Common Agnostic and Atheist Objection to the Bible

[RickD]

Butterfly wrote:
Would any loving parent withhold from their child medicine that would heal them? Of course not!

Hi Rose. If you would just let me run something by you that came to my mind.
Here's a hypothetical story of 2 girls, let's say they're both 9 years old. One girl lives in America, in a typical upper middle class Christian family. She has two loving parents, many friends, and a very happy childhood. This girl contracts a disease that if not treated, will put her to sleep, and she will die. There is medicine that will cure this disease, and her mother has access to this medicine. Would this loving parent withhold medicine that would heal her? The obvious answer is no.

The second girl lives on the other side of the globe, in a country that is under religious rule. The religion is one which women are not just less than men, but men can do anything they desire to their wives and daughters. And the women have no power to stop these men from doing anything the men's wicked heart desires. So, this second girl is brought up in a home where her father not only rapes her, but dear old dad brings his friends over and allows them to rape her every weekend. And, the girls loving mother has no way to stop these men from these atrocities. Now, this second girl contracts the same disease, as the first girl. Without the girls father knowing, The loving mother has a relative who has given the mother the same medicine that would heal her daughter from this sickness. Now, would this mother, who has seen first hand what the daughter has gone through, and will continue to go through, would this loving parent withhold medicine that would heal her of the sickness, only to have her daughter go through living hell?

For the next thing that came to mind, I'm going to have to ask you to assume God exists, and that He is omniscient. Assume that God knows the future, and He knows every possible thing that would happen, and every choice that people would actually make. There's a young girl who is sick. Her family prays for her healing, but she dies. Some family members curse God, and wonder how a loving God would allow such a precious child to die, when He has the power to heal her. Other family members grieve, and don't understand how she could die, but they trust that God knows everything, and so on. Now, since the God we are assuming exists knows everything that would have happened to this girl throughout her entire life, how can we say that by allowing this young girl to die so young, God hasn't saved her from a life of misery and pain far greater than the death she died? And furthermore, since this is my hypothetical story, and my God for this story, what if God knows that this girl would grow up to hate God, refuse to believe in Jesus Christ, die in her sins, and of her own free will, choose eternal separation from God over an everlasting relationship with Him in heaven? Then, wouldn't we have to say that this God really does love this girl with an eternal love that we really can't understand?

[Butterfly]

I know that the needless suffering I see around me is not proof that God doesn't exist, and that is why I didn't loose my faith when my parents weren't healed. It wasn't until I was able to see the biased nature of the Bible God that my faith began to erode. When I asked the tough question: How can a just god be biased? And know that to be biased implies injustice which is not perfect...

Everyone has to die, your parents, mine, and us when our bodies fall away, there is no avoiding that. There is no ultimate healing of the body. God can not be biased, its not like he is going to have a winning side on election day. Injustice is a very big concept, death can not be seen as injustice, not always.

Hi Neo-x,

I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression that I equated my parents not getting healed with the biased nature of God. That was not the case. The Bible itself is what presents God in a biased manner, it is filled with inequality and discrimination based solely on gender that is sanctioned and ordained by its author. This is what I meant when I said a just god cannot be biased because it implies injustice.
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[Butterfly]

Butterfly wrote:
Would any loving parent withhold from their child medicine that would heal them? Of course not!

Hi Rose. If you would just let me run something by you that came to my mind.
Here's a hypothetical story of 2 girls, let's say they're both 9 years old. One girl lives in America, in a typical upper middle class Christian family. She has two loving parents, many friends, and a very happy childhood. This girl contracts a disease that if not treated, will put her to sleep, and she will die. There is medicine that will cure this disease, and her mother has access to this medicine. Would this loving parent withhold medicine that would heal her? The obvious answer is no.

The second girl lives on the other side of the globe, in a country that is under religious rule. The religion is one which women are not just less than men, but men can do anything they desire to their wives and daughters. And the women have no power to stop these men from doing anything the men's wicked heart desires. So, this second girl is brought up in a home where her father not only rapes her, but dear old dad brings his friends over and allows them to rape her every weekend. And, the girls loving mother has no way to stop these men from these atrocities. Now, this second girl contracts the same disease, as the first girl. Without the girls father knowing, The loving mother has a relative who has given the mother the same medicine that would heal her daughter from this sickness. Now, would this mother, who has seen first hand what the daughter has gone through, and will continue to go through, would this loving parent withhold medicine that would heal her of the sickness, only to have her daughter go through living hell?

If I was that mother, the reason I would not withhold the medicine from my daughter is that I would be clinging to the hope that somehow we could escape from that situation. For me, where there is life there is hope.

For the next thing that came to mind, I'm going to have to ask you to assume God exists, and that He is omniscient. Assume that God knows the future, and He knows every possible thing that would happen, and every choice that people would actually make. There's a young girl who is sick. Her family prays for her healing, but she dies. Some family members curse God, and wonder how a loving God would allow such a precious child to die, when He has the power to heal her. Other family members grieve, and don't understand how she could die, but they trust that God knows everything, and so on. Now, since the God we are assuming exists knows everything that would have happened to this girl throughout her entire life, how can we say that by allowing this young girl to die so young, God hasn't saved her from a life of misery and pain far greater than the death she died? And furthermore, since this is my hypothetical story, and my God for this story, what if God knows that this girl would grow up to hate God, refuse to believe in Jesus Christ, die in her sins, and of her own free will, choose eternal separation from God over an everlasting relationship with Him in heaven? Then, wouldn't we have to say that this God really does love this girl with an eternal love that we really can't understand?

The problem with that hypothetical story is that we know in real life, there are many, many times when young people who are solid Christians pray to be healed and it never happens.
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[B. W.]

I too lost my father to cancer many years ago. He was deeply involved in the branch of Christianity that believed in positive confessions and claiming ones healing by standing on verses like Isa. 53:5 "by his stripes we are healed"...needless to say it didn't work. My mother was also taken by an illness a number of years later that had no cure, and received many prayers for her healing...all for naught. At the time I too resigned myself to the fact that their physical healing was not in Gods plan, even though I believed that it was totally within his power to heal them.

God not being subject to our "whims" has nothing to do with whether or not our sincere prayers for healing should not be answered. Would any loving parent withhold from their child medicine that would heal them? Of course not! So why should God? Especially when we read in the Bible how God desires for us to make our request known to him, and that he will answer our prayers. The truth of the matter is that as a general rule God does not answer prayer, and when people claim he does it is usually for minor requests like finding a lost set of keys.

I know that the needless suffering I see around me is not proof that God doesn't exist, and that is why I didn't loose my faith when my parents weren't healed. It wasn't until I was able to see the biased nature of the Bible God that my faith began to erode. When I asked the tough question: How can a just god be biased? And know that to be biased implies injustice which is not perfect...

Were your parents Jehovah Witnesses or Christian Scientist or Word of Faith?
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[Butterfly]

Were your parents Jehovah Witnesses or Christian Scientist or Word of Faith?
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I became a Christian in my twenties, my parents also became Christians at that time. Not long after becoming Christians we got into the Word of Faith movement. It was my dad who got deeply involved in the "standing on faith" and "confessing the word" part of it, and remained there until his death. I migrated out of the Word of Faith movement and settled into a more traditional form of Christianity.

I also dabbled in Christian Science for a few years before becoming a Christian, and even though I was not raised in a Christian home I did have a very strong belief in a creator god from a very young age (like maybe 4).
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[1stjohn0666]

An agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in the existence of a deity. An atheist disbelieves altogether.

[RickD]

Butterfly, you wrote:

Would any loving parent withhold from their child medicine that would heal them? Of course not!

to make your point that since God has the power to heal and He doesn't, then He's immoral.

With my story of the two 9 year old girls, I was trying to show you that while you and I might disagree with the choice of the second mother to withhold medicine, she had a perfectly rational, and loving reason to withhold the medicine. My point was that I can't see how you or I, sitting here in modern day US, can judge that mother's decision. We don't live there, and can't have all the details of her decision. We don't know the whole story. The same point goes for why God doesn't physically heal everyone who asks Him for healing. We aren't God, and we don't know the whole story. Can't you just see that there's a chance that God knows something that we don't know?

RickD wrote:For the next thing that came to mind, I'm going to have to ask you to assume God exists, and that He is omniscient. Assume that God knows the future, and He knows every possible thing that would happen, and every choice that people would actually make. There's a young girl who is sick. Her family prays for her healing, but she dies. Some family members curse God, and wonder how a loving God would allow such a precious child to die, when He has the power to heal her. Other family members grieve, and don't understand how she could die, but they trust that God knows everything, and so on. Now, since the God we are assuming exists knows everything that would have happened to this girl throughout her entire life, how can we say that by allowing this young girl to die so young, God hasn't saved her from a life of misery and pain far greater than the death she died? And furthermore, since this is my hypothetical story, and my God for this story, what if God knows that this girl would grow up to hate God, refuse to believe in Jesus Christ, die in her sins, and of her own free will, choose eternal separation from God over an everlasting relationship with Him in heaven? Then, wouldn't we have to say that this God really does love this girl with an eternal love that we really can't understand?


Butterfly wrote:
The problem with that hypothetical story is that we know in real life, there are many, many times when young people who are solid Christians pray to be healed and it never happens.

Butterfly, this is trying to make the same point. Can't you admit that there's a chance, however small, that God knows something that we just can't understand because we just don't know what God knows??

[Butterfly]

Butterfly, this is trying to make the same point. Can't you admit that there's a chance, however small, that God knows something that we just can't understand because we just don't know what God knows??

When I believed in God of course I held to the idea that there were many, many things that God knew that I was ignorant of.
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[RickD]

Butterfly, this is trying to make the same point. Can't you admit that there's a chance, however small, that God knows something that we just can't understand because we just don't know what God knows??

When I believed in God of course I held to the idea that there were many, many things that God knew that I was ignorant of.
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Ok, but I asked you, for the sake of my story, to assume God exists. So assuming God exists, is it possible that we don't know why God doesn't answer some prayers for physical healing?

[Butterfly]

Butterfly, this is trying to make the same point. Can't you admit that there's a chance, however small, that God knows something that we just can't understand because we just don't know what God knows??

When I believed in God of course I held to the idea that there were many, many things that God knew that I was ignorant of.
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Ok, but I asked you, for the sake of my story, to assume God exists. So assuming God exists, is it possible that we don't know why God doesn't answer some prayers for physical healing?

Okay, for the sake of your story and assuming God exists I would say it is totally possible that we don't know why God doesn't answer prayer. I thought I already made that clear in my reference to my father, and mother not getting healed when I was a Christian.
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[RickD]

Butterfly wrote:
Okay, for the sake of your story and assuming God exists I would say it is totally possible that we don't know why God doesn't answer prayer.

Thank you.

[B. W.]

Were your parents Jehovah Witnesses or Christian Scientist or Word of Faith?

I became a Christian in my twenties, my parents also became Christians at that time. Not long after becoming Christians we got into the Word of Faith movement. It was my dad who got deeply involved in the "standing on faith" and "confessing the word" part of it, and remained there until his death. I migrated out of the Word of Faith movement and settled into a more traditional form of Christianity.

I also dabbled in Christian Science for a few years before becoming a Christian, and even though I was not raised in a Christian home I did have a very strong belief in a creator god from a very young age (like maybe 4)-

To help understand a bit more. What years were you all involved in the Word of Faith movement 1970s - 1980s- 1990s, 2000, 2010? This is important because it identifies the trends of the movement. And then what traditional form of Christianity was it you settled in was it - Reformed, Baptist, Methodist, Anabaptist, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, etc - what was it? All this will help see where you are coming from.
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[Butterfly]

Were your parents Jehovah Witnesses or Christian Scientist or Word of Faith?

I became a Christian in my twenties, my parents also became Christians at that time. Not long after becoming Christians we got into the Word of Faith movement. It was my dad who got deeply involved in the "standing on faith" and "confessing the word" part of it, and remained there until his death. I migrated out of the Word of Faith movement and settled into a more traditional form of Christianity.

I also dabbled in Christian Science for a few years before becoming a Christian, and even though I was not raised in a Christian home I did have a very strong belief in a creator god from a very young age (like maybe 4)-

To help understand a bit more. What years were you all involved in the Word of Faith movement 1970s - 1980s- 1990s, 2000, 2010? This is important because it identifies the trends of the movement. And then what traditional form of Christianity was it you settled in was it - Reformed, Baptist, Methodist, Anabaptist, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, etc - what was it? All this will help see where you are coming from.
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I was in the Word of Faith movement from the mid to late 80's...through most of the 90's I was in and out of many different churches trying to find one that I could call home, all the while doing a lot of home Bible studies with Christian friends. From the late 90's till about 2008 my husband and I settled into a Covenant church where we were involved in the music and youth ministries and Bible studies.
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[B. W.]

I was in the Word of Faith movement from the mid to late 80's...through most of the 90's I was in and out of many different churches trying to find one that I could call home, all the while doing a lot of home Bible studies with Christian friends. From the late 90's till about 2008 my husband and I settled into a Covenant church where we were involved in the music and youth ministries and Bible studies.

Were those the years your parents were in the WoF movement? A lot of people drifted from WoF to the Covenant model group during the time periods you cited as well drifted into very legalistic Messianic (goyum) based groups. What years were you in Christian Science group as you mentioned you were involved before the Word of Faith (WoF)

Next, there are many different Covenant type Church groups with many different focus's - was the one you were involved with a Shepherding/Discipleship model or where there was a strong control - submission to authority and mandatory accountability model ie legalism model. For those reading this: Not all Covenant type Church groups now use these models but in the past it was an accepted standard for most that bore the name (Covenant). This model was directed primarily at any leadership role (leadership positions got the worst end of it) and due to this many leadership persons left the Covenant groups - broken and bitter people. It filtered down to the members in slower degrees. Thankfully this model is disappearing by God's unseen hand of correction, Amen

So Butterfly, is Spock your Husband? And were both of you in this type of Covenant Model group?
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[Butterfly]

I was in the Word of Faith movement from the mid to late 80's...through most of the 90's I was in and out of many different churches trying to find one that I could call home, all the while doing a lot of home Bible studies with Christian friends. From the late 90's till about 2008 my husband and I settled into a Covenant church where we were involved in the music and youth ministries and Bible studies.

Were those the years your parents were in the WoF movement? A lot of people drifted from WoF to the Covenant model group during the time periods you cited as well drifted into very legalistic Messianic (goyum) based groups. What years were you in Christian Science group as you mentioned you were involved before the Word of Faith (WoF)

Yes, my parents were in WoF the same years as I was, though they remained in it after I migrated out because of its legalism. In the late 80's I was very interested in Messianic ministries like Zola Levitt, I even learned how to read and write Hebrew, and to play Messianic songs from groups like Lamb.
I was involved in Christian Science for a few years in the late 70's with my mom.

Next, there are many different Covenant type Church groups with many different focus's - was the one you were involved with a Shepherding/Discipleship model or where there was a strong control - submission to authority and mandatory accountability model ie legalism model. For those reading this: Not all Covenant type Church groups now use these models but in the past it was an accepted standard for most that bore the name (Covenant). This model was directed primarily at any leadership role (leadership positions got the worst end of it) and due to this many leadership persons left the Covenant groups - broken and bitter people. It filtered down to the members in slower degrees. Thankfully this model is disappearing by God's unseen hand of correction, Amen

So Butterfly, is Spock your Husband? And were both of you in this type of Covenant Model group?
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The Covenant church we were involved in was relatively liberal, but there was continual turnover in the leadership positions, which ultimately led to us leaving a couple of years before we left Christianity, though that wasn't the reason.

Anyone who has read my blog, and visited Spock's (Richards) blog and website, knows that we are husband and wife. I was involved in the Covenant church a few years before Richard and I were married, then he joined afterwards.
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