Saturday, December 29, 2007

Sufficiently Evident?

It's amazing the drivel you find in apologetic writing. Take, for example, this recent piece by Michael Coren.

While simply dismissing recent atheist books by saying, "Nothing new here. Nothing clever or challenging, either," Coren does make some assertions (without much logical support) to address a few issues, like the hidden-ness of God.

If God were good, He would make Himself obvious. Not really. God makes himself
just sufficiently evident to allow us freedom.


Not true, however, even on the most cursory analysis. By applying the same time of reasoning we typically use to understand the universe--the scientific method of observation, theory, and testing--the existence of God fails time and time again to be proven. (Of course, it is a logical fallacy to rejoice in the fact that God's existence has not been dis-proven.) How, then, does this meet the criterion of "sufficiently evident"?

Is God's message, "In all other areas, apply reason, but regarding my existence, use the method of pure faith. Of course, this will allow all manner of charlatans, sociopaths, and psychopaths to claim that they are speaking on my behalf, and you have no method of falsifying those claims, but remember: I love you!"

"And, by the way, if your reason leads you to believe that the world's affairs would best be settled by humans, within a secular system that disallows anyone from invoking my name to support their arguments, I'm going to punish you for eternity. But don't forget the love!"
He's the great lover, not the satanic rapist. He desperately wants us to love
Him and return to Him, but we have to make that decision ourselves.

He sounds a lot more like a forlorn, desperate stalker, who will kill you if you don't "love" him. This whole line of "reasoning" merely highlights that religion is an utterly perfect scam. If you're espousing a system of belief that doesn't hold up to rational inquiry or scientific testing, how can you squelch disbelief? Easy: make disbelief the very worst sin, make belief the only requirement, and threaten infidels with eternal misery. Genius!

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