The “I Could Do It Better” Fallacy
Many people struggle with either belief in God or the nature of God. I can understand that, as I have been there myself. There are some good reasons to struggle with these questions. However, I have noticed that there is one objection that seems to come up over and over again. People say things such as if I was God, I would appear physically and prove my existence or heal everyone with cancer or stop all the hurricanes or kill all the evil dictators or whatever. Since God does not seem to do what I would do, he either does not exist or he is not worth worshipping.
Really? Do we really think that we have the proper perspective that we can know the best way much better than an eternal and omniscient being? Most of us, if we were taken from our regular life and suddenly put as President of the United States would have no idea what we are doing. We do not have the knowledge, experience, resources or perspective to run a country. Yet we think we could run the universe better than the God of the Bible. Our young children probably think they could run our family better by spending the money we put to bills on toys and candy. Makes sense from their perspective but does not fit reality. Before we reject God because we think we could do it better than the biblical God, perhaps we need to take a reality check and gain some humility.
Have you committed or commanded the slaughter of entire cities? Killed Egyptians for a Pharaoh’s sins? Sicked bears on jeering children? If you answered no to all of these questions, then you could indeed do better than the God of the Old Testament. In my view, the people most in need of a reality check are the ones who find such a deity to be worthy of worship or even respect.
It’s funny that the same questions always seem to come up, the same parts of the Bible put out there, things that we cannot reconcile with our minds or sense of justice. Therefore we decide that we could not possibly believe in a God that would commit such seeming atrocities. The “God of the Old Testament” is the same God of the New Testament, and in that New Testament, His Son came to Earth to die for the sins of mankind, not just then, but now. His invitation is open for any who would accept His love and forgiveness. The subject of deaths caused by a just God is uncomfortable. Yet judging that same God is putting ourselves in an odd position, claiming that somehow we know more than One who created the universe and sees the past, present and future right into infinity. For myself, I would prefer to admit that there are some things that I might not understand, yet still accept the love of a God who I know will welcome all who come to Him, with open arms.
Ironically, much of this post is a fallacy.
Ironically, Mike’s post is a fallacy too. Or is at least as far as I know, since he’s provided absolutely no support for his assertion.
Everyone I’ve ever heard claim outrage at the seeming “atrocities” of the Biblical God has no issues with the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of millions of innocent and defenseless lives in the last half-century (I refer, of course, to abortion). Usually, in fact, they are outraged that people would oppose this institutionalized secular murder. Then again, it’s a lot easier to be outraged at Someone who tells you that your preferred lifestyle is damnable sin then it is at someone who is helping you avoid the consequences of that lifestyle and pretending that it isn’t costing someone else life.
This is the argument that I am making. What I encounter are critics who conclude God does not exist in this way:
1. If God existed, he would do things the way I would do them.
2. The world does not look like God is doing things the way I would do it.
3. Therefore, God does not exist.
The problem is that premise 1 is false.
I’m a (slightly) different kind of critic. Hi.
If I may be so bold as to posit a variation on your argument:
1. If the God of the Bible is loving and therefore worthy of worship, he would do things in a consistently loving way.
2. The God of the Bible does not do things in a consistently loving way.
3. Therefore, the God of the Bible is not loving and therefore not worthy of worship.
How would you respond to this?
cpmkxt,
That’s not a fallacy since I did not provide an argument. Its just a statement presented as fact that could be true or false. A fallacy lies within the structure of an argument.
Come on Mike. 🙂 You provided a bare assertion, which while not formally fallacious, we literally have no reason to believe it.
That is a more robust argument Kyle, and yet it ignores part of the picture of the revelation of God – at least as understood by orthodox Christianity (and that’s orthodox with a small “o”) .
God isn’t merely loving (and here I’m not suggesting that God somehow decided to be loving), Christianity (and Judaism) both believe that He has other qualities. One of which is his justness, another is his self-consistency.
I agree that the “argument” is rather laser-focused on one aspect of the Christian God, but aren’t all aspects necessary for God to be God? I don’t claim to have disproved a necessary aspect, but I would say that my not seeing the “loving” aspect is probably my chief reason for finding him to be unworthy of worship.
The problem is that what you mean by acting in a consistent loving manner is acting the way you would (or would want to). You want God to submit to your definition of loving.
But the way I act has nothing to do with being consistently loving. I can’t even say that I want to be consistently loving in the manner of a being who is worthy of worship. I have a certain set of expectations for people such as myself who are not worthy of worship, and a higher set of expectations for anyone who claims to be worthy of worship.
Don’t we all ultimately evaluate for ourselves who is or is not worthy of worship? We may have reached different conclusions, Stephen, but haven’t we gone about reaching these conclusions in the same way? You might say that you’ve submitted to God’s definition of loving, but how could you have done so without first making the evaluation that God’s definition was correct?
Yes, Kyle, I image all aspects are required, which was my point. One can’t just say that God should be loving – and that would surely entail different things to different people at different times – if it is at the expense of the rest of his nature. Love and justice, for example, aren’t competing aspects of God’s nature (or ours). They are complementary.
I wonder if you have tried to think about this from God’s perspective? In some sense we are all, at time or another, God’s enemies and we have been judged (or will be judged) accordingly and yet we have this most extraordinary of events in history called the atonement. Even if one is not impressed by Christ’s suffering on the cross the meaning of the cross and of the resurrection for mankind and for (new) creation should give us pause for thought.
I would agree that for God to be God he must be more than just loving. But if he fails to be loving, then he fails to be God. I have tried to see it from his perspective, but that just made it worse. I imagined myself killing and inflicting harm needlessly, hardening hearts, and using human lives as object lessons. Needless to say the exercise failed to fill me with warm fuzzies.
You bring up Jesus, bob, but I’m not there yet. I’d like to hear more about the Egyptians. All those dead Egyptians piling up in Exodus, what were they to God? Collateral damage?
Who said you should be filled with warm fuzzies? I would have thought that in the presence of God trembling and fear on all our parts would be more likely. This is not a case of buddy Jesus being cool with whatever sin you happen to be committing just as long as you are, when push come to shove, a good egg. I think you have again demonstrated Stephen’s point. It’s not that judgement and love are mutually exclusive. Rather, you don’t like how God went about his business. And that is the long and short of it.
If you want to talk about the Egyptians then fine. But I don’t suppose I can answer your questions for at least two reasons. One, I’ve not pretend to have any. Two, I suspect you are a half-empty type of guy when it comes to God.
But if you still want to talk about divine judgement then you will first have to explain to me why you think that the Bible provides a reliable account God’s interaction with his creation yet none of the revelation or theology associated with God’s nature is reliable. You will also have to explain to me what moral source you appeal to when you judge the being that is by definition the ultimate source of morality.
1. You didn’t ask me to be in the “presence” of God (whatever that means), you asked me to look at things from God’s perspective. This experiment is designed to put me in God’s divine shoes and engender empathy, isn’t it? I’m afraid the experiment failed.
2. I never said I wanted anything from Jesus, neither friendship nor approval. I’d appreciate if you didn’t try to turn me into an archetype and instead treated me as an individual, as I am treating you.
3. You’re right, I don’t like the way God is reported to have gone about his business. You apparently do. We’ve both made judgments about God, haven’t we? Is it wrong to make judgments about God? Is one judgment worse than another if we’ve both used the same process to reach them?
4. Your “half-empty” remark is another attempt on your part to argue against an archetype rather than a person. If you feel I’ve been pessimistic or unreasonably skeptical, please give reasons why instead of speculating about my personality.
5. I have no problem granting–for the sake of this discussion–the complete reliability of Biblical accounts, revelation, and theology. Let’s say it’s all 100% true. After examining Biblical accounts, revelation, and theology, I find the God who exists (again, for the sake of this discussion) to be unloving and therefore no more worthy of worship than the demons in the air.
6. The moral source I appeal to is my experience of morality. I find my experience of morality to be a worthy source to appeal to because it seems quite similar to that of the majority of my fellow humans. I don’t have a definitive naturalistic explanation for this quasi-authoritative shared morality–and I’m not certain there is one–but if you feel it’s germane to the discussion, I could share a few ideas I’ve gotten from people smarter than myself that I find compelling.
1) No, I never asked you to be in the presence of God. I suspect that being in the presence of God is neither something you decide to do – like deciding to have ice-cream today instead of deciding against – nor is it something that is understandable vicariously. Instead, what I was attempting to do was counter your “warm fuzzies” quip. If that is what you expected to feel then I suggest you may have been running in vain. And If that is what you think is my view of God then you have misunderstood me.
2) I have no idea what you are talking about – either with respect to what you do or do not want from Jesus or this archetype you speak of. I’d say you are fairly unique in your views – at least in my experience. Indeed, I’ve only ever once met someone who does not outright deny the existence of God and yet he spends a great deal of energy finding him unworthy of worship. Furthermore, I do not think that either of you are the progenitor of such an esoteric idea. So for two reasons your archetype claim holds little water. Perhaps a little more exegesis and a little less eisegesis would help avoid further confusion.
3) What process have we used?
4) While I remain unaware of the nature of this cryptic archetype you refer to, I withdraw my claim that your are “pessimistic and unreasonably skeptical” when it comes to God’s nature.
5) Fine. If you believe that God is sovereign – at lest even in principle – then I’ll just have to accept that you also believe that your own brand of morality trumps God’s. Which leads us on to point 6…
6) Sure! Please explain to me the compelling ideas you have heard. I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory answer for a morality that is worth an objective damn if it is not grounded in some transcendental source. Sam Harris, for example, didn’t provide one. It appears to me that the only consistent naturalistic view on morality is moral nihilism. There is neither moral right nor moral wrong – only the Zeitgeist of moral opinion. But perhaps you have other ideas?
I don’t comment much, but I’d like to think this through with Kyle on his terms. If, for the sake of argument, we agree that things in the OT happened as described, then we necessarily accept that the civilizations God judged committed incest, child sacrifice, lawlessness, etc as a matter of course. In the interest of preserving humanity and elevating the experience of life on this planet God ended these wicked civilizations in a spectacular & public way. If this persuaded contemporaneous and subsequent civilizations to restrain their evil practices, then it seems God has acted in the best interest of ALL humanity. It is indeed gruesome and it is good for all of mankind–which is God’s concern throughout the OT & NT. I think we lose sight of this when we arbitrarily focus only the individual being judged.