Modern Christians Are Polytheists

May 22, 2019

In the past, I’ve argued that modern Christians, especially them with apologetic bents, worship two gods. A couple days ago, I got into a debate with one of the moderators at Capturing Christianity. Eventually, this moderator, who another moderator called a “firecracker” whose behavior online is worth examining, got upset after demanding a deductive argument to prove my point. I reiterated to him that philosophy proper isn’t done that way, so while he’s use to the deductive arguments Christian apologists are overly fond of, actual philosophical works don’t proceed in that manner. One is tasked with reading and deciphering paragraph after paragraph of philosophical thought and insight in order to grasp either an argument or the overall philosophy of a given philosopher.

Regardless of this, I obliged and provided a deductive argument that was patterned after Craig’s Moral Argument. I did this so that he wouldn’t be able to deny its validity. He would have then been obligated to discuss whether the argument is sound. Unfortunately, as is the case with a lot of wannabe apologists, this moderator was philosophically inept and therefore, devoid of any knowledge, perfunctory or otherwise, of how philosophy works. I will present that argument here and then present a fuller argument to show that Christians with apologetic bents indeed worship two, irreconcilable gods. The argument is as follows.

P1 If moral values and duties come from god, he wouldn’t violate moral universals

P2  God does violate moral universals

C Therefore, moral values and duties do not come from god

Like Craig’s Moral Argument, this is a modus tollens argument. If the consequent is false then we can infer that the antecedent is also false. Of course, someone may then ask what exactly do I mean by “God does violate moral universals.”

The specific moral universal he and I were discussing isn’t simply the more common universal against murder, but specifically the universal against infanticide. I told him that even the most ardent relativist accepts that different cultures do not routinely murder infants, especially in large numbers. He could at least grasp the concept of moral universals and as such, he didn’t disagree with that. What he could not do is disprove the fact that his god, per the Bible, committed infanticide, and on more than one occasion (Exodus 12:29-30; 1 Samuel 15:3)! He eventually removed me from the page because it’s clear he didn’t want other Christians to see what he thought was a dangerous line of thinking, the same line of thinking that has led many to atheism.

In the same breath, such Christians maintain that they worship a perfectly good god from whom moral values and duties extend from and that they worship a god who committed infanticide. There are other inconsistencies still; for example, Christians are usually against abortion and yet they worship a god who committed abortions. My interest, as always, is whether a Christian can reconcile these two concepts. Given my argument above and my extended argument, the answer is a resounding no. The extended argument, in the deductive logic that Christians love, would look as follows.

P1 If moral values and duties extend from a morally perfect god, this god wouldn’t violate moral universals

P2 The Judeo-Christian god violates moral universals

C Therefore, moral values and duties do not extend from the Judeo-Christian god

C2 Inference: The Judeo-Christian god is not a morally perfect god

C3 Inference: Moral values and duties might extend from another god who is morally perfect

Given my extended argument, either a Christian is tasked to find a candidate that better fits the description of a morally perfect deity from who moral values and duties extend from (which is what I allude to in C3)  or admit that the Judeo-Christian god is incompatible with the god alluded to in the Moral Argument. An honest Christian would seek the truth and eventually run into my Argument From Assailability. There isn’t a god in any religion who fits that description. So they are left with two conclusions: a) the Judeo-Christian god doesn’t fit the description b) the gods of other religions don’t fit the description. From there, atheism is all but inevitable because P2 can easily read “Allah violates moral universals” or “Ahura Mazda violates moral universals” or “Shiva violates moral universals,” and so on and so forth. Of course, the conclusion would then follow that moral values and duties do not extend from any of these gods, and after so many of these exercises, you will also have the following, what is clearly an explosive, pun very much intended, conclusion:

C4 Inference: Moral values and duties do not extend from a god who is morally perfect

So it’s not simply that atheism becomes inevitable, but that one is now left with the much harder work of explaining the origin of morality and also explaining how it works: Why are there universals? Why does morality appear to differ from culture to culture and throughout time? What role, if any, does reason play in morality? What school, if any, has succeeded at explaining how morality works? What school, if any, has succeeded in the project of moral ontology? What merit does moral pluralism have? Is the assumption that law proceeded morality mistaken?

There are so many questions one can ask and seek answers for. The issue is that philosophy proper isn’t really appealing to Christians because they purport to know all the answers and are thus, enamored with the notion that there’s one, absolute answer to any question. Because of this, they can’t accept that some questions have nuanced and even convoluted answers; other questions simply don’t have an answer. Philosophy proper deals with a lot of unknowns and uncertainty, which is far from the absolute knowledge Christianity purports to offer.

In any case, what’s clear is that the two concepts they have are incongruous and the false congruity they present is borne of cognitive dissonance. Christians routinely ignore what god did according to the Old Testament. Yet this is the being Jesus called “father”! This is precisely what led Marcionites and his followers to conclude that Yahweh was, in fact, an evil deity and that he wasn’t the father Jesus referred to. Christians routinely ignore most of the Old Testament because a lot of it contradicts what they’re told to believe about god: he’s good, merciful, loving. The Old Testament reveals a god who is far from that! So it may not be that just wannabe apologists are polytheists; it’s also that everyday Christians believe in two distinct concepts of god as well: the god portrayed in “the word of god,” which includes the Old Testament, and the more palatable figment borne of the human need for moral sanity and decency.

So when a wannabe apologist approaches you with the highbrow nonsense “Where do you get your morals from!?”, please refer them to this argument or present it to them. I guarantee you what will follow is frustration, name calling and insults, and an abrupt end to your conversation because Christians don’t want the skin falling from their eyes; they don’t want the veil lifted on their cognitive dissonance. It’s akin to opening a wound. Some of them are painfully aware of this, but continue to subscribe to false beliefs. They also don’t want to be made to realize that they don’t have the moral high ground and that their take on the origin of morality is woefully wrong. Despite Capturing Christianity’s cocksure insistence, Christianity is not true!

 

Written by R.N. Carmona Posted in atheism, christianity, ethics, logic, naturalism, philosophy, religion Tagged with apologetics, atheism, christianity, ethics, morality, philosophy, polytheism, the moral argument