Hysterical.

Just for fun I was reading this critique from The Secular Web of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Faith when I came across a couple of particularly hilarious arguments made in Strobel’s book concerning hell.

The chapter dealing with hell contains a dialogue (apparently each chapter focuses on an interview with someone ‘qualified’ to comment on the issue) with J. P. Moreland, who first explains that hell is “the worst possible situation that could ever happen to a person.” As to why God allows people to suffer in hell, however, Moreland responds that he is just being considerate, as he wouldn’t want to force anyone into heaven if they do not want to be there:

If people do not fall passionately in love with him, then to force them to have to be around him forever-doing the kinds of things that people who love him would want to do-would be utterly uncomfortable.

So never mind that you will suffer “the worst possible situation that could ever happen to a person,” God wouldn’t want things to be uncomfortably awkward for you by forcing you to hang out with him in heaven.

Then there is the question as to why God doesn’t just annihilate souls who reject him, rather than sending them to eternal torment. I will quote Paul Doland, the author of the critique, explaining the book’s response to this prickly one:

According to Moreland, God “refuses to snuff out a creature made in his own image” because such a creature has “intrinsic value” (p. 183). Instead, God punishes beings of “intrinsic value” for all eternity? He sends creatures “made in his own image” to Hell? How is that “morally superior,” as Moreland claims? What school of “morality” is this?

Of course, both of these arguments are so bad, they deserve no mention at all. But I laughed so hard I thought I just had to share them.

The amazing thing about the arguments and logic of theists, over and over, is just how God awful they are. Pun intended.

Hipster Christianity

Christian Brett McCracken has written a book, which he summarizes in this article, on “Hipster Christianity.” What this consists of is fairly straightforward – Hipster Christians are Christians who are hipsters, and they hope to break away from all the suburban, megachurch cultural ugliness that most often comes to mind when thinking about evangelical Christianity. Hipster Christians drink, smoke, occasionally dabble in the sex, vote for Barack Obama and love the arts. They are the Christian antidote to George W. Bush.

The good thing about this, as far as a progressive is concerned at least, is that Hipster Christians are trying to bring social justice back into Christianity. They are politically active, compassionate towards the poor and generally progressive in their politics. Insofar as it is always nice to see Jesus People act a little bit more like the historical Jesus, this is a welcomed change of emphasis.

There are inherent tensions, however, in combining “cool and Christ,” as McCracken puts it. Firstly, you can only get so Christian before you start becoming uncool, or vise-versa. McCracken talks at one point about a pastor who, going for shock value, preached

on the Dance of Mahanaim in the Song of Solomon (an “ancient striptease,” as he referred to it, and “one of the steamiest passages in the Bible”). During his sermon, Driscoll—looking like a metrosexual jock in an Ed Hardy—esque tight T-shirt, cross necklace, and faux-hawk—talked about how wives should be “visually generous” with their husbands (e.g., they should keep the lights on when undressing and during sex).”

Were I a Hipster Christian, I wouldn’t appreciate the sermon being inspired by the patriarchal practices of the ancient world, where women were considered primarily as objects of gratification for their husbands. But I guess if I brought that up in church I would be favoring the Hipster/Progressive/Feminist sides of me too much, endangering the fragile art of pretending they are compatible with Christianity.

Continue reading…

It’s funny because it’s true!

Courtesy of SMBC.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1406#comic

Q: When Was Satan Cast Out Of Heaven?

I came across this website while I was doing a little research on the biblical account of Satan defying God and being cast into Hell because I wasn’t sure if it was actually in there, and remember at some point in my education as an English major that Milton had made the events up for Paradise Lost (though I could be wrong, someone please educate me on this).

So anyway this question, “When was Satan cast out of Heaven?”

…Seriously?

I can accept that people believe in God because they want reasonings for unexplainable phenomenon, but my mind warps into some LHC produced black hole when I am reminded that people believe The Devil—in his most literal sense—exists.

In this article they posit whether the Devil was thrown from heaven in 1914 at the beginning of World War I as apparently the Jehova’s Witnesses believe or not; this is highly confusing the questioner because why would God allow the Devil to stay “in heaven after he deceived Adam and Eve and so many others and only decide to throw him out in 1914?”

This is answered quite matter-of-factly by quoting Isaiah 14:13 which says something about The Devil wanting to dethrone the Lord. And with that they answer the question by saying Continue reading…