View more documents from Robin Schumacher.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Biblical Interpretation - Part 2
Below is part two of my three part set of messages on Biblical interpretation or hermeneutics. This message focuses on the second part of the hermeneutical process, which is interpretation.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Biblical Interpretation - Part 1
Recently I delivered some messages on Hermeneutics, or the science of Biblical interpretation. While in seminary, the one class I really wanted to excel in was hermeneutics. I had a very exacting and strong professor and learned quite a lot. Since then, I've tried to work hard at the various techniques that are employed to ensure a person gets the most out of God's Word and obtains the goal Paul speaks about in 2 Tim. 2:15: "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth."
The below presentation gives an overview of the hermeneutical process and goes into detail on the first step, which is 'observation'.
The below presentation gives an overview of the hermeneutical process and goes into detail on the first step, which is 'observation'.
View more documents from Robin Schumacher.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Response to evilbible.com
The folks at Gotquestions.org recently asked me to write a response to the evilbible.com website. Given that Gotquestions.org usually tries to keep their material presentations fairly succinct, and therefore has to trim my replies to them to fit their format (which is absolutely fine), I thought I would post my full response to evilbible.com in its entirety.
The web site evilbible.com endeavors to do two things: (1) Demonstrate that the Bible is not the Word of God, but instead is only a book written by ‘evil’ men; (2) Disprove the God of Christianity. The arsenal it attempts to use to prove its assertions is one common to many other atheist web sites and publications – supposed Biblical contradictions are put on display, atrocities and immoral practices that are recorded within the pages of the Bible are referenced, and various philosophical and moral arguments are used to assert that the God of the Bible is an impossibility or at best not a God to be worshipped.
While a number of these specific arguments will be addressed in the sections that follow, certain topics on the evilbible.com website that have already been thoroughly tackled on Gotquestions.com (e.g. slavery) will not be covered, but instead anyone wishing more information on those subjects is encouraged to review the material that already exists and which sufficiently answers evilbible.com’s charges in those areas. Instead, the focus of this work will be to speak to the three broad problems that cause nearly all (or perhaps all) of evilbible.com’s arguments to fail:
• A misunderstanding of God’s Word
• A misunderstanding of God’s character
• A misunderstanding of God’s creation
Let’s now review each of these issues and cite specific examples from evilbible.com’s web site that illustrate how and why their assertions against the Bible and God do not hit the mark.
A Misunderstanding of God’s Word
The first problem area for evilbible.com is a misunderstanding of God’s Word. In its efforts to attack the Bible, the evilbible.com web site focuses on two key things:
1. The Bible is full of horrible atrocities
2. The Bible is full of contradictions
As to point number one, the evilbible.com web site is absolutely correct – the Bible is indeed full of atrocities and immoral behavior. From start to finish, the Bible records many terrible things, with the worst being the premeditated murder of the Son of God. But where evilbible.com’s argument in this area falls flat is that they fail to understand that the Bible does not approve of everything it records. This is absolutely crucial to understand. For example, in Judges chapters 19 and 20, the Bible records the brutal rape and murder of a young woman who was a Levite’s concubine. Moreover, the actions of the Levite are less than honorable, and the end results of the crime cause a vicious civil war to break out within the nation of Israel. But a careful reading of the text will show no approval of the actions that took place, and no commendation from God for the Levite’s behavior. So evilbible.com’s arguments that atrocities being recorded in Scripture prove that it isn’t God’s Word simply do not hold up.
Another argument in this same vein on the evilbible.com website focuses on the command of God for Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Obviously since God initiated this request, and human sacrifice is abhorrent, surely this proves the Bible is not anything produced by a loving and good God. But where evilbible.com’s argument in this area fails is that the website’s writers don’t understand that God never intended for Abraham to sacrifice his son to Him; the story is a powerful narrative typology of God Himself sacrificing His own Son Jesus for the sins of mankind. And whereas Abraham was stopped by God from going through with his act, God Himself did not stay His own hand when it came to His Son, and the end result was salvation for all who would believe in Him.
With regard to point number two above, evilbible.com lists a number of apparent contradictions in the Bible that are used to assert that the Bible is not inerrant but instead a fallibly written book. When it comes to asserted Biblical contradictions, it should be noted that a number of good books on this subject address nearly every one (if not all) of evilbible.com’s claims. Second, it should not come as a surprise that non-Christians trip over the issues that evilbible.com brings to the table. The Bible is a spiritual book and while it exhibits what is called perspicuity (a term that means plain and easily understood) in regard to its core teachings, there is spiritual significance and lessons for much of what the Bible speaks about, and only those who have been quickened by God’s Spirit will arrive at their meanings. For example, Leviticus 19:19 says, "‘You are to keep My statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together." Critics look at this obscure Old Testament passage, laugh, and reach the conclusion that God doesn’t want people to wear wool and polyester blends. However, in this case God was using physical things to act reminders of spiritual principles. He was telling Israel not to mix their pure religion with the pagan religions that literally encircled them – they were not to be syncretistic, but instead they were to be devoted to the one true God and not assimilate other pagan teachings.
Spiritual lessons such as the above are found in a number of errors that evilbible.com makes. For example they argue for the following set of contradictions:
First, it should be noted that evilbible.com does not reference the proper book/chapter/verse in the first quote – it is actually Exodus 20:4. That error aside, their argument fails because they quote the verse out of context; if one continues reading the next verse, the true reason for the prohibition is given: ““You shall not worship them or serve them”. The command of God to not make images concerned objects of worship, not objects used for decorative or educational purposes as Exodus 25:18 records.
An example of a supposed contradiction argued by evilbible.com in the New Testament is the following:
Again, evilbible.com should not really be faulted for not understanding these two verses clearly – they are two spiritual sides to one coin. The Bible makes it clear that Christians are saved by faith alone. But the Bible also makes it clear that the faith produced in the Christian is evidenced by good works that manifest themselves in the Christian’s life. So to put them together in one sentence: Christians are saved by faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-9), but the faith that saves is not alone (James 2:24). This principle is viewed elsewhere in Scripture, for example by Jesus, who referenced the fact that good trees bear good fruit but bad trees yield bad fruit (Matthew 7:17).
So in conclusion, evilbible.com’s claims of atrocities and contradictions in God’s Word simply do not hold water. There have always been critics who claim the Bible is wrong – for example, many used to maintain that the reigns and times of the Israeli kings were recorded in error (e.g. Joram-Jehoram), but then came Dr. Edwin Thiele’s book the "The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings", which showed they are indeed correct. In the end, the Bible has always survived the challenges thrown at it.
A Misunderstanding of God’s Character
The second problem evilbible.com suffers from is a misunderstanding of God’s character. Themes on the website routinely speak of God as being a tyrant and an unabashed killer. Evilbible.com takes the position of Socrates who once said that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it – better to be the victim than the perpetrator. In making such assertions, evilbible.com also follows the lead of atheist Robert Wilson who wrote, “The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer.” In addition, evilbible.com charges that God is the creator of evil and wickedness, and therefore asserts that God cannot be the holy and righteous deity described in the Bible. In theology, this is the problem of theodicy, which is how to vindicate of God’s divine attributes (particularly holiness and justice) in the face of the existence of physical and moral evil.
With respect to the first assertion – that God is a tyrannical murderer of the innocent – evilbible.com displays a gross misunderstanding of history, which in turn results in a misunderstanding of God’s character. Referencing Old Testament accounts of God imposing judgment on various cultures and peoples, evilbible.com says:
Such a claim is completely without merit and historically inaccurate. The Bible records the exact opposite about the peoples with whom God acted upon in judgment. A few examples include:
“Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them [the people in the land] out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” (Deuteronomy 9:4-5)
“For whoever does these things [occultic practices and other atrocities] is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you. “You shall be blameless before the Lord your God.” (Deut 18:9-12)
"‘Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. ‘For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants." (Leviticus 18:24-25)
Evilbible.com overlooks the historical evidences that these nations and cultures practiced the very things that the evilbible.com website decries as morally reprehensible. As just one example, the Assyrians who inhabited Nineveh during the time of Jonah were an incredibly barbaric and cruel people. When archaeologists uncovered Nineveh, the TV specials produced from their work had to be filtered because the evidence of brutality was so great. The discoveries unearthed facts such as how the Assyrians used to slowly impale their victims by sliding them down sharp poles, and that they also made handbags from their victim’s skins. In a stone pillar found at Nineveh, one Assyrian ruler boasted of “nobles I flayed” and “Three thousand captives I burned with fire. I left not one hostage alive. I cut off the hands and feet of some. I cut off the noses, ears and fingers of others. The eyes of numerous soldiers I put out. Maidens I burned as a holocaust.” Such things certainly speak against evilbible.com’s claims that the people who fell under God’s judgment were innocent. Other examples include the inhabitants of Jericho who history has shown practiced child sacrifice, cultic prostitution, and much more.
Evilbible.com also overlooks the patience of God in dealing with such people. God always waited for the nations who ultimately experienced judgment to turn from their despicable ways and always warned them of the judgment that was coming. The peoples and cultures could have repented of their sins, but they chose not to. As an example, the people of Amalek (described in 1 Samuel) routinely attempted to commit genocide against Israel, but were given 400 years by God to repent. But Amalek continued to commit their atrocities against Israel and so God judged them via Saul and the Israeli army.
Evilbible.com does not stop to consider that, if one were to catapult the practices, genocide, and barbarism of these cultures/peoples into the 21st century, and broadcast it around the world via CNN, there would most certainly be a global outcry for severe military action and punishment. And if modern ‘enlightened’ man would call for such severe judgment against such atrocities, why should evilbible.com criticize God for carrying out the same thing?
Lastly, in regard to evilbible.com’s claim that God is creator of evil, they present the following rationale and verse from the King James Bible to support their position:
In evilbible.com’s defense, the verse from Isaiah 45:7 has been misunderstood by many people, primarily because of a poor translation in the King James Bible (and ASV). Parts of the book of Isaiah are of the poetry genre, and there is a literary technique used at times in Hebrew poetry called antithetical parallelism which set two thoughts in complete contrast to one another, which is exactly what is happening in Isaiah 45:7. For example, if you were asked what the opposition of ‘light’ is, you would likely respond ‘darkness’, which is what Isaiah 45:7 says. But if I asked you what the opposite of ‘peace’ is, would you respond ‘evil’? No, you likely wouldn’t. This is why nearly all other translations of this verse (including the New King James Version) translate the word ‘calamity’ or something very similar as that is what the antithetical structure of the verse mandates. And God certainly does this – He does bring about calamity and judgment upon those who oppose Him, but such a thing does not make Him evil; it makes Him a just and righteous God.
So, in the end, the above examples (and others present on the website) show how a misunderstanding of history and wrong Biblical interpretation lead to the wrong conclusion about God’s character.
A Misunderstanding of God’s Creation
The last broad issue found on the evilbible.com website is a misunderstanding of God’s creation, which manifests itself most in the problem of evilbible.com borrowing from the Christian moral worldview to carry out its arguments against God and the Bible instead of its atheistic foundation. In essence, evilbible.com is one big protest that invokes a Christian framework to deny the Christian God. For example, evilbible.com declares:
Here’s the problem with making such a statement: without God, evilbible.com has no real foundation for the morality it claims – no moral framework with which to attack God. Why is this the case? Because before a person can call something bad (as evilbible.com does God and the Bible) a person must know what good is. But before a person can call something good, they must have a moral framework to distinguish between good and bad. But before someone can have a moral framework to distinguish good and bad, they must have absolute moral laws to build that framework. But before a person can have absolute moral laws, they must have an absolute moral law giver (laws don’t give themselves). Now the atheist has backed themselves into a corner, because the only absolute moral law giver you can have is the Judeo-Christian God. This is why intellectually honest atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, say you can’t ever call anything bad or good – the atheist foundation doesn’t support such a stance. In his book, River out of Eden, he writes: “Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life...life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA . . . life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference” (emphasis added).
Since, being atheists, evilbible.com cannot be intellectually honest and use the term ‘evil’, they should rename their website to something that is not prefaced with the word ‘evil’. All evilbible.com can assert is what atheist and evolutionist William Provine calls ‘approximate morals’, but they can never have ethics that are globally, eternally, and universally binding upon everyone, and thus cannot call anything evil.
Another misunderstanding of God’s creation is exhibited in evilbible.com’s claim that God is impossible (http://www.evilbible.com/Impossible.htm). On this section of their website, evilbible.com puts forth a variety of common arguments against God, but the overall theme is that creation as we know it refutes the existence of the God described in the Bible. Primarily, the argument of the existence of evil is used again to reject God. Evilbible.com wrongly rejects the argument of free will being the catalyst of evil (which it is/was), and commits a mistake of not accepting the fact that, yes, there is evil in this world, but perhaps God has a good reason for permitting it. Jesus dying on the cross appeared on the surface to be the epitome of gratuitous evil, but out of that event, mankind was redeemed from the misery it finds itself in. God’s gift of freedom, and the misuse of that freedom, clearly explains the moral evil we experience. As Augustine said, “such is the generosity of God’s goodness that He has not refrained from creating even that creature which He foreknew would not only sin, but remain in the will to sin. As a runaway horse is better than a stone which does not run away because it lacks self-movement and sense perception, so the creature is more excellent which sins by free will than that which does not sin only because it has no free will.”
Moreover, evilbible.com posits God is impossible because of supposed contradictions in His nature that do not match the world, and yet they are perfectly happy to accept that an impersonal, amoral, meaningless and purposeless universe accidentally created personal beings who are obsessed with morality, meaning, and purpose in life. If as they argue, a cause must resemble its effect, then what explanation do they give for this contradiction? Mindless matter has no way of producing mind or anything similar.
The fact is, the Being who is the cause of everything in the universe perfectly mirrors the God described in the Bible. This is evidenced by what one can infer just from the fact of creation alone:
Conclusion
A misunderstanding of God’s Word, His character, and His creation all result in the argumentation errors found on evilbible.com. A fitting summation of their stance is this statement made on their website:
For certain, there are apparent difficulties that arise when one begins studying the Bible. But a person should not assume God doesn’t exist and/or the Bible is in error just because they encounter a problem in the Bible that they can’t immediately understand or justify. The scientist doesn’t throw out science just because he/she sees something in the physical world that they can’t immediately explain. Neither should we do the same with theology or the study of Scripture. Misunderstandings like those committed by evilbible.com are the result of not thoroughly investigating matters or dismissing a belief based on a presupposition that is buried deep in a person’s heart or lifestyle (or both). And the danger in both cases is something Pascal warned about many years ago: “People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive”.
The web site evilbible.com endeavors to do two things: (1) Demonstrate that the Bible is not the Word of God, but instead is only a book written by ‘evil’ men; (2) Disprove the God of Christianity. The arsenal it attempts to use to prove its assertions is one common to many other atheist web sites and publications – supposed Biblical contradictions are put on display, atrocities and immoral practices that are recorded within the pages of the Bible are referenced, and various philosophical and moral arguments are used to assert that the God of the Bible is an impossibility or at best not a God to be worshipped.
While a number of these specific arguments will be addressed in the sections that follow, certain topics on the evilbible.com website that have already been thoroughly tackled on Gotquestions.com (e.g. slavery) will not be covered, but instead anyone wishing more information on those subjects is encouraged to review the material that already exists and which sufficiently answers evilbible.com’s charges in those areas. Instead, the focus of this work will be to speak to the three broad problems that cause nearly all (or perhaps all) of evilbible.com’s arguments to fail:
• A misunderstanding of God’s Word
• A misunderstanding of God’s character
• A misunderstanding of God’s creation
Let’s now review each of these issues and cite specific examples from evilbible.com’s web site that illustrate how and why their assertions against the Bible and God do not hit the mark.
A Misunderstanding of God’s Word
The first problem area for evilbible.com is a misunderstanding of God’s Word. In its efforts to attack the Bible, the evilbible.com web site focuses on two key things:
1. The Bible is full of horrible atrocities
2. The Bible is full of contradictions
As to point number one, the evilbible.com web site is absolutely correct – the Bible is indeed full of atrocities and immoral behavior. From start to finish, the Bible records many terrible things, with the worst being the premeditated murder of the Son of God. But where evilbible.com’s argument in this area falls flat is that they fail to understand that the Bible does not approve of everything it records. This is absolutely crucial to understand. For example, in Judges chapters 19 and 20, the Bible records the brutal rape and murder of a young woman who was a Levite’s concubine. Moreover, the actions of the Levite are less than honorable, and the end results of the crime cause a vicious civil war to break out within the nation of Israel. But a careful reading of the text will show no approval of the actions that took place, and no commendation from God for the Levite’s behavior. So evilbible.com’s arguments that atrocities being recorded in Scripture prove that it isn’t God’s Word simply do not hold up.
Another argument in this same vein on the evilbible.com website focuses on the command of God for Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Obviously since God initiated this request, and human sacrifice is abhorrent, surely this proves the Bible is not anything produced by a loving and good God. But where evilbible.com’s argument in this area fails is that the website’s writers don’t understand that God never intended for Abraham to sacrifice his son to Him; the story is a powerful narrative typology of God Himself sacrificing His own Son Jesus for the sins of mankind. And whereas Abraham was stopped by God from going through with his act, God Himself did not stay His own hand when it came to His Son, and the end result was salvation for all who would believe in Him.
With regard to point number two above, evilbible.com lists a number of apparent contradictions in the Bible that are used to assert that the Bible is not inerrant but instead a fallibly written book. When it comes to asserted Biblical contradictions, it should be noted that a number of good books on this subject address nearly every one (if not all) of evilbible.com’s claims. Second, it should not come as a surprise that non-Christians trip over the issues that evilbible.com brings to the table. The Bible is a spiritual book and while it exhibits what is called perspicuity (a term that means plain and easily understood) in regard to its core teachings, there is spiritual significance and lessons for much of what the Bible speaks about, and only those who have been quickened by God’s Spirit will arrive at their meanings. For example, Leviticus 19:19 says, "‘You are to keep My statutes. You shall not breed together two kinds of your cattle; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor wear a garment upon you of two kinds of material mixed together." Critics look at this obscure Old Testament passage, laugh, and reach the conclusion that God doesn’t want people to wear wool and polyester blends. However, in this case God was using physical things to act reminders of spiritual principles. He was telling Israel not to mix their pure religion with the pagan religions that literally encircled them – they were not to be syncretistic, but instead they were to be devoted to the one true God and not assimilate other pagan teachings.
Spiritual lessons such as the above are found in a number of errors that evilbible.com makes. For example they argue for the following set of contradictions:
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven... earth... [or] water. - Leviticus 26:11
And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them. - Exodus 25:18
First, it should be noted that evilbible.com does not reference the proper book/chapter/verse in the first quote – it is actually Exodus 20:4. That error aside, their argument fails because they quote the verse out of context; if one continues reading the next verse, the true reason for the prohibition is given: ““You shall not worship them or serve them”. The command of God to not make images concerned objects of worship, not objects used for decorative or educational purposes as Exodus 25:18 records.
An example of a supposed contradiction argued by evilbible.com in the New Testament is the following:
For by grace are ye saved through faith... not of works. - Ephesians 2:8-9
Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. - James 2:24
Again, evilbible.com should not really be faulted for not understanding these two verses clearly – they are two spiritual sides to one coin. The Bible makes it clear that Christians are saved by faith alone. But the Bible also makes it clear that the faith produced in the Christian is evidenced by good works that manifest themselves in the Christian’s life. So to put them together in one sentence: Christians are saved by faith alone (Ephesians 2:8-9), but the faith that saves is not alone (James 2:24). This principle is viewed elsewhere in Scripture, for example by Jesus, who referenced the fact that good trees bear good fruit but bad trees yield bad fruit (Matthew 7:17).
So in conclusion, evilbible.com’s claims of atrocities and contradictions in God’s Word simply do not hold water. There have always been critics who claim the Bible is wrong – for example, many used to maintain that the reigns and times of the Israeli kings were recorded in error (e.g. Joram-Jehoram), but then came Dr. Edwin Thiele’s book the "The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings", which showed they are indeed correct. In the end, the Bible has always survived the challenges thrown at it.
A Misunderstanding of God’s Character
The second problem evilbible.com suffers from is a misunderstanding of God’s character. Themes on the website routinely speak of God as being a tyrant and an unabashed killer. Evilbible.com takes the position of Socrates who once said that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it – better to be the victim than the perpetrator. In making such assertions, evilbible.com also follows the lead of atheist Robert Wilson who wrote, “The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer.” In addition, evilbible.com charges that God is the creator of evil and wickedness, and therefore asserts that God cannot be the holy and righteous deity described in the Bible. In theology, this is the problem of theodicy, which is how to vindicate of God’s divine attributes (particularly holiness and justice) in the face of the existence of physical and moral evil.
With respect to the first assertion – that God is a tyrannical murderer of the innocent – evilbible.com displays a gross misunderstanding of history, which in turn results in a misunderstanding of God’s character. Referencing Old Testament accounts of God imposing judgment on various cultures and peoples, evilbible.com says:
“The people slaughtered in the Old Testament were almost uniformly blameless (with a few exceptions, of course for instance, the Sodomites violated the conventions of hospitality.)” http://www.evilbible.com/why_i_am_not_a_christian.htm.
Such a claim is completely without merit and historically inaccurate. The Bible records the exact opposite about the peoples with whom God acted upon in judgment. A few examples include:
“Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them [the people in the land] out before you, ‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” (Deuteronomy 9:4-5)
“For whoever does these things [occultic practices and other atrocities] is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you. “You shall be blameless before the Lord your God.” (Deut 18:9-12)
"‘Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. ‘For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants." (Leviticus 18:24-25)
Evilbible.com overlooks the historical evidences that these nations and cultures practiced the very things that the evilbible.com website decries as morally reprehensible. As just one example, the Assyrians who inhabited Nineveh during the time of Jonah were an incredibly barbaric and cruel people. When archaeologists uncovered Nineveh, the TV specials produced from their work had to be filtered because the evidence of brutality was so great. The discoveries unearthed facts such as how the Assyrians used to slowly impale their victims by sliding them down sharp poles, and that they also made handbags from their victim’s skins. In a stone pillar found at Nineveh, one Assyrian ruler boasted of “nobles I flayed” and “Three thousand captives I burned with fire. I left not one hostage alive. I cut off the hands and feet of some. I cut off the noses, ears and fingers of others. The eyes of numerous soldiers I put out. Maidens I burned as a holocaust.” Such things certainly speak against evilbible.com’s claims that the people who fell under God’s judgment were innocent. Other examples include the inhabitants of Jericho who history has shown practiced child sacrifice, cultic prostitution, and much more.
Evilbible.com also overlooks the patience of God in dealing with such people. God always waited for the nations who ultimately experienced judgment to turn from their despicable ways and always warned them of the judgment that was coming. The peoples and cultures could have repented of their sins, but they chose not to. As an example, the people of Amalek (described in 1 Samuel) routinely attempted to commit genocide against Israel, but were given 400 years by God to repent. But Amalek continued to commit their atrocities against Israel and so God judged them via Saul and the Israeli army.
Evilbible.com does not stop to consider that, if one were to catapult the practices, genocide, and barbarism of these cultures/peoples into the 21st century, and broadcast it around the world via CNN, there would most certainly be a global outcry for severe military action and punishment. And if modern ‘enlightened’ man would call for such severe judgment against such atrocities, why should evilbible.com criticize God for carrying out the same thing?
Lastly, in regard to evilbible.com’s claim that God is creator of evil, they present the following rationale and verse from the King James Bible to support their position:
“God Is The Creator Of Evil: “Secondly, I want to reinforce the fact that God is indeed the creator of evil. Please read verse Isaiah 45:7. “I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I the lord do all these things”. The Christian God outright claims that he is indeed the source of evil. So how can he then claim to be sinless?”
In evilbible.com’s defense, the verse from Isaiah 45:7 has been misunderstood by many people, primarily because of a poor translation in the King James Bible (and ASV). Parts of the book of Isaiah are of the poetry genre, and there is a literary technique used at times in Hebrew poetry called antithetical parallelism which set two thoughts in complete contrast to one another, which is exactly what is happening in Isaiah 45:7. For example, if you were asked what the opposition of ‘light’ is, you would likely respond ‘darkness’, which is what Isaiah 45:7 says. But if I asked you what the opposite of ‘peace’ is, would you respond ‘evil’? No, you likely wouldn’t. This is why nearly all other translations of this verse (including the New King James Version) translate the word ‘calamity’ or something very similar as that is what the antithetical structure of the verse mandates. And God certainly does this – He does bring about calamity and judgment upon those who oppose Him, but such a thing does not make Him evil; it makes Him a just and righteous God.
So, in the end, the above examples (and others present on the website) show how a misunderstanding of history and wrong Biblical interpretation lead to the wrong conclusion about God’s character.
A Misunderstanding of God’s Creation
The last broad issue found on the evilbible.com website is a misunderstanding of God’s creation, which manifests itself most in the problem of evilbible.com borrowing from the Christian moral worldview to carry out its arguments against God and the Bible instead of its atheistic foundation. In essence, evilbible.com is one big protest that invokes a Christian framework to deny the Christian God. For example, evilbible.com declares:
“It violates my morality to worship a hypocritical, judgmental, self righteous murderer.”
http://www.evilbible.com/why_i_am_not_a_christian.htm
Here’s the problem with making such a statement: without God, evilbible.com has no real foundation for the morality it claims – no moral framework with which to attack God. Why is this the case? Because before a person can call something bad (as evilbible.com does God and the Bible) a person must know what good is. But before a person can call something good, they must have a moral framework to distinguish between good and bad. But before someone can have a moral framework to distinguish good and bad, they must have absolute moral laws to build that framework. But before a person can have absolute moral laws, they must have an absolute moral law giver (laws don’t give themselves). Now the atheist has backed themselves into a corner, because the only absolute moral law giver you can have is the Judeo-Christian God. This is why intellectually honest atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, say you can’t ever call anything bad or good – the atheist foundation doesn’t support such a stance. In his book, River out of Eden, he writes: “Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life...life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA . . . life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference” (emphasis added).
Since, being atheists, evilbible.com cannot be intellectually honest and use the term ‘evil’, they should rename their website to something that is not prefaced with the word ‘evil’. All evilbible.com can assert is what atheist and evolutionist William Provine calls ‘approximate morals’, but they can never have ethics that are globally, eternally, and universally binding upon everyone, and thus cannot call anything evil.
Another misunderstanding of God’s creation is exhibited in evilbible.com’s claim that God is impossible (http://www.evilbible.com/Impossible.htm). On this section of their website, evilbible.com puts forth a variety of common arguments against God, but the overall theme is that creation as we know it refutes the existence of the God described in the Bible. Primarily, the argument of the existence of evil is used again to reject God. Evilbible.com wrongly rejects the argument of free will being the catalyst of evil (which it is/was), and commits a mistake of not accepting the fact that, yes, there is evil in this world, but perhaps God has a good reason for permitting it. Jesus dying on the cross appeared on the surface to be the epitome of gratuitous evil, but out of that event, mankind was redeemed from the misery it finds itself in. God’s gift of freedom, and the misuse of that freedom, clearly explains the moral evil we experience. As Augustine said, “such is the generosity of God’s goodness that He has not refrained from creating even that creature which He foreknew would not only sin, but remain in the will to sin. As a runaway horse is better than a stone which does not run away because it lacks self-movement and sense perception, so the creature is more excellent which sins by free will than that which does not sin only because it has no free will.”
Moreover, evilbible.com posits God is impossible because of supposed contradictions in His nature that do not match the world, and yet they are perfectly happy to accept that an impersonal, amoral, meaningless and purposeless universe accidentally created personal beings who are obsessed with morality, meaning, and purpose in life. If as they argue, a cause must resemble its effect, then what explanation do they give for this contradiction? Mindless matter has no way of producing mind or anything similar.
The fact is, the Being who is the cause of everything in the universe perfectly mirrors the God described in the Bible. This is evidenced by what one can infer just from the fact of creation alone:
- He must be supernatural in nature (as He created time and space).
- He must be powerful (incredibly).
- He must be eternal (self-existent, because there is no infinite regress of causes).
- He must be omnipresent (he created space and is not limited by it).
- He must be timeless and changeless (He created time).
- He must be immaterial because He transcends space/physical.
- He must be personal (the impersonal can’t create personality).
- He must be necessary as everything else depends on Him.
- He must be infinite and singular as you cannot have two infinites
- He must be diverse yet have unity as unity and diversity exist in nature
- He must be intelligent (supremely). Only cognitive being can produce cognitive being.
- He must be purposeful as He deliberately created everything.
- He must be moral (no moral law can be had without a giver).
- He must be caring (or no moral laws would have been given).
Conclusion
A misunderstanding of God’s Word, His character, and His creation all result in the argumentation errors found on evilbible.com. A fitting summation of their stance is this statement made on their website:
“I don’t think I could ever complete a whole list as to what I find objectionable regarding the bible.”
http://www.evilbible.com/why_i_am_not_a_christian.htm.
For certain, there are apparent difficulties that arise when one begins studying the Bible. But a person should not assume God doesn’t exist and/or the Bible is in error just because they encounter a problem in the Bible that they can’t immediately understand or justify. The scientist doesn’t throw out science just because he/she sees something in the physical world that they can’t immediately explain. Neither should we do the same with theology or the study of Scripture. Misunderstandings like those committed by evilbible.com are the result of not thoroughly investigating matters or dismissing a belief based on a presupposition that is buried deep in a person’s heart or lifestyle (or both). And the danger in both cases is something Pascal warned about many years ago: “People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive”.
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