The Fallacy of the God/Parent Apology

[Divine Insight]

Christians are often trying to make excuses for their God by proclaiming that their God is just as helpless, inept, and unintelligent as human parents. They try to make an analogy between how some human parents might treat their children and why they think it makes sense to think that an omnipotent creator God should have the same limitations. These apologies fail miserably because human parents are not infinitely intelligent, wise, omnipotent, or omniscient. Neither did they design their children.

If human parents have stupid kids that can hardly be blamed on the parents. On the other hand if an omnipotent creator God creates stupid humans than this is entirely on him. There can be no one else to blame. The stupid humans most certainly can't be blamed for being stupid. It wasn't their fault that this is how God created them.

Human parents cannot know what's going on in the mind of their children.

An omniscient God knows every thought his children have.

Human parents can easily fail as being effective teachers, and often do fail at this in extreme ways.

A God cannot fail at being an effective teacher because there can only be two possible reasons for him to fail. Either he's a lousy teacher, which would mean that he's inept. Or his children are lousy students, in which case this can only be because he failed to design intelligent children.

If a human parent has a child who has psychological or mental problems it can often be quite difficult for the human parent to even know that this is occurring. And even if the human parent suspects this to be the case, it's is next to impossible for a human parent to be able to heal the child. Even professional psychologists and psychiatrists have great difficulty in trying to diagnose and help people who have psychological or mental problems. In fact, we are currently aware that there are many different potential causes for the same types of psychological symptoms.

An omniscient God who knows every thought the child has, and who also has also numbered every hair on their head would not only know that the problem exists, but he would also know precisely what it would take to remedy the situation and heal the child from this aberrant condition.

Trying to excuse a supposedly omnipotent omniscient God by pointing to how inept human parents are is hardly an apology for the failings of a supposed "Creator God" who actually creates every child that exists.

Question for Debate:

At what point should apologists be willing to recognize and concede that some of their apologies for their imaginary God simply don't hold water?

Surely there needs to be some criteria for being able to recognize when an apology is dead and no amount of repeating it will ever bring it back to life.

[bjs]

[Replying to rikuoamero]

You seem to be describing the free will defense by adding the fatherhood analogy on top of it. Is that your intent?

Quick explanation of the free will defense: Even an omnipotent God cannot do the logically impossible. God cannot make you morally free and not-free at the same time. God cannot allow you to choose between killing and not killing while at the same time forcing you not to kill.

The addition of the Father analogy might be helpful in understanding this, as long was get that the analogy is limited and that those who use the analogy are not intending a one-to-one comparison. (Hence the word analogy.)

It seems more than a little unfair to say an analogy is false when we are using in a way that those who brought it up never intended, and often expressly denied.



As a side note, were you a young person when your teacher-priests who nodded with approval at this kind of analogy? Under 20? It seems like the kind of thing a teacher-priest would approve of in a teenager, while expecting more precise thinking from a 40-year-old. Just a curiosity of mine. Over the years I have noticed that a lot of people on this board who say I was a Christians for X number of years tend to describe religious leaders they knew accepted what they said as teenagers. They seem to think that the fact that these adults didnt correct what teenagers said meant that the adults actually thought this way, as opposed to the adults thinking that as a person matures his understanding of God would mature as well.

[bjs]

Christians are often trying to make excuses for their God by proclaiming that their God is just as helpless, inept, and unintelligent as human parents.

I have literally never, ever heard any Christian say this in any setting.

Of course you have never heard them say this literally. They aren't about to openly confess that comparing God with the behavior of human parents is precisely the same thing as proclaiming that their God is just as helpless, inept, and unintelligent as human parents.

But the very moment they try to apologize for their God's behavior by comparing him with the behavior of human parents that's precisely what they are arguing for whether they realize this or not.

No, you are arguing that. Stop projecting your thoughts on to other people. If for no other reason than that you are making a strawman. You are creating arguments Christians never use and then pretending it is valid to attack those arguments.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 11 by bjs]

God cannot allow you to choose between killing and not killing while at the same time forcing you not to kill.

Then Christians need to get on board with that. They need to stop saying God intervened in their life to prevent them making some sort of horrible choice. I've talked with Christians who claim just that - one comes to mind from this very forum, where a Christian claimed that he was at the point of suicide, gun in hand, only for God to intervene by burning his curtains with some sort of divine laser.

The addition of the Father analogy might be helpful in understanding this, as long was get that the analogy is limited

Try breaks down the instant one thinks about it. What parent in the real world intentionally has a child for the express purpose of killing that child?

As a side note, were you a young person when your teacher-priests who nodded with approval at this kind of analogy? Under 20?

Yup.

Over the years I have noticed that a lot of people on this board who say I was a Christians for X number of years tend to describe religious leaders they knew accepted what they said as teenagers. They seem to think that the fact that these adults didnt correct what teenagers said meant that the adults actually thought this way, as opposed to the adults thinking that as a person matures his understanding of God would mature as well.

So is the analogy of God being a parent who likens what we humans tend to do with the environment and wars and whatnot to 'skinning our knees', a correct one or not? Does God view it that way? Are you saying that priest-teachers approve of false things from younger students as opposed to correcting them?

[1213]

Not only this, but then Jesus could not have been born of God either since it was of extreme importance that the lineage of Jesus go back to David, and ultimately to Adam and Eve who were born of Satan.

Obviously, you are free to make your own stories. I just want to remind that according to the Bible, Adam and Eve were created(/formed) by God, not born.

Also, Bible doesnt really say Jesus was son of David. Bible tells Jesus will be and was born to the house of David. There is vast difference in what you claim and what the Bible tells. And I can agree that your versions are full of problems. I recommend people to read what the Bible tells.

Jesus responded, as he taught in the temple, "How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? For David himself said in the Holy Spirit, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, Until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.' Therefore David himself calls him Lord, so how can he be his son?" The common people heard him gladly.
Mark 12:35-37

Not only this, but as Rikuo asks, "Who created Satan?" Satan couldn't have been born of Satan. He had to originally have been a child of God. But then he could not sin according to this theology because those who are born of God cannot sin.

By what the Bible tells, Satan is also created, not born.

[Divine Insight]

Christians are often trying to make excuses for their God by proclaiming that their God is just as helpless, inept, and unintelligent as human parents.

I have literally never, ever heard any Christian say this in any setting.

Of course you have never heard them say this literally. They aren't about to openly confess that comparing God with the behavior of human parents is precisely the same thing as proclaiming that their God is just as helpless, inept, and unintelligent as human parents.

But the very moment they try to apologize for their God's behavior by comparing him with the behavior of human parents that's precisely what they are arguing for whether they realize this or not.

No, you are arguing that. Stop projecting your thoughts on to other people. If for no other reason than that you are making a strawman. You are creating arguments Christians never use and the pretending it is valid to attack those argument.

This is precisely what I mean about Christian apologists. They are in complete denial of what they are arguing for.

There is no strawman here. The very moment that a Christian start using the "parent" analogy where they try to defend the behavior of a God in terms of how a human parent might behave they have already demanded that their God is every bit as inept, unwise, and helpless as a mortal human.

Not only this, but they often use analogies where they have the parent doing things that I personally consider to be extremely ignorant parenting techniques.

Here's another extremely poor apology that you yourself just gave in an earlier post in reply to Rikuo.

You seem to be describing the free will defense by adding the fatherhood analogy on top of it. Is that your intent?

Quick explanation of the free will defense: Even an omnipotent God cannot do the logically impossible. God cannot make you morally free and not-free at the same time. God cannot allow you to choose between killing and not killing while at the same time forcing you not to kill.

The addition of the Father analogy might be helpful in understanding this, as long was get that the analogy is limited and that those who use the analogy are not intending a one-to-one comparison. (Hence the word analogy.)

It seems more than a little unfair to say an analogy is false when we are using in a way that those who brought it up never intended, and often expressly denied.

Why call it an "analogy" if it doesn't even remotely come close to justifying the behavior?

And this whole idea that God can't allow people to choose and force them to do things at the same time is not only nonsense, but the Biblical stories forbid this excuse. This God is already infamous for forcing people's behavior. Apparently you've forgotten that this God hardened the heart of the Egyptian Pharaoh forcing him to refuse to set the Jews free.

This God doesn't respect Free Will. Not only this, but precisely because this God is omniscient he can't be equated to a human father.

If a human father knew that his child was about to commit murder and had already made the choice to do so on in mind, shouldn't the human father stop the child from committing the murder? The father will still know what choice the child had made. So he doesn't need to permit the child to actually carry out the murder.

So your excuse for this God doesn't work. There is no excuse for an omniscient God who knows your thoughts and actions even before you carry them out to allow you to harm other people. Refusing to violate human Free Will is the most pathetic excuse Christians every came up with. This apology is an insult to human intelligence.

In fact, Jesus backs me up on this 100%. Jesus himself had decreed that to merely think of committing a sin was the same as having already done it. Therefore if a murderer is already planning out the murder they have already made their choice. There is not excuse for allowing them to actually carry out the heinous deed.

The excuses Christians cling to in order to try to keep this disgusting theology alive are nothing short of pathetic, and an insult to human intelligence.

This religion basically causes people to support the most heinous excuses for an extremely immoral and ignorant religion. You may as well be making excuses for mass murderers. In fact, it would actually be much easier to make excuses for them. At least with a mass murderer you could always argue that they are mentally ill and really had no free will in the matter after all..

You can't makes excuses for an omniscient omnipotent God. Anything your God does needs to be both intentional and knowingly. Therefore when your God allows a mass murderer to go out and commit a mass murder your God is just as guilty as the human who did it. There is no excuse for the God at all.

Let's face it. There is no such thing as a God. Humans are responsible for their own actions. And that's the truth of reality.

When a mass murderer kills people it's not because some God who could stop him refuses to do so to honor the murder's free will. It's simply because there is no God to stop him. Period.

The Free Will excuse is pathetic. But Christians have no choice but to cling to this pathetic excuse because they have nothing better to offer. This is the best they can do. Yet they refuse to acknowledge that it's a horribly failed excuse.

Oh wait! But a human parent would do the same thing!

No, they wouldn't! At least no GOOD parent would allow their child to commit a mass murder if they knew the child was about to do it.

A GOOD parent would stop the child and say, "No. I'm not going to let you do that".

This idea that you can excuse the behavior of this God by making an extremely poor analogy with what you might think a human parent might do simply doesn't hold water.

You'd need to find some pretty pathetic parents to behave as poorly as this God behaves.

This doesn't even work as an analogy. Any decent parent would be way better than this God.

[Bust Nak]

You are creating arguments Christians never use and the pretending it is valid to attack those argument.

If the argument Christians had in mind when the use the parent analogy does not involved projecting human flaws back to god, then we can attack it as a false analogy. It's a valid attack either way.

[1213]

And this whole idea that God can't allow people to choose and force them to do things at the same time is not only nonsense, but the Biblical stories forbid this excuse. This God is already infamous for forcing people's behavior. Apparently you've forgotten that this God hardened the heart of the Egyptian Pharaoh forcing him to refuse to set the Jews free...

I think it would be good to notice, when pharaohs heart was hardened, it happened by ending the plague. Every time there was plague, pharaohs heart softened and he was going to free the slaves and every time plague ended, pharaoh changed his mind and wanted to keep the slaves and his heart was hardened. Pharaoh wanted to do what was evil, but the plagues changed his mind every time temporarily. I dont think that is same as interfering someones free will.

So your excuse for this God doesn't work. There is no excuse for an omniscient God who knows your thoughts and actions even before you carry them out to allow you to harm other people. Refusing to violate human Free Will is the most pathetic excuse Christians every came up with. This apology is an insult to human intelligence

I think in this case it would be good to understand, this life is like the matrix, in the movie Matrix. Nothing of this world can destroy soul, which is the important thing, body is just a temporary dwelling for soul, in Biblical point of view. People were expelled to this first death, because they wanted to know what evil means. In here all kind of evil is possible, because people wanted to know evil. Luckily this is just a short lesson that is not even meant to last forever. True life is with God and all those who become righteous, can have that after this lesson. Murder is wrong, but in Biblical point of view people should not fear anything of this world.

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matt. 10:28

[ttruscott]

. Apparently you've forgotten that this God hardened the heart of the Egyptian Pharaoh forcing him to refuse to set the Jews free...

GOD had to harden Pharaoh's mind to get him to turn against the Israelites? How backward this pov is to the story! Pharaoh repeatedly tried to stop them leaving but the plagues made him fear GOD and relent until that fear died away.

All GOD had to do to harden Pharaoh's heart against Israel was to allow his fear to die off and then let him do what he most wanted to do - kill them all. To claim that HE forced Pharaoh to hate and kill the Israelites is to claim that a 6 ton monster with spikes and tentacles on his face describes an elephant, !!

[Divine Insight]

And this whole idea that God can't allow people to choose and force them to do things at the same time is not only nonsense, but the Biblical stories forbid this excuse. This God is already infamous for forcing people's behavior. Apparently you've forgotten that this God hardened the heart of the Egyptian Pharaoh forcing him to refuse to set the Jews free...

I think it would be good to notice, when pharaohs heart was hardened, it happened by ending the plague. Every time there was plague, pharaohs heart softened and he was going to free the slaves and every time plague ended, pharaoh changed his mind and wanted to keep the slaves and his heart was hardened. Pharaoh wanted to do what was evil, but the plagues changed his mind every time temporarily. I dont think that is same as interfering someones free will.

So your excuse for this God doesn't work. There is no excuse for an omniscient God who knows your thoughts and actions even before you carry them out to allow you to harm other people. Refusing to violate human Free Will is the most pathetic excuse Christians every came up with. This apology is an insult to human intelligence

I think in this case it would be good to understand, this life is like the matrix, in the movie Matrix. Nothing of this world can destroy soul, which is the important thing, body is just a temporary dwelling for soul, in Biblical point of view. People were expelled to this first death, because they wanted to know what evil means. In here all kind of evil is possible, because people wanted to know evil. Luckily this is just a short lesson that is not even meant to last forever. True life is with God and all those who become righteous, can have that after this lesson. Murder is wrong, but in Biblical point of view people should not fear anything of this world.

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matt. 10:28

None of what you just said makes any sense at all.

If a mass murderer goes into a school and murders a bunch of young students, what happens to the students who were murdered?

If those students are sent to heaven when they die, then they got out of the "test" for free and were never tested properly before entering heaven.

If those students are sent to hell when they die, then the same truth holds. They weren't given a full life to live where they might have repented in the future.

So these apologies for this theology are absurd. They don't make any sense at all.

Why you have accepted these apologies is beyond me. They clearly do not make any sense.

How can life be a valid test when some humans die at a very young age, whilst others die after having lived for many years.

Not only this but there have been very devout Christian pastors who were very devout believers for many decades before they finally realized the theology is nonsense. The problem there is that had they died while they were devout believers they would have been "saved", but since they were too unfortunate not to have been killed in time, now they'll be going to hell.

So this apology you have just given is absolute nonsense.

[Bust Nak]

All GOD had to do to harden Pharaoh's heart against Israel was to allow his fear to die off and then let him do what he most wanted to do - kill them all. To claim that HE forced Pharaoh to hate and kill the Israelites is to claim that a 6 ton monster with spikes and tentacles on his face describes an elephant, !!

Wait, didn't you tell me ages ago that we have no freewill on this Earth because here we are compelled into certain beliefs by physical evidence? That free will only existed in pre-creation?