“I believe in honesty. I believe that a Church has no right to teach what it does not know. I believe that a clean life and a tender heart are worth more to this world than all the faith and all the gods of Time. I believe that this world needs all our best efforts and earnest endeavors twenty-four hours every day....I believe that fear of a god cripples men’s intellects more than any other influence. I believe that Humanity needs and should have all our time, efforts, love, worship, and tenderness. I believe that one world is all we can deal with at a time. I believe that, if there is a future life, the best possible preparation for it is to do the very best we can here and now. I believe that love for our fellow-men is infinitely nobler, better, and more necessary than love for God. I believe that men, women, and children need our best thoughts, our tenderest consideration, and our earnest sympathy.…I believe that it is better to build one happy home here than to invest in a thousand churches which deal with a hereafter.”
~ Helen H. Gardner, Men, Women, And Gods, 1885
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If you believe that God is unjust, how do you deal with the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection, which depends on death, destruction and violence of the strong against the weak – these things are all perfectly natural. On what basis do you judge the natural world to be horribly wrong, unfair and unjust? If you are sure that this natural world is unjust and filled with evil, you’re assuming the reality of some extra-natural (or supernatural) standard by which to make your judgment. Alvin Plantinga said this: “Could there really be any such thing as horrifying wickedness (if there were no God and we just evolved)? I don’t see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live…A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort…and thus no way to say there is such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. Accordingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (…and not just an illusion of some sort), they you have a powerful argument for the reality of God.
Nature is not "unjust”. It is neither moral nor immoral but amoral. Only humans bring thoughts of morality into nature. The fact that nature is so brutal is evidence of either:
no creator (evolution)
a wicked creator
a creator that might be good but somehow had his plan messed up (christian idea of the fall)
Our sense of morality evolved. We are social animals that rely on each other unlike other animals that evolved sharp teeth, claws, speed, flight etc. Our sense of empathy evolved so that we could survive. And that sense of empathy is ever evolving, ever widening. Think of the progress made in our empathy toward slavery, not long ago it was considered a husband’s right to be at his wife and children, Think about a woman’s right to own property and vote, children working in factories. This compassion is not reliant on a god telling us how to behave. Please! Give yourself a little more credit than that!
Do you really think if you became an atheist you would love your wife and children less?
A man very close to me in my past was a christian who credited God/Jesus with saving him from becoming a pedophile. He prayed about it, stayed faithful to his wife, etc. HOWEVER. He molested his children through leering looks; through inappropriate touch; etc. He didn't actually rape a child, but it was obvious the attraction was there. Neighborhood children were a little "creeped out" by him.
This is how I see it. If this man had not been a christian, he would probably have gone to therapy (since he was so worried that he not act upon his tendencies). He may have gotten to the root of his problem; maybe remembered how he himself was molested as a child, and would have gotten REAL help.
Instead, he credited christianity with rescuing him when in fact it PREVENTED him from receiving substantive help for his problem.
I find it so sad when we seem to have no idea how to reach peak mental, physical, and spiritual wellness. We don't want to do the hard work of facing ourselves and our issues, which often means facing a painful past and learning how to transform and recreate our lives. We want to pray away the pain, or ask god to to chase the devil away, or whatever. This is only a means of covering up the problem; it does NOT get to the real root of problems. You would think that a wise and almight god would have known that and mentioned something about it in the bible. Since it's not there, we must use our own judgment. However, too often christianity is used as a block from becoming healthy and happy people.
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