David B. Calhoun’s Blog

There’s a video up at LiveLeak.com that asks ten questions. The video is well done and asks very good, intelligent questions. Because of the honesty and rationality of the video, I’ve decided to honor the request for answers by trying to answer them myself. There are a few that I don’t have answers for, but for the others - I hope they are as good as the questions, and I hope this helps someone out there, so I’m posting it.

1. Why won’t God heal amputees?
2. Why are there so many starving people in our world?
3. Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible?
4. Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense?
5. Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible?
6. Why do bad things happen to good people?
7. Why didn’t any of Jesus’ miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence?
8. How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?
9. Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood?
10. Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians?

1. If God exists and is a good God, would he necessarily have an obligation to heal uniformly all types of ailments? Does God have an obligation to anything at all?

2. I don’t know. This does seem to be a problem for a good God. (to read more, see The Problem of Evil or, more recently, topics on the Problem of Suffering)

3. These are part of the laws of the Hebrew Testament, what Christians call the Old Testament (laws which have been superceded by the New Testament). The laws are a product of their times. I don’t know what to think myself about them, whether they are made by humans or actually given by God. In either case they are laws made in very different times that address a very different culture. Also, consider that anyone breaking these very harsh laws were likely breaking the law knowingly - that is, they were aware of the law when they broke it.

4. Again, the Bible was written in a very different time. The current standard of science is a very recent standard that is a product of our times. To hold the Bible to scientific standards is to retroactively hold it to a standard that had not yet been created and is not even guaranteed to be the “end-all” standard of truth. This is to say nothing of whether God is the author of the Bible at all. But in any case, if the Bible was written by man or by God, it would be unthinkable that a document written originally for an ancient culture would be written in a scientific standard, which would not benefit anyone nor be understood by anyone of that time.

5. I know of no passage in the Bible (though I’m no expert) that directly advocates slavery. Each of the verses mentioned (ex 21:20-21, colo 3:22-24, eph 6:5, 1 peter 2:18) I looked up and found to be biblical instructions for the pre-existing institution of slavery. The Bible didn’t invent or advocate it. There’s a valid point in saying that giving instructions for it is the same as advocating it, which is a fair point, but need not be the case. I agree tough that it’s disappointing that the Bible (in both the Old Testament and New Testament) didn’t advocate ending slavery.

6. I don’t know. The Bible itself tries to answer this with the book of Jonah, which basically ends up saying “God does what he wants to do - don’t judge him”. In other words, we don’t get an answer. Here’s an inverse problem: why do good things happen to bad people? I don’t have an answer for this.

7. What kind of evidence should we expect from Jesus’ miracles? Which miracles would leave behind this kind of evidence? For instance, changing water to wine, walking on water, healings, raising the dead (Lazarus), feeding thousands of people with very little food to start with, etc? I’m not sure how these would leave evidence. If written testimony from multiple sources suffices as evidence, then we definitely have that kind of evidence. But I think this question is asking for harder evidence - it’s difficult to see how that could be provided, even if the miracles did happen.

8. If God exists, should we expect that Jesus appears to everyone? Did Jesus say he would appear to everyone? It would be nice if he did, but he obviously doesn’t. Why not? I don’t know. This doesn’t necessarily point in his non-existence though.

9. This is a question of Biblical exegesis, which I’m definitely no expert on. Commentaries on this passage with give you different conclusions based on the scholar’s interpretation. In the actual passage in John, it says that many followers actually leave after Jesus says to eat his body and drink his blood, because they thought he was advocating cannibalism, and though it it to be just as ridiculous as it sounds. Even his disciples are confused and ask Jesus for clarification about this, and Jesus basically implies he doesn’t mean it literally. What he said was symbolic of entirely accepting Jesus and his teachings. He was in effect saying that his word must be accepted wholly - the flesh and blood is symbolic of this “whole”, plus I wouldn’t doubt Jesus wanted to add some dramatic effect in there. That’s what the best rhetoricians do…

10. Because most Christians treat their marriages no different than non-Christians do. The marriage ceremony is effectively asking God to bless their marriage. I don’t even know if God blesses any marriages. Let’s say for the sake of argument that God blesses all Christian marriages. Why then do they get divorced? Simply stated, it’s their own doing. There are some things in this world that are God’s responsibility and some things that are our own responsibility. It would be wrong to blame God for things we ourselves have done, whether God has blessed us or not.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 11:13 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.