perfect control over human beings, the nasty little question of why a world with a God wouldn't be perfect stops being quite so hard to answer.
One repeating theme on this site is that invoking theodicy is some kind of theism-destroying silver bullet. If we quit being so determinedly Christocentric, or at least quit being Biblical literalists, theodicy isn't a problem.
I'm just going to avoid mentioning all the instances where I can answer the author's questions with, "Actually I don't believe the Bible. WHERE IS YOUR CONTRADICTION NOW?"
Fourth, we have the fact that all of the gods of the past truly were imaginary. We all know with certainty that the Egyptian gods, the Roman gods and the Aztec gods were completely fictitious. Otherwise we would not have started to worship Jesus. We would be worshiping Ra or Zeus rather than Jesus if Ra or Zeus were real.
Because this particular vision of God exists contemporarily, it discredits the existence of other versions of the divine. Because it's the most recent, clearly it's the surviving candidate of whatever religious selection chooses "the best and truest" religions. Therefore if we discredit the best tradition, we've discredited all the "inferior" ones that it replaced. Or... or something. I honestly can't even begin to fathom the thought process behind this assertion. I feel this is a clue to why the author(s) believe it is sufficient to discredit one specific self-contradicting view of God, but I need more explanation than this.
I understand now, after reading this site, that it is working to unpack--and yes, discredit--something very specific. However, there are claims made that the site can "heal" people of a much broader delusion: belief in the supernatural of any sort, other versions of the divine included. It's stated here.
So evidently it is enough to discredit the "power of prayer," as many people see it. Discrediting this particular belief is the only evident means to the goal stated here.
So why, in the hopes of disproving Religion, is it enough to discredit one religious belief? That's the question that's still unanswered for me. After all, there's more than one thing happening out there on the religious stage. This site doesn't allow for that. Just the Christocentric Biblical literalist view.
A believer might say, "You are taking the Bible literally." But how else are we supposed to take it?
Metaphorically? In pieces? There are lots of options that real live Christians have chosen if you go out and observe them in their natural habitats. However, the only alternative WWGHA presents to the existence of God (as delineated in a literalist interpretation of the Bible) is that God must not exist in any form. For me there's a leap of logic between "this belief about prayer makes no sense" and "deities are imaginary." If I found a 2,000 year old text that simultaneously claimed God was purple and also that God would strike all purple things from the Earth, that's a serious contradiction that could (and should) cause serious problems for people who claim to believe both of these things, and also in their own rationality. In fact, you could even say that this portrayal of God must be untrue. However, the fact that this definition of God clearly makes no sense does not itself disprove God's existence. Just that this definition of God makes no sense.
I sincerely hope that all the authors are claiming they've accomplished is the discrediting of one particular definition of God. Because that's all they've even talked about so far.
I'm still left with this impression: This website is a great and elaborate and well-researched, well-thought-out exploration of the theodicy question. Which I think is a tiresome question based in an unnecessarily self-contradictory definition of God. If I needed a website that existed solely to prove "the theodicy question really does exist for a lot of people, and if you don't resolve it somehow you end up believing some wacky things," WWGHA would be a fantastic resource.
Unfortunately, I don't care about the theodicy question. And that means this site ate up the last few hours of my time... for nothing.
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Date: 2008-04-03 02:16 am (UTC)From:Not to nitpick, but the argument in question is actually the problem of evil. A theodicy is an attempt to respond to that problem. Just sayin'.
Metaphorically? In pieces?
Part of the problem with this approach, I think, is the question of why a putatively perfect being would use such an imperfect book to tell us of its existence. Christians would have us believe that God wants us to know about him and Jesus and how to be saved and all, and yet the book that's supposed to teach us about that is so remarkably open to interpretation. A good human philosopher or writer will take great pains to be as clear as possible if they are trying to make a point that they want everyone to understand, and yet a deity doesn't do that?
Edit: Oh yeah, and it raises the question of which parts we are supposed to take metaphorically. Genesis? Okay. The virgin birth, Jesus' miracles, including his death and resurrection? I don't see how any of those are saner than Genesis, and yet taking them symbolically would pretty much undermine the entire religion.
Which I think is a tiresome question based in an unnecessarily self-contradictory definition of God.
Well, it's easy for you because you don't believe in the Bible. Most Christians aren't nearly as willing to say that God isn't all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. For them, the problem of evil (particularly the evidential variant) is indeed a serious problem, one that - I think - is insoluble.
Bear in mind that the author is writing for a specific audience: Christians. Obviously, objections to Christianity aren't necessarily going to apply to your religion. Moreover, he probably wouldn't care about that anyway, because Wiccans aren't causing the problems that Abrahamic folks are.