[split] Are Questions About God Important?

[h4ym4n]

Hi Boru,

Sorry for the delay. Thanks for playing along and thinking this through.

But if our values come from Christian history (they don’t, but I’ll play along), then it absolutely doesn’t matter if God exists, from a moral/ethical standpoint.

Interesting point.

(First a small flight of fancy. It makes me think of a time travel paradox situation. (Bodies didn’t address theirs. Travelers did.) If our values come from Christian history, then it doesn’t matter if God exists or not. We have those values regardless. But would we have Christian history if God didn’t exist? Dammit Boru! I’m a statistician, not a philosopher. :-)

I am contending that it is our Christian history that gives us our values. And, obviously to my thinking, we have that history because God exists.

You’re point is that if we have the Christian virtues, then we don’t need God to exist anymore, assuming that he ever did. And I would say yes. Yes we do.

Consider, in the last 100 to 200 years, and the last 60 in particular, we have moved from a Christian society to a post-christian society. The 19th-century poet Matthew Arnold once spoke of the “long, withdrawing roar” of the “Sea of Faith,” leaving us with “neither joy, nor love, nor light.”

Those values have still been with us but, as I see it, are going away, getting replaced by greater selfishness, antagonism, etc. The world is not getting better without that Christian worldview.

If God didn’t exist, then even though, somehow, the Christian worldview lasted that long anyway, it will soon die out. Without the Christian worldview, what is there to get us back on track? And not only without that worldview, but replaced by many, many worldviews, almost to the point where everyone has their own unique worldview. It seems to me that it will be impossible to keep those virtues. Who will define what is inhumane, when everyone has a different idea of what humane is? How will we have compassion for victims when everyone is a victim? How can we have community and brotherhood, when our culture fights for radical individualism? I don’t know.

On the other hand, if God does exist, then (try not to do a spit-take here) His plan of salvation is constantly at work. He is letting us wallow in our own sinfulness, like He did with the Israelites in the OT. We Christians have to recognize that we have lost our moral vision. You all say this all the time: When you see how Christians act, why would you want to be Christian?

If Christians can stop being buttheads (can I say that here?) and start being Christ-like, then we can again be a light to the world. Now back to the point, we could not do that on our own. On our own, we will always be buttheads, where eventually, we’ll be going to hell in a bucket, and not even enjoying the ride. As evidence of this I show you the last 200, 100, 60 years.

But because God exists, He can guide us back to those virtues, (and I say He is).

For today, no, it may not matter whether God exists as long as the people around you have that worldview. But tomorrow they may not, and then it matters.

If Christians can stop being buttheads (can I say that here?) and start being Christ-like, then we can again be a light to the world

When your gang leader, Yahweh, stops creating buttheads we will all be better off


@SimpleCaveman

Is yahweh a Christian?