On non-belief and the existence of God

[Clueless Morgan]

It's a nice ideal, but I tend to think we have a tendency of messing things up.

So... if you're a Christian you won't mess anything up?

If we're all human and we all have a tendency to mess up, then Christians, too, have this same tendency and it doesn't make a lick of difference if you're a good person trying to do good things and you don't follow Christianity or if you're a good person trying to do good things and you do.

But, also, why would a good person reject the personification of goodness?

I'm sorry, about whom are we speaking?

Princess Diana?

Angelina Jolie?

Bono?

Is "the personification of goodness" hyperbole, or am I to take this description literally?

Why wouldn't they embrace and welcome it?

How much other baggage comes with it? Do I have to believe that this "personification of goodness" was also, say, born of a virgin? Or is the son or daughter of a god? Or is a god itself?

If Christianity is true, then Christ would/should surely be welcomed by all who want goodness and love to prevail.

I'm sorry again, but when was it established that goodness and love can only prevail if Christianity prevails? Why couldn't goodness and love prevail if everyone accepts, say, secular humanist ideals?

[Neo-Scholastic]

What I think Michael means by personification of goodness is the Glorified Christ more so than Jesus in His humanity. In His Glorified state, the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is not just another good man; but rather the Ideal of Human Perfection, i.e. the complete unity of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom.

[ShaMan]

In His Glorified state, the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is not just another good man; but rather the Ideal of Human Perfection, i.e. the complete unity of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom.

According to whom?

I can make all the claims I want, but unless and until I back those claims with proof, they remain subjective prejudice. Let's say I make the claim that my neighbor Thomas is able to levitate

I may believe it well enough, myself having never seen him do it, and that in and of itself may be harmless, but if I go around imposing upon others that the guy next door can levitate, and I insist that everyone who disagrees with me is just "wrong", then it is highly likely that my worldview will be adversely informed by my delusion of supreme authority.

[Whateverist]

It's a nice ideal, but I tend to think we have a tendency of messing things up. But, also, why would a good person reject the personification of goodness? Why wouldn't they embrace and welcome it? If Christianity is true, then Christ would/should surely be welcomed by all who want goodness and love to prevail.

Perhaps this is what is meant by Jesus saying "he is the way", that it is his example that matters, not his personal kingship. Does Jesus' transcendence constitute the way we are to follow or does it mark him as a being above others to be worshiped? Which interpretation is more in keeping with the spirit of his teaching? Personally I could never accept that what Jesus valued above all else was compliance with the law and worship.

[FallentoReason]

Hey Michael, thanks for the thoughtful response. Let's have a look at it.

Hi F2R

If I'm understanding you correctly, you are suggesting that people could essentially be damned out of ignorance. I'd like to challenge that view a little. If we look at how John the Evangelist describes Jesus's response to the Jews who were rejecting them he says (John 5:22), "If I [Jesus] had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.". So ignorance, it appears, would have been an excuse.

Hmm.. would this be equivalent to, say, telling your kid about cleaning his room? So e.g. 'If I had not spoken to my kid, he would not have a messy room; but now he has no excuse for the mess in his room'.
If that's accurate, then I'd have to disagree about ignorance being an excuse. How was your kid supposed to know the very first time you had an expectation of him if you had never spoken to him about it? Ergo the non-belief problem.

If we look at the context of Jesus's teachings about people not believing in him, we find that we're not talking about abstract people in any place and time, but people who had heard him speak, seen him heal, and still reject him. The context, which is a growing tension between Jesus and the leading Jews, is Jesus showing them what the Kingdom of heaven is like, and them saying 'no, we don't want that'.

I'm not so sure that there is a problem here? This is an example where God somewhat "indirectly" shows himself and people have then exercised their free will and unfortunately chosen against him.
This is precisely the sort of opportunity *everyone* deserves, in all places and time throughout the ages, but perhaps without the ambiguity.

Likewise in the parable of the sheep and goats the people who inherit the Kingdom did not recognise the King, but had embraced the values of the King (feeding the poor, caring for the sick, etc), so accepting the King (Jesus) could mean accepting his values, even when they did not recognise the King. The people who were destined to be excluded were those who had rejected the values of the King.

Paul echoes these thoughts in his letter to the Romans, when he essentially says that the conscience judges those who have not had the revelation of any particular law: "When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all."

Hang on, so are you essentially saying that knowledge of Jesus/God isn't required to gain access to heaven?

If you have three minutes to spare, I find this a thoughtful short video from Tom Wright.

Interesting video, and I can see how the choices we make would have a big influence on where we end up eventually. But this doesn't detract from the point I'm making, which is that God revealing himself wouldn't negate our ability to then choose for ourselves if we wish to worship him or not.

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Within the Christian framework, it is believed that God exists, and that there are propositions p,q,r...z that are *necessary* for us to believe in order to be saved…

Only among certain mainline Protestants (like Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Baptists) that preach “faith alone” hold this position.

Then I think this argument poses a great challenge to them

The Roman Catholics allow those outside the Church to be saved if they have “perfect contrition.” It is also not a problem for New Church, Unitarian Universalists, Quakers and other heterodox groups. I don’t think Methodists have a very clear teaching on this, and I grew-up in a half-Methodist church community. These same Christological and sorietological debates have gone on since the first century.

Any other theory for the methodology to being saved will always suffer from the same problem. It is that the incentive to take on such action will usually come about from a justification as to why such action is even necessary/useful/important in the first place. Long story short, the appearance of God to all is just as critical as ever, no matter how you believe salvation will come about.
You can in fact plug in other necessary conditions (not just faith-based conditions) into the argument, and still come out with the same result, with a minor adjustment so as to accomodate for practical conditions such as acting a certain way.

...this is something that can very easily be avoided by God himself if only he would undeniably reveal himself as the God of Christianity. He has the power to do so, and the will to act by.

I don’t think so. Even if YHVH was printed on the blood cells of every human being, it still would not be undeniable enough for a staunch naturalist. That stamp could be the maker’s mark of ancient aliens, right?

If we remember that God is omniscient, then he would know precisely how to reveal himself such that we wouldn't be mistaken about his existence.

… we actually have very clear examples of people who directly witnessed God in His almighty presence and yet, freely chose to rebel…Adam & Eve… Lucifer and the fallen angels…

Very true. Anyone can see that simply knowing the truth is not sufficient without the will to act on it. Most people know that a high fat simple sugar diet is bad for you, yet many still continue to eat unhealthily.
Those who know the truth but lack the will to act on it, no matter how well informed, cannot even follow the dictates of their own convictions. Those who truly desire to do the right thing will do so when they know the truth. These people can be instructed by the Lord. Your examples (the original parents and the devil) also make good proof-texts for why the ‘faith alone’ doctrine is not the best one. Orthopraxy trumps orthodoxy every time.

[/quote]

Well, again, I think whether orthopraxy or orthodoxy is the way, it would still make a world of difference (quite literally) if God undeniably showed himself. That way, those who lack the will to act on this knowledge are *absolutely* responsible for the life they've lead. But until then, it's unjust to punish the unbeliever to an eternity of damnation just because God didn't make it clear the life He created them into.

[Michael]

What I think Michael means by personification of goodness is the Glorified Christ more so than Jesus in His humanity. In His Glorified state, the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is not just another good man; but rather the Ideal of Human Perfection, i.e. the complete unity of Divine Love and Divine Wisdom.

That's nicely put :-)

So Jesus, as the embodiment of God's goodness and love, is the perfect King and is simply attractive, even compelling, to follow. I can't imagine any ordinary human taking that place.

And I think we can get that far without even considering the more mystical element of Christianity, the question of how sin is removed from the world (the Catholic/Orthodox tradition focusses on that question, whereas the Protestant view focusses more how punishment is avoided).

So I suppose ultimately the question of 'why follow Jesus?' for the Christian is answered not only by 'he is is good' but also by the belief that Christianity is true. However, what we were dealing with here in this thread was more the question of those seeking to follow goodness but not knowing the person of Jesus, and it's that question that I think is answered by the biblical passages I quoted earlier.

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Fallen to Reason. A reply to you will take a little longer than I currently have, but I will get back to you on all those points/questions.

[Michael]

FallenToReason

Hmm.. would this be equivalent to, say, telling your kid about cleaning his room? So e.g. 'If I had not spoken to my kid, he would not have a messy room; but now he has no excuse for the mess in his room'.
If that's accurate, then I'd have to disagree about ignorance being an excuse. How was your kid supposed to know the very first time you had an expectation of him if you had never spoken to him about it? Ergo the non-belief problem.

I was arguing the opposite of what you think I was arguing; I was suggesting that Jesus does allow for ignorance to be an excuse on occasion. Because he said the Jews only sinned once they had been spoken to. That doesn't mean that it's not good to care for what is in our possession (we don't argue that we should never tell our child to tidy their room just so they can stay out of trouble with us) but we do allow for some ignorance before they know. And so many describe the path of our lives, and the path of humanity, in similar language as the progression from childhood to adulthood. When children are very young we give them no instruction as they are not yet up to it. Then for a while we give them instruction and rules. Then when they are older the rules hopefully disappear as they learn the deeper reasons for why we should care for those things under our stewardship (a room, a house, our local community environment, the Earth, following the tidying room example).

And so, if we follow the child example, the child can make choices as they grow older. They can choose to reject any notion of stewardship and care. They can say to their parents 'no, I don't wish to be part of the community that cares for our environment', for example. They have been shown why it may be considered important, but they can make their own choices. But they reap the consequences (chopping down all the truffula trees, for example, to make thneeds). And so ignorance, which was once an excuse, has moved at some time on to wilful rejection.

Hang on, so are you essentially saying that knowledge of Jesus/God isn't required to gain access to heaven?

I'm saying an explicit knowledge is not required, but that there is an implicit knowledge of the values of goodness (of God) in the conscience. So we can take this back to child in their room, that the child deep down, at least as they get a little older, should realise it would be wrong to destroy what has been given to them. But as parents we still nurture them and explain things in more detail, and help set up order in their lives and bring them up to care for the environment around them (starting with their room). So we don't set conscience against nurture; that would be to impose a dichotomy that is not present in Christian faith.

Interesting video, and I can see how the choices we make would have a big influence on where we end up eventually. But this doesn't detract from the point I'm making, which is that God revealing himself wouldn't negate our ability to then choose for ourselves if we wish to worship him or not.

Indeed, and I'm not saying it does negate our ability to make a choice. Indeed, on the contrary, it forces that choice which ultimately must be made (just as our fictional child must at some point choose to live in a house and community with order or choose to live somewhere outside of that order). The meeting with God precipitates a division of ways, a 'sifting' as the biblical texts refer to it, or what C.S.Lewis called the "Great Divorce" in his entertaining fictional story of heaven and hell.

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Perhaps this is what is meant by Jesus saying "he is the way", that it is his example that matters, not his personal kingship. Does Jesus' transcendence constitute the way we are to follow or does it mark him as a being above others to be worshiped? Which interpretation is more in keeping with the spirit of his teaching? Personally I could never accept that what Jesus valued above all else was compliance with the law and worship.

I would say that for the Christian the answer is "Both... And..." rather than "Either... Or..."

[FallentoReason]

FallenToReason

Hmm.. would this be equivalent to, say, telling your kid about cleaning his room? So e.g. 'If I had not spoken to my kid, he would not have a messy room; but now he has no excuse for the mess in his room'.
If that's accurate, then I'd have to disagree about ignorance being an excuse. How was your kid supposed to know the very first time you had an expectation of him if you had never spoken to him about it? Ergo the non-belief problem.

I was arguing the opposite of what you think I was arguing; I was suggesting that Jesus does allow for ignorance to be an excuse on occasion.

Oh okay, I see. I thought the opposite because 'excuse' has negative connotations.. but anyways..

Because he said the Jews only sinned once they had been spoken to. That doesn't mean that it's not good to care for what is in our possession (we don't argue that we should never tell our child to tidy their room just so they can stay out of trouble with us) but we do allow for some ignorance before they know. And so many describe the path of our lives, and the path of humanity, in similar language as the progression from childhood to adulthood. When children are very young we give them no instruction as they are not yet up to it. Then for a while we give them instruction and rules. Then when they are older the rules hopefully disappear as they learn the deeper reasons for why we should care for those things under our stewardship (a room, a house, our local community environment, the Earth, following the tidying room example).

And so, if we follow the child example, the child can make choices as they grow older. They can choose to reject any notion of stewardship and care. They can say to their parents 'no, I don't wish to be part of the community that cares for our environment', for example. They have been shown why it may be considered important, but they can make their own choices. But they reap the consequences (chopping down all the truffula trees, for example, to make thneeds). And so ignorance, which was once an excuse, has moved at some time on to wilful rejection.

Alright, well it seems that in a nutshell, what you're saying is that the responsibility of "acting correctly" slowly comes over time, as we grow older. But word it how you will - the problem still remains: it's not clear *at all* that such 'rules' (per se) are governing this universe; God needs to show himself.

Hang on, so are you essentially saying that knowledge of Jesus/God isn't required to gain access to heaven?

I'm saying an explicit knowledge is not required, but that there is an implicit knowledge of the values of goodness (of God) in the conscience. So we can take this back to child in their room, that the child deep down, at least as they get a little older, should realise it would be wrong to destroy what has been given to them. But as parents we still nurture them and explain things in more detail, and help set up order in their lives and bring them up to care for the environment around them (starting with their room). So we don't set conscience against nurture; that would be to impose a dichotomy that is not present in Christian faith.

Wouldn't implicit knowledge of God turn to explicit knowledge the moment nurturing begins? It would be like the child growing up without knowing his parents, yet somehow figures out what is expected of him. He hasn't met them, but the moment he does and nurturing begins, he explicitly knows what is expected of him. Thus, an atheist could come to act in accordance with God's will without ever knowing him, given that they all have values of goodness in their conscience. And thus, it seems like Jesus isn't required at all.

Interesting video, and I can see how the choices we make would have a big influence on where we end up eventually. But this doesn't detract from the point I'm making, which is that God revealing himself wouldn't negate our ability to then choose for ourselves if we wish to worship him or not.

Indeed, and I'm not saying it does negate our ability to make a choice. Indeed, on the contrary, it forces that choice which ultimately must be made (just as our fictional child must at some point choose to live in a house and community with order or choose to live somewhere outside of that order). The meeting with God precipitates a division of ways, a 'sifting' as the biblical texts refer to it, or what C.S.Lewis called the "Great Divorce" in his entertaining fictional story of heaven and hell.

Well, in conclusion, it seems like there's no reason for God *not* to show himself, as far as I can see. Point in favour of the problem of non-belief

[Michael]

Well, the thing that strikes me there, F2R, is that you're working from the basis of a hidden God, but that's quite contrary to the Christian faith in the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus.

But I do appreciate that God seems hidden to many people on an individual level. I think that is probably an even greater of an issue in a Western country that stresses the 'personal relationship to Jesus' as central to the Christian faith. To be honest I'm not entirely sure what that means to people. Personally I have a strong sense of the numinous, but I don't mind admitting it's terribly vague; I certainly don't get any clear specific messages from Jesus. So in that sense I don't think I do have a 'personal relationship with Jesus' in the American Evangelical sense of things. I pray to Jesus, but I don't hear anything specific back. I can't say I've ever been able to say "God told me to do such and such, or such and such was going to happen". I don't speak in tongues either (while I'm getting my almost total lack of evangelical credentials out on the table). Thankfully I'm not an American Evangelical so I'm not too worried. So while I experience great peace in prayer, and it gives me time, I feel, for the conscience to speak (in much the same way as it would for an atheist who spends time in quiet), if I want revelation of more specific guidance I'll read the bible and reflect on the lives of a people who together are in relationship with God. A key difference between Catholic and Protestant faiths here is we (Catholics) I think are much more focussed on the community ahead of the individual. I think that's largely the other way around in Protestantism (hence their 'personal relationship with Jesus'). So I learn from the community. We reflect on the lives of 'the saints' (today, for example, we remember Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life for others in a German concentration camp). God, then, reveals himself in the lives of others, in our conscience, and most especially in Jesus. My sense of the numinous, if anything, just prepares me to see outside of a more highly constrained naturalism.

Sorry, that's a bit rambling, but I think the revelation of God is a subtle question. At least it is for me. Others may report clearer personal revelation.

[Whateverist]

It's a nice ideal, but I tend to think we have a tendency of messing things up.

So... if you're a Christian you won't mess anything up?

If we're all human and we all have a tendency to mess up, then Christians, too, have this same tendency and it doesn't make a lick of difference if you're a good person trying to do good things and you don't follow Christianity or if you're a good person trying to do good things and you do.

Good point. There is no choice which is free from the possibility of human error, including a Christian's initial choice to rely on God to keep from messing up.