Neverfox

No rulers / aggression / exclusion / subordination / deprivation; therefore be the most social and sociable being.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

Yes, and?

The objection assumes that freedom consists in asserting one’s own will against every other will. Why should it?

For Christianity, the highest use of freedom is not self-assertion but participation in the Good. “Let your will be done” is not the renunciation of freedom. It is an act of freedom.

After all, when someone freely chooses truth over falsehood, or love over cruelty, we do not say they have become less free because their will has become aligned with something greater than themselves. We say they have chosen well.

The Christian claim is that God is not merely another agent competing with our desires. God is the transcendent source of being, truth, goodness, and beauty. To will the Good and to will God are therefore not two different acts. They are the same movement understood from different angles.

So the prayer is not, “Override my freedom.” It is, “May my freedom cease to be a rebellion against its own deepest end.”

[Neverfox @neverfox]

Consistently described by whom? The Qur’an is one book produced within a relatively narrow historical horizon. The Bible is a library of texts spanning centuries. Of course the latter contains a greater diversity of voices, images, and theological reflections. That is not a defect. It is what one would expect of a people wrestling with the mystery of God across a long history.

But the deeper issue is that Christianity does not identify God with the surface content of every biblical depiction. Christ is not merely one more character added to an already completed picture of God. He is the decisive disclosure of who God is.

Which means the Christian is under no obligation to place every portrayal of divine violence on exactly the same plane as the revelation of God in Christ. Quite the contrary. The New Testament itself repeatedly rereads and reinterprets Israel’s scriptures in light of Christ.

And as for the alleged contrast, one should be careful. If by “justice” one means the infliction of overwhelming power upon enemies, then yes, many religious texts can supply examples. But Christians confess that God’s justice is finally revealed on a cross. Not in the triumph of force, but in self-emptying love. That is a far more radical claim than simple consistency.

The irony is that the argument treats consistency as though it were the highest theological virtue. But a perfectly consistent image of God is of little interest if it is merely an image. Christianity’s claim is that in Christ we encounter God himself. Once that claim is on the table, the question ceases to be whether all religious texts maintain the same tone. The question becomes whether the crucified Christ is the truth of God.

If he is, then the standard by which we judge every prior image of God—including some biblical images, and certainly the Qur’an’s image—is not their internal consistency, but their conformity to the God revealed in Christ. That is a much more dangerous criterion, because it places every religious picture of God under judgment, not just the ones we happen to dislike.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

@God_Questioner @SaintEcclesia Are you assuming that fear here means dread, terror, or anxiety? If so, why? And what do you take the opposite of that fear to be in this text?

[Neverfox @neverfox]

Because “eternal” and “ultimate” are different concepts. You’ve argued that matter or energy never began. You haven’t argued that matter or energy is the kind of reality at which explanation must stop. That it is ultimate does not follow merely from its being eternal. Eternity tells us something about duration. It tells us nothing about whether matter exists through itself or derives its existence from something more fundamental.

And that’s not creating an artificial problem that only theology can solve. It’s simply refusing to assume that whatever happens to be eternal is therefore metaphysically ultimate. You may conclude that matter is ultimate. But that’s a conclusion that requires argument, not something established merely by assigning eternity to it.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

Then atheists must have evidence for that principle itself.

What is the evidence that one should never believe anything without evidence? Not evidence for some particular claim, but for the rule itself. The rule is not something established by an experiment, observed through a telescope, or measured in a laboratory. It’s a philosophical commitment about what counts as a rational belief.

And in practice nobody lives by it anyway. We trust memory, other minds, the reality of the external world, the reliability of reason, and the uniformity of nature long before we have anything like a proof of them. Those are the conditions that make evidence possible in the first place.

The issue is not whether we believe without evidence. Everyone does. The issue is which beliefs are fundamental enough that they cannot themselves be justified by appealing to prior evidence.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

Then you’re not offering an explanation. You’re declaring in advance that certain questions are not worth asking. That’s your prerogative, but it isn’t an intellectual achievement.

And “God did it” still has nothing to do with the position under discussion. That phrase imagines God as another object within reality introduced to explain other objects. The issue is whether reality itself is intelligible without any ultimate ground.

If your answer is that reality simply exists and no further explanation is needed, then that is the position to defend. But dismissing the question and caricaturing the answer are not substitutes for an argument.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

I never suggested naturalists don’t speculate about the fundamental basis of reality, or that theists have some monopoly on metaphysics.

We were discussing whether theology and naturalism are even trying to answer the same question. In response, you’ve offered a picture of eternally existing matter or energy. Fine. But that’s an answer to the question of temporal origins. The issue I raised wasn’t what existed before the universe. It was whether reality as such requires an explanation.

An eternal universe may be true or false, but “it has always been there” and “it therefore needs no further account” are two entirely different claims. The second does not follow from the first.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

No, it doesn’t.

“Why” does not automatically mean “for what purpose.” It can also mean “on what basis” or “by virtue of what.” You’re confusing a question of explanation with a question of purpose. Asking why there is a world at all is not asking what goal the world is trying to achieve. It’s asking what accounts for its existence.

Nothing in the question presupposes a conscious creator. The dispute is about what sort of explanation, if any, reality requires. Smuggling “intent” into the question is your addition, not mine.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

God does not “want” the truth to be known the way I want a cup of coffee. Our wills are directed toward a final end in the Good, and that end is not something separate from God. To say God wills all to know the truth is just to say that every rational creature is ordered toward participation in the source and fulfillment of its own being. The multiplicity of religions reflects the fragmentary and finite way we apprehend that end, not a failure of divine intent.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

Parsimony is only relevant if two accounts are addressing the same question. Naturalism concerns how the world works. Theology asks why there is a world at all and why it is intelligible. Calling one “simpler” than the other already assumes they are competing answers to the same question. They aren’t.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

If you think that’s extraordinary, wait until you ask why there is a world in which donkeys, biology, anatomy, and neuroscience exist at all.

You’re treating an unusual event within reality as more in need of explanation than reality itself.

The existence of a talking donkey would be a question for biology. The existence of biology is a question of an altogether different order.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

@athiestboi Why are you acting as though Christianity is a religion founded on credulity toward marvels? You think Christians believe because they are unjustifiably persuaded that a man once walked across a lake?

[Neverfox @neverfox]

@UgoCannon A bush does not become more miraculous by speaking than by existing.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

Who is “we”? You seem to be assuming a shared epistemology that simply does not exist.

The Christian does not begin from the premise that miracle claims are guilty until proven innocent, nor from the conviction that nature is a causally closed system against which every alleged miracle must be weighed. Those are philosophical commitments, not neutral standards.

So the appeal to “consistency” proves very little. Consistency with respect to what conception of reality? What account of causation? What theory of evidence? Until those questions are settled, “we” is doing all the work in the argument.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

If a natural explanation works, one still owes an account of why there is anything there to be explained at all. If a natural explanation does not yet exist, one still owes an account of why reality should be intelligible rather than absurd. Theology is not a rival to natural explanations. It is concerned with the more fundamental question of why there is a world, why it is intelligible, and why truth, reason, and being are there for us to encounter in the first place.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

@athiestboi That’s a curious way of demonstrating moral wisdom.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

So what? Why would it? Concepts often precede the terminology used to describe them.

The fact that a word doesn’t appear in a text tells you very little by itself. The relevant question is whether the concept is present. People discussed gravity long before the term became part of scientific vocabulary. The same is true of countless philosophical and theological concepts.

So even if “Trinity” never appears in scripture, that would only matter if you could show that the doctrine itself is absent. Simply pointing to the absence of a later technical term proves nothing. It just shows that later Christians developed a vocabulary to describe what they believed the scriptures were already saying.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

What are we talking about here?

If we’re discussing what various Christians have believed, then yes, many Christians have treated salvation as though it were primarily a matter of affirming the right doctrines.

But if we’re discussing what constitutes a coherent Christian theology, that’s another matter entirely.

If salvation is really just a matter of affirming the correct proposition about Jesus, it becomes difficult to explain why the New Testament places such overwhelming emphasis on love, holiness, repentance, transformation, mercy, justice, and union with God rather than on passing a theological examination.

The contrast between “having faith in Christ” and “orientation toward the Good” only works if Christ is something less than the Good itself. On a Christian understanding, he isn’t.

If God is not merely a being but the transcendent source of all being, truth, goodness, and beauty, then faith cannot be reduced to holding a correct opinion about him. To believe is to be drawn toward and conformed to the reality God is.

Once that is understood, it becomes difficult to see how mere doctrinal assent could play the decisive role you’re assigning to it. A proposition can direct one toward God or away from him, more or less truly, but no proposition is itself the end. The end is God. What ultimately matters is participation in that reality, not simply the possession of correct statements about it.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

It would be a problem only if Christianity taught that Christ was merely God in disguise. Instead, it teaches that the Word truly became human. A human life perfectly turned toward God is not an embarrassment to that claim; it is its very expression. Isaiah is describing precisely the humanity Christianity believes Christ assumed.

[Neverfox @neverfox]

@jimrodney @JenResistedAGN Believing your own position is true and incompatible positions are false is not some uniquely religious behavior. It’s how belief works. Thinking otherwise is the odd position.