Most of the "hard questions about atheism" seem to be just "god of the gaps" stuff. My problem with that is that the underlying assumption behind "I don't know the answer to challenge X about the nature of existence", or "I don't have a plausible explanation for Bible verses Y" being one of "Therefore Christianity is true", because Christianity, for all its infighting, still requires quite specific beliefs in a particular anthropomorphic higher power, which seems to require a very specific and colossal suspension of disbelief.
What if we grant that there is some kind of magical entity that created the universe? It doesn't even being to follow that this entity gives the first hint of a flying fuck, if you'll excuse my French, about humans. A suggestion that we might be like ants to such a being would be overstating the case - people notice ants. If we grant "there is a god" as a premise, I don't see that as raising the odds of there being anything in Christianity much beyond the assumption of no god. To get to Christianity from there requires a whole lot of working, which strangely never gets to be shown. It still ultimately just makes Bibles bits of paper, and it's hubris to assume that the universe and its hypothetical creator has any capacity to care about what we think.
ETA: The short version of that might be summed up as, "No I don't want to hear about Jehova. Get the hell off my porch!"
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-02-08 03:19 am (UTC)What if we grant that there is some kind of magical entity that created the universe? It doesn't even being to follow that this entity gives the first hint of a flying fuck, if you'll excuse my French, about humans. A suggestion that we might be like ants to such a being would be overstating the case - people notice ants. If we grant "there is a god" as a premise, I don't see that as raising the odds of there being anything in Christianity much beyond the assumption of no god. To get to Christianity from there requires a whole lot of working, which strangely never gets to be shown. It still ultimately just makes Bibles bits of paper, and it's hubris to assume that the universe and its hypothetical creator has any capacity to care about what we think.
ETA: The short version of that might be summed up as, "No I don't want to hear about Jehova. Get the hell off my porch!"