God's Not Dead

I appreciate the existence of scripture. But I do not believe the written word of any religion (Bible, Torah, Quran, etc.) provides evidence supporting the existence of a living God. It provides evidence of an ongoing attempt to set down a series of rules for life that are codified in a written book, which is given the aegis of "Holy authority" so that people will follow these rules. The whole process of how the Bible got bound together argues against it having any specific spiritual authority. It appears to me that a group of people got together, called themselves the Council of Nichea and voted on which books would go and which wouldn"t. Now you can easily argue that they were guided by God, but that"s supposition and faith, not evidence. When we want evidence, we do look toward science and the scientific process. And yes, it tackles incredibly complex, deep subjects. People who devote their lives to science pretty much live lives of skeptics and consider no subject sacrosanct. As you point out, science may not be able to answer every question. But also keep in mind the context of what Noah Chomsky was talking about when he made the quoted statement and he"s talking about human affairs. Fair enough. But just science may not provide an answer to morality and justice does not mean that one of the Gods who wrote one of the holy books floating around the world does have the answer. If you go through the Bible from the Old Testament to the New Testament, it is obvious that morality as stated in the Bible has evolved over time. We no longer permit men to sell their daughters into slavery; I doubt any present day minister is going to sacrifice his son to God; and unlike during the pre-Civil War South we aren"t preaching the Biblical justification for slavery any longer. In fact, even if science or philosophy cannot lay out a perfect set of ethical and moral rules, it doesn"t mean that God exists. It may simply mean that we live in a wild and woolly world where we DNA constructs have to work it out for ourselves as best as we can. And sometimes, the set of rules we come up with is going to vary from the set of rules another group comes up with. In short, why must there be an absolute in terms of morality? Perhaps we live in a world where morality is relative. I like that world to be honest. If ethical morality was fixed in the Bible, I"d always be subject to my father or husband and I would have to be silent if I were to enter a church. You argue that evil exists plain and simple. Is that a point in favor of the existence of God? I would say no. And if evil is growing more prevalent in society, because knowledge of God is fading, why does God permit it to fade? Is salvation dependent on the random time when a person happens to be born? Did God favor people born in the 1950s more than those born today, so he arranged it so people believed in him more then than now? Or is this simply the ebb and flow of society over time? And if you say that if evil is simply a sort of random trial we have to go through, is God like a scientist in a lab sending rats down a shoot into a maze where the rats have to learn to navigate the maze to be saved. But a random segments of the rats are sent into an offshoot to be shredded and chopped without ever being given a chance to navigate the maze? What is the point in such an illogical, random experiment? Even if I concede that putting rats through a maze is somehow moral and just, how can it be moral or just that a huge chunk of the rats are siphoned off through murder and abortion without ever being given a chance to find God (or the exit from the maze)? If God gives us free will, then how can it be just for him to have hardened Pharaoh"s heart without letting him decide for himself whether to believe or not? I am sorry, but neither the Bible nor the existence of God or its set of codified rules appear to me to constitute evidence of his existence or living status. You also claim that Satan has free will. But from my recollection of the Bible, he seemed to snap to whenever God or Jesus uttered a command, e.g., (Matt. 4:10 and 16:23, Mark 8:33, Luke 4:8). In any event, I am not buying the argument that the random, chaotic nature of misfortune and evil in the world constitutes evidence that God exists or is alive. And I don"t certainly do not understand the argument that a God is going to give one person 80 years to come to faith who grows up in the Church and has studied God all his life, yet cut off someone else at age 14 in some horrible African civil war and only briefly heard of God from foreign missionaries and is too busy fighting to stay alive to think about it. If that"s the kind of morality I"m supposed to cling to, I"m going to back away. Some eighty year old man dies in bed after a life of sin, but confesses at the last moment and he gets a gold key to Heaven"s gate while a 14 year old dies at the hand of an African Warlord having heard of God only briefly from some foreigner and he"s going to spend eternity in a fiery damnation? Christianity may have had some value. It may have some future value. But it"s not a good argument for the existence of God. Actually, the fact that God used to take an active role in the affairs of man, but then suddenly went silent after the death of Jesus is an argument for the proposition that God (if he once was alive) is now dead. I appreciate the points you"ve made and tried to answer them as best as I could. I look forward to continuing our debate.