This is my response to a random hindu in twitter!
This is my response to “satchitanandareflections”
hi there..
my first blog and i am going to be responding to a random guy in twitter
who asked me to see his objections to Christianity .. something called
Jehovism Deconstructed
(link - http://satchitanandareflections.blogspot.com/2016/06/jehovism-deconstructed.html?m=1 )
i dont like or prefer christians to be giving lectures on hindu
doctrines anymore than the hindus doing the same.. but none the less i
appreciate this article written by this Mr. Satchitanandam simply because
he took out the time to express his opinions and concerns about christian
doctrines and its ramifications, which is riddled with logical fallacies and
lack of understanding basic theology.
let me start of with some basics in theistic philosophy before we can
get to the individual questions and rants of Mr. Satchitanandam
1)
omnipotence is the ability to do anything and
everything that is logical. (Matthew 19.26, Luke 1.37, Jeremiah 32.17, John
1.3) that is how it has been classically defined. Its not the ability to make
contradictory things like a square circle or a married batchelor!
Application -
Can God make a human who is free willed and at the same time fully control
what he does? NO
Can God make a person free willed and at the same time do things in this
world (in this timeframe) in his own timing (like bring judgment day before the
completion of time) ? NO
Can God appear as Jesus and force people to believe in him? NO
Can God send people to Heaven or Hell without their choice or
decision? NO
Can God become a Non - God? NOOO...
should this mean that God is not omnipotent? NO ... the absence of inability
to do the logically impossible is not a defect, it itself denotes omniscience!
2) Omnipresence is the pervading presence in everyplace in every
time frame in every dimension at the same time. (Psalms
139.7-10, Proverb 15.3, Jeremiah 23.24, Colossians 1.17)
Applications -
Does this mean that God is present in Hell? YES (2 Thessalonians 1.7-9)...BUT!...
hell is a place where his Glory, his love , power, joy will be absent
and not necessarily his Presence fully. hell is not a evil place, it is
merely the place where evil people/beings exist (just as on earth u will have
good and bad people existing IN GOD (Acts 17.28). but in Hell his attributes of
Justice, Anger on Evil will be what is manifested , not a total absence
Does it mean that Hell is present in God, meaning evil is within God?
yes it is inside the presence of God , but not necessarily within the being
of God! (if you are a Pantheist, than this is a problem for you,.. in classical
Judeo-Christian theism God is not a part of his creation..)
3) Omnibenevolence is the being of absolute goodness , justice,
righteousness, order, compassion, mercy forgiveness and so on. (John
3.16, psalms 145.17, James 1.17, Hebrews 1.3).
Application-
Does it mean that the presence of evil suffering and diseases
are proof that God is incompassionate?
again this is a contradiction, can God create a Free world with Free
humans and still produce a perfectly good situation like himself? , NO he cant,
but that is what is logically impossible! omnipotence is the ability to do
anything and everything logically possible!
presence of HELL is proof that god is incompassionate ? God is to be taken as
a being , not as a mathematical abstract concept! He is Loving, Caring ,
Forgiving Merciful..... but dont stop there... he is also Just, Angry at
what is evil, Jealous of his creation, persistent and unchanging.... so
just as the love of God is demonstrated through Jesus (john 3.16) and the
chance to be with God in his presence in heaven , his justice and righteousness
also demands that those who are unjust, evil and sinful be separated from his
presence ( a choice that the freewilled human makes, not something imposed on
them 1 timothy 2.4, hell was not even prepared for humans, it was meant
for the demons who rebelled against God Matthew 25.41)
the damnation of non christians and those who never heard of the gospel
makes god unjuist and incompassionate? God is exclusive, i know of no religion
or philosophy that claims all religions are valid! ex. bhagavat gita 9.30 -
shows how chanting of 'only' rama will deliver the sinner! this is a classical
example of the law of non contradiction in philosophy. Either all
religions are false or Only one can be true!. i believe it is christainity and
you Hinduism
4) omniscient – all knowing
Application-
if God already knew satan ->adam and -> the people of this earth
would sin, does it make God a sinner? NO it doesn’t … that is the whole point
of creating Freewilled beings, god can be held responsible for the sins of
humans only if man is deterministic! Just as we cannot be put in jail for a
murder that my son commits, we cannot even question or ask God if he is
responsible for our mistakes!
Couldn’t he stop it? He can but that would mean controlling
freewill beings! He cant contradict , remember?
Doesn’t he know? Than isn’t he responsible? Prior knowledge is not Predetermination, I know that when I let my son to go out and ride his cycle, he will at on point or other fall and abrade his knees! That is knowledge , and not my doing!, God knows what choices we will make, but doesn’t determine those choices.
following are videos from Reasonablefaith youtube channel to discuss on the problem of evil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k64YJYBUFLM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxj8ag8Ntd4
World is a imperfect place / sinful place – therefore God who made it
must also be imperfect or sinful - NOPE! Its not.. this is a nonsequitor, and not
a logical conclusion, an absolutely perfect artist can make a completely bad
and ugly painting. It really is a preference of that artist. So as a
Omnibenevolent and Omniscient God , he only needs to create a “GOOD” world, not
a “PERFECT” world. I suppose you would agree that this world is atleast a good
world in many sense! This is a fallacy trying to determine the attribute of the
cause from the effect – like almost saying the white egg must have been laid by a white hen!
:P
Christians Doctrines that are
misunderstood
1) Book of Genesis – flat earth, star studded sky, man created in god’s image , breath of
god is soul of man? Why create so much? image of god – does god have a body
than?
Video explaining genesis from Inspiring Philosophy
youtube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf5ovSpS2GU
INTERPRETATION The scholarly interpretation of genesis is that it has a poetic and allegoric
framework, example - read genesis 1 and genesis 2, you will see two creation
accounts, one centered around god and one around adam. That itself is simple
enough to prove that it is not an historic account of origin of man 6000 yrs ago!
The majority of scholarly Christian thinking right from the time of St.
Augustine (4th century ACE) is that WE CANT interpret genesis
creation story literally!
Again a claim is being made that genesis teaches
flat earth (kindly quote the verses) and that stars are studded in a dome
shaped sky. EVEN IF THAT IS TRUE! It is irrelevant as the creation story is a
theological exegesis and not a scientific treatise.
IMAGE OF GOD – image of God means the special privilege of being created by god with ‘freewill’
and a ‘thinking rational mind’ .. are animals and plants also created in the
image of God? No!. there is no theological interpretation that “the breath
of God produces spirit in the man”. Does god have a body ? again
nonsequitor trying to analyse the cause from its effect. Illogical!
WASTEFUL VAST CREATIONS LIKE THE
TRENCH, OUTER SPACE ETC – is something wasteful because you and I
don’t see it or experience it? Such a narcissistic attitude doesn’t take us
anywhere but shows the stupidity of the question. Studies in the teleological
fine tuning argument for God has shown that all factors of the universe
including its vastness is a prerequisite for life on earth to exist. So there
is nothing wasteful, and the universe is not here for your sake or my sake. It is
here to speak of the glories of its creator.
2) Free- will –
One of the reasons why we are said to be created in
the image of god is that we are not ‘automatons’/ ‘robots’ as satchinanandham
claims!. That exactly is the reason why God created freewilled independent self
aware and thinking beings unlike the plants and animals (most of them) which
are driven by emotional and impulse and beyond thinking and rationaling… but
what is the use of freewill
- only a free willed being can love! Both your
Dog and your Wife “love” you, but they are not in the same plane of “love”
(hopefully) the dog is driven by passion and impulse were as your wife loves
you out of volition and decision
-only a free willed being can produce maximal
good in this world – without freewill we would be automatons and robots as
sathcinanandham has pointed out,. That is not a great creation? Creating freewilled
beings is greater than creating simple blindly order following automatons!
IMPLICATIONS of FREE – WILL
- God can act only through the choices
and decisions of mankind
- God’s timing will be withhead for the
sake of the freewilled beings – ex- god knows who
will believe him and who wont, than he could straigawaycastcas the bad
people in hell even without giving them a chance to be born and live a life!.. that
is not possible because he cannot contradict himself nor determine a person’s
fate beyond that person’s will or choice
- sending so many prophets and teachers to warn Israel
before sending Jesus – it’s not a failed mission in any sense, because u
cant expect god to be contradictory and do the illogical, namely create //fully freewilled beings and yet fully control them// … so di God
fail to correct his creation or fail to redeem them for 1000s of years? No … We
have failed to follow God and destroyed our own chance of redemption.
-why wait for 1000s of years before sending Jesus - the same as above, the timing of Gods
intervention is atleast partly determined by his creation, it is a voluntary
restriction he applies to himself, and remain faithful to his own words
3) Original Sin
A thorough confusion of the Original sin is
prevalent amongst the hindus, which I will attempt to explain in another
article or video maybe.
Romans 5.12 – therefore , just as sin entered the
world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all
people because all men sinned.
Matthew 19.14 - Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not
hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these
Genesis
6.12 - God saw how corrupt the
earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their (own) ways
The following verses show how God will not pass on sin from
father to son, (though in the oldtestament the consequences of sin
could be passed from father to son)
"The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father;
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the
righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon
him." Ezekiel 18:20
"The fathers shall not be put to death for the
children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every
man shall be put to death for his own sin." Deuteronomy 24:16
SO ARE WE PUNSIHED FOR ETERNITY FOR A
SIN WE NEVER COMMITTED? CERTAINLY NOT
4) why Israel and not other countries (older
civilisations) – this begs the question. Why didn’t God choose America or Israel
to reveal his vedas to him but only to the rishis of india? This is a pointless
question.
5)– no other historical document from 5th century bce to 5th century ace has the level of historicity that the gospels and newtestament has! you will have a majority of even secular atheistic scholars who agree to that, I suppose satchinanandham has made no attempt to study them before commenting this
6) internal inconsistencies in gospel,
resurrection – every historian and every lawyer knows this is OKAY! … and
this is EXPECTED. Simply because the gospels are not forgeries written by
conspiring but independent testimonies and witnesses to the event – hence one
would say 2 women went to the tomb and another mentions more or less numbers. And
historians can easily harmonise these gospels to show the actual history.
7) virgin birth – original sin – satcinanandham’s
own words proves w, I am saying here, namely that Jesus cannot be sinless just because he was born of a virginwvirgin I agree that’s why I feel his explanation of original
sin is flawed and illogical.
Is virgin birth true or false? Whatever it is, it is not necessarily the central doctrine of Christianity , and he assumes that by proving that parthenogenesis or single mother embryo creation by science will debunk virgin birth? Seriously? So if I can make a cake in my house, it proves that there are no bakers outside who makes cakes… or that if I manage to built a car by myself in my garage, that proves that Hendry Ford who invented the car doesn’t exist?
8) what about sinner before and after jesus?
– the Christian understanding is that Jesus suffered and died as God in Being of
Man, which is eternally and infinitely sufficient to legally cancel the sins of
all of mankind both past and future.
John 8.56 – Abraham was looking forward and put his
faith in god for his salvation
Psalams 110 – David prophesied about the messiah
and had pit his faith in Jesus God for his salvation
9) what about those who never heard the gospel?
As I already mentioned, we will be judged by our
works , wheather that work is sufficient or not is to be determined by God who
is the Judge of all the earth. You and I maynot have a say on his judgements. He
is the creator and he alone has the power and the omniscience to decide on this
10) was jesus sent to hell for our sins – in
a sense he was, he tasted death and hell on behalf of all mankind.
11) god wills that all people be saved? Than why
send to hell?
Because freewill! Even though it is God’s will that
all men be saved, he cannot override mans’s will. That was the definition of
omnipotence as explained before
15) children who die young are saved but why not
those who never heard the gospel.
Because children are innocent whereas adults have a
conscience, based on which god will judge them and they have to show their
deeds to show their righteousness ( which no man is capable of, being
absolutely sinless and pure to obey his own conscience from birth to death)
TamChris
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