Although I am a Christian (at least I think I am... some might disagree), religion in the broad sense has become something of a paradox to me. For one, it appears to suffer from a double standard. Another way of putting this is that religion often falls victim to the fallacy of special pleading. It is perhaps the only class of beliefs that makes astounding truth claims, yet refuses the accountability of falsification.
The religious adherent is more than happy to take advantage of this or that apologetic, but in the midst of scrutiny and criticism promptly retreats to his/her impervious fortress of faith. This suggests to me that most religious adherents are not concerned with truth, despite claims to the contrary, but instead are slaves to their respective confirmation biases.
This leads me to the crux of my complaint: Everyone seems to have THE truth. In fact, several religions advance what might be deemed serious truth claims. Such a claim carries significant consequences for an individual such that if true, said person cannot "afford" to be wrong with respect to the truth claim.
For instance, let us consider Christianity, since it is the faith of which I am most familiar. The Christian worldview includes the following propositions:
(i) God* exists (God* is a very specific definition that includes being a person and being perfect)
(ii) There exist actual (quasi-physical) "places" called Heaven and Hell.
(a) Heaven is a "place" of unimaginable, eternal bliss.
(b) Hell is a "place" of unimaginable, eternal anguish and torment.
(iii) There is a set of conditions S such that if person X satisfies S, then X will go to Heaven and if person X fails to satisfy S, then X will go to Hell.
To a significant degree (ii) and (iii) depend on the truth of (i), however, it is questionable whether (i) implies (ii) and (iii). Conversely, it seems reasonable to suggest that (ii) and (iii) imply (i). And it is (ii) and (iii) that are superb examples of serious truth claims such that person X cannot afford to go wrong with respect to (iii), which entails (ii).
Now, the God of Christendom is essentially Anselm's greatest possible being who most notably, perhaps, possesses the properties/qualities of omnibenevolence and love. Assuming (i), (ii) and (iii), it would stand to reason that God would ensure that (i), (ii) and (iii) are unequivocally clear and undeniable. This is supported by notable scripture, namely:
John 3:16 and 2 Peter 3:9
Furthermore, Romans 1:20 seems to indicate that this is indeed the case. Men are supposedly without excuse with respect to (i), but as suggested above, this does not necessarily lead one to accept (iii), which is the very proposition with respect to which X cannot afford to go wrong. Nevertheless, let us concede the point to Paul and see where that leads (later we will examine Paul's claim in more detail).
Given (i), the general consensus of Christendom (save various minority sects) is that God loves X and according to the aforementioned verses, (a) offers eternal life (i.e. Heaven) to X (John 3:16) and (b) desires X to obtain said eternal life or Heaven (2 Peter 3:9). A further proposition that is commonly asserted is:
(iv) God has endowed humans with free-will.
and is usually conjoined with:
(v) God does not and will not override any individual's free-will.
This implies that X is responsible for satisfying S in order to obtain the Heaven that God desires for him/her. This does not preclude, however, God acting in X's favor so that X is more likely to satisfy S than not. In fact, this would be the loving thing to do. In other words, if I know that the well being of my son critically depends on certain key information, my love for him will compel me to make that information known in the most straightforward and obvious way! And because humans are very much driven by self-preservation and personal well-being, it seems reasonable that God could nearly guarantee that the majority of individuals satisfy S without having to violate their freedom.
The question, though, is whether or not reality reflects what a reasonable person might expect if, what I will call, the Christian's theological set T holds. To us humans, although we are conceding to (i), it is not at all obvious that (ii) and (iii) are true, at least, based on (i). But even by their very nature, (ii) and (iii) are very specific propositions not obvious to physical beings in a physical reality. Thus, X may not (in fact, probably will not) come to (ii) or (iii) independently and, further still, X may not ever be introduced to (ii) and (iii) (the classic remote/isolation problem). It would seem, then, that given the nature of the propositions in question, God would make their truth overtly obvious to human beings so as to guarantee maximal realization of "His" suggested will (2 Peter 3:9).
Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case, for even if X is fortunate enough to know about (ii) and (iii), their respective truth values are by no means clear. For if Heaven and Hell do exist, we humans have no means of verifying such existence, since allegedly Heaven and Hell are located in some other dimension or are states of being. Conveniently (or rather inconveniently), X can only "physically" verify the reality of (ii) upon death, which, as it so happens, is too late to form an opinion about the matter. This implies that X's fate will be Hell, since going wrong with respect to (ii) entails going wrong with respect to (iii). So, according to Christianity, (ii) is not subject to empirical verification, which obscures the truth of (iii) thereby increasing the odds that more people will go wrong with respect to (iii).
But perhaps we are too hasty. Perhaps empirical verification is not necessary. After all, God could simply inform humans about the consequences of going wrong with respect to (iii) in an undeniable manner so as to guarantee the maximal realization of "His" will. This is exactly what Christianity claims God has done in the form of the Bible and the events described therein. But is this what we would expect given our assumptions?
First, although the Bible speaks of origins and man's early history (in Genesis), it is so radically different from what we observe scientifically that there is an instant division amongst Christians about how to understand the book of Genesis. Some insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Genesis provides a literal account of creation. Others, seeking to reconcile belief with science, suggest that Genesis is a mythopoetic writing, not meant to be read literally. Admittedly, though, this weakens the authoritative status of the Bible, since it is, so far, indistinguishable from a typical work of humans given the context and time.
Second, the Bible records that God selected a single individual to reveal "Himself" to (Abraham) for the purpose of creating a "chosen people". To my mind, this seems rather curious, since a significant amount of people are being deprived of the fact that they are "playing for the wrong team". The natural question, then, is would not God reveal "Himself" to everyone so as to avoid any confusion? Why have one chosen people that form a small subset of the entire population rather than choosing everyone?
At least part of the Christian response is that God was selecting a lineage from which the messiah would be produced. The task, if you will, of the messiah was to bring about reconciliation between God and humanity by dieing in their stead. But unless such a sacrifice were retroactive, it appears that a good majority of the human population over a span of thousands of years has ended up in Hell. To overcome this problem, one might give recourse to obscure verses in Peter's epistles about Jesus preaching to the captives, but any argument based on such verses is immediately "infected" by their inherently vague meaning.
But I am getting off topic. The question is whether or not the Bible acts as a good medium of communication from God to man. More and more I cannot help but suspect that it is not. The reason for this suspicion is that it is bound up in the uncertainties of history. Our "durational" distance from the events makes it nearly impossible to verify and given that our current world seems to operate very differently from the "biblical age", it would seem rather natural to feel inclined to sweep such ideas away with all the other superstitions we disregard from the same times and cultures. And if this is true, then would it not seem reasonable for God to continue interacting with humans (from every part of the world) in an unambiguous way? Many rightly point out, though, that we are finite beings and so cannot understand everything or know everything and so it is no surprise that God seems mysterious to us. But is this a good approach? I find that it makes matters worse. For, if we are so fragile, then it seems that God (in "His" love) has an even greater responsibility to make "His" truth unambiguously clear and accessible to the lot of "His" creation. After all, why let our relative stupidity consign our eternal souls to Hell? And if God is content to remain hidden to a substantial degree, why not make us smarter in order that we might not get side tracked by competing theories that seem reasonable, but which ultimately lead us to Hell?...... To be continued.
