Let us examine these concepts and how they contradict each other. According to Christianity, their god is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. And according to that religion, people were given free will. First, some definitions need to be recognized, and I will do so using scripture to ensure it is not my interpolation that is creating the apparent contradictions.
Omniscient : God knows everything (past, present, and future)
Omniscient : God knows everything (past, present, and future)
Job 37:16 – “Do you know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of him who is perfect in knowledge.”
Psalm 147:5 – “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”
Isaiah 46:9 – “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.”
1 John 3:20 – “God... knoweth all things.”
Omnipotent: God can do anything (is all-powerful, not limited in any way)
Matthew 19:26 - “But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Luke 1:37 – “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Job 42:2 – “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
Free will: Sentient beings can make decisions without interference or influence from God.
Scriptural references to free will are quite cryptic, but generally, humans would have to have free will to rebel against God. There could be no fall of man if there was no free will. Without the fall of man there would be no need for a savior and would render the whole religion even more moot than it is on evidential grounds.
These concepts contradict themselves on several levels. But to simplify the issue, I like to present the case of the creation of heaven. In heaven, the inhabitants still have free will. They have free will sufficient to rebel against that god even in heaven, as the story of the fall of Lucifer explains. Numerous angels lead by Lucifer rebelled against god, necessitating the creation of hell.
So this immediately destroys several defenses to the problem of evil that theists like to bring up. Here are some of those defenses and why they are problematic.
1. You have to have evil to know good. Without evil, free will could not exist.
Wrong. This god, being all powerful, has the capacity to create any system/universe he wishes. He can create a place free of evil, free of suffering, without pain, without needs while also populating that place with sentient beings with free will. Per that religion, god indeed created such a place:heaven. Why he then also created the horrible existence of Earth is a big problem for Christianity.
2. God gave Adam and Eve the choice. It is because of their choice that the world ended up this way.
If that is somehow true, then that god is not omniscient. If god indeed knows everything, then that god would know the outcome of any situation. That god would know the choices made. There is no inherent flaw in giving people a choice, letting them make up their mind, and still also knowing the future (if god knows the future). Thus the Christian god made a universe that he knew would turn out this way. It is not predetermination from the humans' points of view, as they make their decisions independent of that god (free will). But that god, being independent of time, knowing the future, would know how the world would turn out. The creation of this world is unnecessary, as that god could have just made heaven the default state for existence.
Of course, ending up with a threat of hell motivation for obeying dictated morals makes free will rather pointless. If a mob boss has a gun to my head and says I need to pay him respect and money or he will kill me, I do not really have a choice there. I am not then committing suicide if I decide to disobey. Similarly, humans do not send themselves to hell, as Christians will often attest. Rather, the god set up a situation where there is no real choice. Too bad that god also failed to make his existence and system completely unverifiable. It is like a mob boss that never shows up for the meeting, and tries to convince you that he will kill you for disobeying when nobody has ever seen evidence that that mob boss ever killed anybody.
This demonstrates irrationality of the creation and implementation of hell. If god is all-powerful and all-knowing, then hell is unnecessary. Consider the rebellion story in heaven. If a god can do literally anything, it can simply unmake anything that exists just as easily. If a rebellion started, that god could just DELETE these troubled entities instead of creating hell and torturing them for eternity and setting up the evil-good polarity.Heaven could still just be the default state, and any god that does not like to see sentient beings suffer would prefer to just end their existence than send them to such a place.
Hell is a huge problem for Christianity as it shows just how immoral their god actually can be. Their god can condemn people to hell just for having impure thoughts. That god has no problem with seeing sentient beings suffer for eternity just for committing thought crimes. That god also gave mankind not only free will, but the capacity to grasp the concepts of the logical absolutes and think critically and make rational decisions. When exercising intellectual honesty, humans by default become atheists. An all-knowing god would know this consequence of his own design. Simply not believing in god is sufficient to justify an eternity of torture. As a matter of fact, denying the existence of the holy ghost is the only unforgivable sin, an act that has no victim or external effect. So Christianity is the worship of a god that has no problem condemning people to hell for eternity just for applying rational skepticism using the brains he supposedly designed.
Going back to the heaven concept, we have yet another problem. In heaven there is no suffering. That is impossible if human identity is maintained in the afterlife. Think about it this way. If you were in heaven, could you be happy knowing others are in hell? Knowing you made it and others, including loved ones, are not on the right path, will end up in hell, could you exist in that state without suffering? If the inhabitants of heaven are former humans, and they maintain their identity and memory, then there must be suffering in heaven. If there is no suffering, then it is not you that makes it to heaven. It is some facsimile of you that lacks the knowledge of former relationships and the love of family members on Earth. If your mind has been so altered that you no longer have care or concerns over your Earth-bound misguided relatives, is it really you that ends up in heaven?
The savior concept is a great way to wrap up this blog. God created a world, being all powerful, and all knowing. He knew the world would end up this way. He knew the great flood would have no effect on addressing the evil of men and yet did it anyway. He had also already created a world free of suffering, the inhabitants of which still have free will (heaven). Even if he passes the blame to Adam and Eve, that god still knows everything, including the future. Thus there is no rational reason that god would have created our world especially as heaven evidently already existed. Our world would have simply been a bad idea, a poor design, something illogical for an all-knowing and all-powerful being to bother implementing.
And then after eons of suffering and failings, that god sent himself to the planet in the form of a human to sacrifice himself (only for a weekend – not much of a sacrifice) to act as a loophole for the screwed up system that god created in the first place because somehow killing his human body version has some effect on the rules that he could not circumvent otherwise. This places a severe limit on that god's power, defying the definition of omnipotence. If that god wanted certain sacrificial laws to go away, that god could simply make them go away without killing a human incarnation and leaving no evidence for this event.
In the end, a Christian has to simply ignore the following facts:
1. Their all knowing god knew how the world would turn out. Otherwise that god is not all knowing.
2. Their god created a world that he would have to ultimately destroy (repeatedly).
3. Their god requires irrational belief (faith), while giving humans the ability to form rational beliefs.
4. Their god would rather torture people for eternity than simply unmake them. Rather, their god wants people to come to a belief in him on irrational grounds (faith) to pass the test of Earth to avoid hell rather than simply forgiving across the board so everyone ends up in heaven and obliterating evil by deleting hell from existence.
5. Their god made a world that he knew would end up in a state where 2/3rds of the planet would have the wrong religion and will end up in hell. That god made a world where the most intellectually honest cannot even believe he exists. And that god made disbelief in the holy spirit (a blasphemy to state), the unforgivable sin.
Mark 3:28-29 “I promise you that any of the sinful things you say or do can be forgiven, no matter how terrible those things are. But if you speak against the Holy Spirit, you can never be forgiven. That sin will be held against you forever.”
That last one is in direct contradiction to the 'god is love' concept of omni-benevolence. If we go by the Biblical definition of love, and by the attribute that states god is love, then that god could not have an unforgivable sin.
Psalm 147:5 – “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”
Isaiah 46:9 – “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.”
1 John 3:20 – “God... knoweth all things.”
Omnipotent: God can do anything (is all-powerful, not limited in any way)
Matthew 19:26 - “But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Luke 1:37 – “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Job 42:2 – “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
Free will: Sentient beings can make decisions without interference or influence from God.
Scriptural references to free will are quite cryptic, but generally, humans would have to have free will to rebel against God. There could be no fall of man if there was no free will. Without the fall of man there would be no need for a savior and would render the whole religion even more moot than it is on evidential grounds.
These concepts contradict themselves on several levels. But to simplify the issue, I like to present the case of the creation of heaven. In heaven, the inhabitants still have free will. They have free will sufficient to rebel against that god even in heaven, as the story of the fall of Lucifer explains. Numerous angels lead by Lucifer rebelled against god, necessitating the creation of hell.
So this immediately destroys several defenses to the problem of evil that theists like to bring up. Here are some of those defenses and why they are problematic.
1. You have to have evil to know good. Without evil, free will could not exist.
Wrong. This god, being all powerful, has the capacity to create any system/universe he wishes. He can create a place free of evil, free of suffering, without pain, without needs while also populating that place with sentient beings with free will. Per that religion, god indeed created such a place:heaven. Why he then also created the horrible existence of Earth is a big problem for Christianity.
2. God gave Adam and Eve the choice. It is because of their choice that the world ended up this way.
If that is somehow true, then that god is not omniscient. If god indeed knows everything, then that god would know the outcome of any situation. That god would know the choices made. There is no inherent flaw in giving people a choice, letting them make up their mind, and still also knowing the future (if god knows the future). Thus the Christian god made a universe that he knew would turn out this way. It is not predetermination from the humans' points of view, as they make their decisions independent of that god (free will). But that god, being independent of time, knowing the future, would know how the world would turn out. The creation of this world is unnecessary, as that god could have just made heaven the default state for existence.
Of course, ending up with a threat of hell motivation for obeying dictated morals makes free will rather pointless. If a mob boss has a gun to my head and says I need to pay him respect and money or he will kill me, I do not really have a choice there. I am not then committing suicide if I decide to disobey. Similarly, humans do not send themselves to hell, as Christians will often attest. Rather, the god set up a situation where there is no real choice. Too bad that god also failed to make his existence and system completely unverifiable. It is like a mob boss that never shows up for the meeting, and tries to convince you that he will kill you for disobeying when nobody has ever seen evidence that that mob boss ever killed anybody.
This demonstrates irrationality of the creation and implementation of hell. If god is all-powerful and all-knowing, then hell is unnecessary. Consider the rebellion story in heaven. If a god can do literally anything, it can simply unmake anything that exists just as easily. If a rebellion started, that god could just DELETE these troubled entities instead of creating hell and torturing them for eternity and setting up the evil-good polarity.Heaven could still just be the default state, and any god that does not like to see sentient beings suffer would prefer to just end their existence than send them to such a place.
Hell is a huge problem for Christianity as it shows just how immoral their god actually can be. Their god can condemn people to hell just for having impure thoughts. That god has no problem with seeing sentient beings suffer for eternity just for committing thought crimes. That god also gave mankind not only free will, but the capacity to grasp the concepts of the logical absolutes and think critically and make rational decisions. When exercising intellectual honesty, humans by default become atheists. An all-knowing god would know this consequence of his own design. Simply not believing in god is sufficient to justify an eternity of torture. As a matter of fact, denying the existence of the holy ghost is the only unforgivable sin, an act that has no victim or external effect. So Christianity is the worship of a god that has no problem condemning people to hell for eternity just for applying rational skepticism using the brains he supposedly designed.
Going back to the heaven concept, we have yet another problem. In heaven there is no suffering. That is impossible if human identity is maintained in the afterlife. Think about it this way. If you were in heaven, could you be happy knowing others are in hell? Knowing you made it and others, including loved ones, are not on the right path, will end up in hell, could you exist in that state without suffering? If the inhabitants of heaven are former humans, and they maintain their identity and memory, then there must be suffering in heaven. If there is no suffering, then it is not you that makes it to heaven. It is some facsimile of you that lacks the knowledge of former relationships and the love of family members on Earth. If your mind has been so altered that you no longer have care or concerns over your Earth-bound misguided relatives, is it really you that ends up in heaven?
The savior concept is a great way to wrap up this blog. God created a world, being all powerful, and all knowing. He knew the world would end up this way. He knew the great flood would have no effect on addressing the evil of men and yet did it anyway. He had also already created a world free of suffering, the inhabitants of which still have free will (heaven). Even if he passes the blame to Adam and Eve, that god still knows everything, including the future. Thus there is no rational reason that god would have created our world especially as heaven evidently already existed. Our world would have simply been a bad idea, a poor design, something illogical for an all-knowing and all-powerful being to bother implementing.
And then after eons of suffering and failings, that god sent himself to the planet in the form of a human to sacrifice himself (only for a weekend – not much of a sacrifice) to act as a loophole for the screwed up system that god created in the first place because somehow killing his human body version has some effect on the rules that he could not circumvent otherwise. This places a severe limit on that god's power, defying the definition of omnipotence. If that god wanted certain sacrificial laws to go away, that god could simply make them go away without killing a human incarnation and leaving no evidence for this event.
In the end, a Christian has to simply ignore the following facts:
1. Their all knowing god knew how the world would turn out. Otherwise that god is not all knowing.
2. Their god created a world that he would have to ultimately destroy (repeatedly).
3. Their god requires irrational belief (faith), while giving humans the ability to form rational beliefs.
4. Their god would rather torture people for eternity than simply unmake them. Rather, their god wants people to come to a belief in him on irrational grounds (faith) to pass the test of Earth to avoid hell rather than simply forgiving across the board so everyone ends up in heaven and obliterating evil by deleting hell from existence.
5. Their god made a world that he knew would end up in a state where 2/3rds of the planet would have the wrong religion and will end up in hell. That god made a world where the most intellectually honest cannot even believe he exists. And that god made disbelief in the holy spirit (a blasphemy to state), the unforgivable sin.
Mark 3:28-29 “I promise you that any of the sinful things you say or do can be forgiven, no matter how terrible those things are. But if you speak against the Holy Spirit, you can never be forgiven. That sin will be held against you forever.”
That last one is in direct contradiction to the 'god is love' concept of omni-benevolence. If we go by the Biblical definition of love, and by the attribute that states god is love, then that god could not have an unforgivable sin.
1 John 4:8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
God indeed insists on his own way. He does not believe all things or bear all things. Those extensions of this definition actually don't make any sense. Nothing, nobody can literally believe all things as this sets up direct dichotomies. The Christian god is thus not love even by the Bible's definition, and yet god is supposedly synonymous with love, per the Bible.
These inherent contradictions are irrefutable and demonstrate that the Bible is not a consistent collection of concepts about the same god, and certainly not an infallible word of any god. These contradictions are direct demonstrations of actual fallibility by definition. The last half of the Corinthians verse is actually good advice.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
So reason like an adult. Understand contradictions and logical fallacies. The truth indeed will set you free. And seeing the truth of the fallible Bible, and the contradictory Christian god concept is the first step to escaping this powerful, yet horribly flawed, religion.
A person replied to this blog, as it was originally posted on a different site. He brought up the scripture:
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
This seems to prove my point. I did some deeper research on the subject and replied:
What I was also getting at was the way different books contradict each other so severely to make the belief that the Bible is infallible completely irrational. So while Isaiah might say that god created evil, and while the omnipotent nature requires that god created evil, there are other scriptures that state that nothing impure or evil come from god. However, there are supporting scriptures to the one from Isaiah such as
Amos 3:6 "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?"
But that gets dangerously close to contextual interpretation. Then again,
Isaiah 45: 5-7 "I am the Lord, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me; That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these."
As expected, the Bible contradicts itself on this issue:
Habakkuk 1:3 "Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, and Thou canst not look on wickedness with favor."
Deut: 32:4 “The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He."
Christian Apologetics Research Ministry did a good article on these references. http://carm.org/does-god-create-evil
They explain that the word evil has many meanings and the references were supposedly about calamity, or natural disasters. This, of course, does nothing to relieve god of the responsibility as an omniscient and omnipotent creator for the evil caused by men, the creation of hell, the creation of the polarity of good/evil in the first place, etc. One of the lamest defenses was given in this article:
"Of course, this raises other questions of why God would do such a thing, which I won't cover here. But, we can trust that whatever God does is just and is used for teaching, guiding, and disciplining His people."
Yes, it is somehow just to kill billions of infants over time through child-birth complications due to a rather imperfectly designed human reproduction system. It is somehow justified to kill millions by famine, plagues, and natural disasters. There is some justice in the deaths of innocent children who die in natural disasters like hurricanes or floods (a global one that god himself supposedly intentionally enacted on all living creatures including morally-neutral animals).
Insane. But a typical weak apologetic indicative of the "trust" they require believers to have to not question their celestial maniacal genocidal murderer and dictator.
Another reply brought up the fact that Revelations speaks of the ability for the inhabitants in heaven being able to see the people suffering in hell. That was a good point too. I replied:
If people in heaven have a view of hell, does that not require god to bypass our sense of empathy and compassion for there to also be no suffering in heaven? So that leaves the sentient beings that inhabit heaven without no sense of compassion or empathy, and thus seems to prove my point that whatever avatar that represents you that exists in heaven cannot be in any way the same individual that you actually are in any meaningful sense. Thus nobody actually gets to heaven. Some weird, inhuman, stripped-down consciousness may get to heaven. But that is all that can logically exist in a place without suffering especially if that place has a front-row seat observing the suffering of other beings. Whatever sentient beings exist in heaven are less human and less moral that we are here on Earth. This can be conclusively shown to be true by examining the way heaven is defined (as being void of suffering) and by the other characteristics of heaven given in the Bible, such as the front-row seat of hell concept.
This seems a good place to state that as a rational, empathetic, and compassionate human, I cannot endorse or believe in Christianity, even if I wanted to disregard the utter lack of evidence for the supernatural, which is the basis of my position of atheism.
Further comments and my replies on this original blog, on atheistnexus.org:
Comment:
There would have to be memory in heaven, and the very fact that memory exists there means that a form of suffering is there as well. To just see or know that loved ones are in hell has to cause grief and suffering, but we are told these emotions are not in heaven at all. This contradicts the very idea of heaven as a place. Of course, apologists would argue that just being with god is so great that these feelings would be instantly overcome. Hog wash!
I point out again that there was once rebellion in heaven. The scripture says that. It would now appear that god is trying to discourage future rebellion if all of the above is true.
What our book writing friends of 2000 years ago forgot is that none of this appears to hold water when you look at it properly. Perhaps they couldn't see it then because they did not have knowledge at their fingertips as we do today.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
God indeed insists on his own way. He does not believe all things or bear all things. Those extensions of this definition actually don't make any sense. Nothing, nobody can literally believe all things as this sets up direct dichotomies. The Christian god is thus not love even by the Bible's definition, and yet god is supposedly synonymous with love, per the Bible.
These inherent contradictions are irrefutable and demonstrate that the Bible is not a consistent collection of concepts about the same god, and certainly not an infallible word of any god. These contradictions are direct demonstrations of actual fallibility by definition. The last half of the Corinthians verse is actually good advice.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
So reason like an adult. Understand contradictions and logical fallacies. The truth indeed will set you free. And seeing the truth of the fallible Bible, and the contradictory Christian god concept is the first step to escaping this powerful, yet horribly flawed, religion.
A person replied to this blog, as it was originally posted on a different site. He brought up the scripture:
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
This seems to prove my point. I did some deeper research on the subject and replied:
What I was also getting at was the way different books contradict each other so severely to make the belief that the Bible is infallible completely irrational. So while Isaiah might say that god created evil, and while the omnipotent nature requires that god created evil, there are other scriptures that state that nothing impure or evil come from god. However, there are supporting scriptures to the one from Isaiah such as
Amos 3:6 "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?"
But that gets dangerously close to contextual interpretation. Then again,
Isaiah 45: 5-7 "I am the Lord, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me; That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these."
As expected, the Bible contradicts itself on this issue:
Habakkuk 1:3 "Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, and Thou canst not look on wickedness with favor."
Deut: 32:4 “The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He."
Christian Apologetics Research Ministry did a good article on these references. http://carm.org/does-god-create-evil
They explain that the word evil has many meanings and the references were supposedly about calamity, or natural disasters. This, of course, does nothing to relieve god of the responsibility as an omniscient and omnipotent creator for the evil caused by men, the creation of hell, the creation of the polarity of good/evil in the first place, etc. One of the lamest defenses was given in this article:
"Of course, this raises other questions of why God would do such a thing, which I won't cover here. But, we can trust that whatever God does is just and is used for teaching, guiding, and disciplining His people."
Yes, it is somehow just to kill billions of infants over time through child-birth complications due to a rather imperfectly designed human reproduction system. It is somehow justified to kill millions by famine, plagues, and natural disasters. There is some justice in the deaths of innocent children who die in natural disasters like hurricanes or floods (a global one that god himself supposedly intentionally enacted on all living creatures including morally-neutral animals).
Insane. But a typical weak apologetic indicative of the "trust" they require believers to have to not question their celestial maniacal genocidal murderer and dictator.
Another reply brought up the fact that Revelations speaks of the ability for the inhabitants in heaven being able to see the people suffering in hell. That was a good point too. I replied:
If people in heaven have a view of hell, does that not require god to bypass our sense of empathy and compassion for there to also be no suffering in heaven? So that leaves the sentient beings that inhabit heaven without no sense of compassion or empathy, and thus seems to prove my point that whatever avatar that represents you that exists in heaven cannot be in any way the same individual that you actually are in any meaningful sense. Thus nobody actually gets to heaven. Some weird, inhuman, stripped-down consciousness may get to heaven. But that is all that can logically exist in a place without suffering especially if that place has a front-row seat observing the suffering of other beings. Whatever sentient beings exist in heaven are less human and less moral that we are here on Earth. This can be conclusively shown to be true by examining the way heaven is defined (as being void of suffering) and by the other characteristics of heaven given in the Bible, such as the front-row seat of hell concept.
This seems a good place to state that as a rational, empathetic, and compassionate human, I cannot endorse or believe in Christianity, even if I wanted to disregard the utter lack of evidence for the supernatural, which is the basis of my position of atheism.
Further comments and my replies on this original blog, on atheistnexus.org:
Comment:
There would have to be memory in heaven, and the very fact that memory exists there means that a form of suffering is there as well. To just see or know that loved ones are in hell has to cause grief and suffering, but we are told these emotions are not in heaven at all. This contradicts the very idea of heaven as a place. Of course, apologists would argue that just being with god is so great that these feelings would be instantly overcome. Hog wash!
I point out again that there was once rebellion in heaven. The scripture says that. It would now appear that god is trying to discourage future rebellion if all of the above is true.
What our book writing friends of 2000 years ago forgot is that none of this appears to hold water when you look at it properly. Perhaps they couldn't see it then because they did not have knowledge at their fingertips as we do today.
My Reply:
The rebellion in heaven indicates that the inhabitants had free will. It also indicates that the inhabitants were at least not content with their situation. So heaven is not infinitely blissful as the mainstream Christians would have us believe. It is, in fact, so tyrannical and pointless that angels themselves formed a rebellion (at least once - reporting on further incidents would likely be suppressed by a dictator like their god). The inherent contradictions this raises cannot just be explained away, as they form a true dichotomy: perfect bliss and not perfect bliss: both are held to be true by the same belief system, making that system inherently objectively illogical and thus irrational.
There is a meta-level higher than this issue, however, which is what I was trying to originally express. If free will can exist in heaven, sufficient that one can form a rebellion, then their god can indeed create an existence where not only is his existence directly confirmed by immediate contact, but the necessity for suffering and evil is completely missing (ignoring the dichotomy indicated). This then sheds a bright light on the inconsistent apologetics used to explain why our existence on Earth has to have evil and suffering. It is thus clear that it is not related to free will at all, but the imperfect conception of men trying to construct the ultimate carrot/stick type of motivator for dictated morality. As such, being the creation of men from the bronze age, it is full of logical flaws, so flawed that any rational modern man is a fool for basing their life thereon.
So next time a Christian tries to explain why evil is needed for us to perceive good, for why hell was created, and for why their god hides himself from existence to preserve free will, one can refer to these points made here and expose the nonsensical nature of these defenses. All it would take is that theist examining the illogical nature of the overlapping beliefs to convince them that the whole system is just poorly designed. Of course, asking a theist to examine the illogical nature of their own beliefs is often asking too much of a brain-washed individual that has convinced themselves of a belief without evidence and convinced themselves that faith is a virtue.
A separate comment:
I guess that says it all why Athiesm is becoming more and more popular with former Theists...Well done GPD, I hope any theist reading your blog will use Rational Thinking and see the Light.......
My Reply:
Thank you. That is why I do blog about this crap. I finally cured myself of the god virus a while ago and wouldn't bother talking about it otherwise. But I care about the future of humanity - an empathy and compassion I have independent of any belief system. I also blog about this stuff so atheists that have recently moved from Christianity can overcome the lingering symptoms of that virus, of which the fear of hell is one of the most difficult. Once a new atheist can perceive the inherent flaws of the hell concept, they can finally themselves experience that profound freedom that most atheists eventually experience. Only after stomping out these lingering fears ingrained by indoctrination and brain-washing, can an atheist be completely cured of the god virus. That profound freedom feeling is otherwise quite elusive, as these ancient beliefs tend to roll around in the subconscious unless directly addressed. Once one has killed the virus, however, that freedom flows quite beautifully from within, and only then does that sense of peace and contentedness (that exceeds the simulated temporary placebo of any religion) come forth.
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