why do deities need supernatural tricks?
Let’s pretend we’ve never been exposed to the notion of deities and the supernatural. Let’s imagine we’ve lived our lives considering only the straightforward natural world around us, where we can see, smell, touch, taste and feel everything we know exists.
Into this natural existence, we are one day given access to all the information available about every god and religious system in existence. So, without any preconceptions we can carefully and rationally assess if any of them might actually be possible.
What features of a religion are likely to give us pause for thought that invisible beings with superior powers are in fact real? Here are some suggestions:
- If a message is part of the package, the message would have to be consistent and make sense. For example, if the deity or deities claim to be all about love, they couldn’t be vengeful, violent and wish to condemn most of their creation to everlasting suffering.
- If a proscribed way of living is required, it would have to fit with scientific understanding of human behaviour. For instance, imagining that people are ‘bad’ because they choose to be, when even a basic understanding of psychology demonstrates that genes and childhood environment determine most of our behavioural ‘choices’, would show a level of ignorance that is impossible for any superior being.
- There would have to be a good reason for invisibility that overrides the fact that humans create random religions featuring conveniently invisible gods in every society.
- There would have to be no benefit for the humans promoting the religion, in terms of control or wealth. For example, beliefs that give power-hungry individuals the opportunity to exploit and manipulate other people, taking their money to build obscenely wealthy institutions, clearly demonstrate their human roots.
Why do I not mention supernatural tricks? Because supernatural tricks, such as coming back to life and walking on water are of no interest. Superior beings wouldn’t need supernatural demonstrations to be taken seriously. As any sane person knows, magic tricks are for charlatans. Consistency, depth, logic and notions with an out of this world humming glow would be the sole requirements.
Violet, this is a beauty! The appeal to logic is solid. The problem being, of course, theists have chosen not to use logic. They are simply incapable of addressing these statements/questions.
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What do you mean? Are you accusing PeW of not being logical? 🙂
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Worse… of switching it off when it suits him 🙂
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This must be the proverbial taking the rug under someone’s feet! You cover a lot of ground in a very short post.
Brilliant mate!
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Thanks! I’m now waiting for some Christians to pipe up and tell me why the tricks would be required.
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Crickets, crickets, crickets…
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I think you are up for a long wait. I think everytime a direct question is asked these apologists take cover only to resurface when there is wiggle room like on how to interpret a specific bible verse. Let me know when they show up, I have a few questions of my own too.
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I’m no Christian but I’ll try for an answer, just for fun: the tricks are not required, but just a token of good will, a measure of God’s love towards its creatures. That’s why Jesus resurrected Lazarus or multiplied bread and fish. I’m guessing if the give any answer it will go along these lines.
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Maybe some of them think of it along those lines, but I’ve heard a couple recently say that Christianity can only be true if the resurrection of the Jesus character happened – because that’s the evidence for divinity. I’m kind of confused by that take on religion. Sort of like, well yes it’s all harmful rubbish, but if the magic trick happened it must be true!
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Curious how prior to starting the Mormon religion Joseph Smith was arrested for fraud in a fortune telling scheme gone wrong 🙂
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I remember reading that on your blog. I wonder how many other religion builders have similar backgrounds. Perhaps all?
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Pingback: A Quiet Conversation About Purpose, Meaning, And Destiny | A Christian Worldview of Fiction
Hi, violetwisp. I’ll be your Christian who bits. 😀 In fact I wrote a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal for my post today. But on a more serious note, let me ask. Does Man know everything? I mean until the Hubble Telescope there was quite a bit about the universe we’d never imagined. Until we discovered DNA there was quite a bit about the human genome we did not have any idea about. Is it not foreseeable that there is something beyond our capability of testing physically because it is not physical but spiritual?
You want rational logic, and I can give you plenty, but you will argue it all away because I am only able to give you evidence since the spiritual is, well, spiritual.
One of the reasons Jesus is so important, however, is that He being God did bridge the physical/spiritual gap. He said it was, in part, that we could see the Father, having seen the Son. That’s about as clear and logical a person can get. You want to see God–well, here He is.
But that still isn’t enough for people who start with the presupposition that there is no God. Brush Jesus aside with any number of disbelief systems.
The fact is, evidence exists for anyone willing to hear.
Becky
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Thank you for commenting! I completely agree with you that we don’t know everything, and I can’t deny there is a possibility of something along the lines of ‘spiritual’ that we are unable to test. However, I’m quite sure that coming to the conclusion that Christianity is the correct expression of any spiritual force that may exist, is illogical. As I state in the post, the message is inconsistent; it doesn’t distinguish itself from any of the many other religions out there to be able to come to the conclusion it could be divinely, rather than humanly, inspired; and the whole concept of ‘sin’ is simply childish and flies against our scientific (and common sense) understanding of human behaviour.
I did enjoy your post though. I like all works of fantasy, and maybe that’s why I like to discuss Christianity so much. 🙂
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“… I can’t deny there is a possibility of something along the lines of ‘spiritual’ that we are unable to test.” Hmm, a small opening. Have you ever explored Zen Buddhism, Violet? It’s spiritual without being childish.
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Thanks for the suggestion, Jim. I do find a lot of aspects of Buddhism in general interesting. I like that questioning is encouraged, and I recognise that the peaceful, meditative nature of expression is of value for a lot of people. However, I came to the conclusion long ago that I’m not interested in seeking answers for questions to which there are no answers. The time and energy people from all ages and societies have devoted to questions of ‘meaning’ is enough for me to conclude that I would be wasting mine to join them. Life can only be lived. These questions only interest me when I think people have come to obviously wrong conclusions that have harmful side-effects. What’s your take on it all?
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You continue to impress me, Violet. “Life can only be lived.” Yes, but that too is a life philosophy with a (pragmatic) conception of meaning. [Oh, lovely, my cat’s getting sick …] Anyway, yes, whether implicit or explicit, we all make metaphysical “leaps of faith.” Yours may be the most rational.
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Sorry I made your cat sick 🙂
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🙂
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I love the concept that we humans who still have so much to learn about ourselves and the universe we live in think nothing of deciding whether or not there is something larger than us living on a block much bigger than the block we think we live on….
It’s hubris at it’s best, or worst, depending on your point of view.
That no one ever seriously asks this question amazes me: Why it is not absurd that we deign to deny the existence of something beyond our ken and to poke fun at the faith of others, yet we kill ourselves by smoking (among other forms of life shortening behaviors), we over eat to the point of epidemic adult onset diabetes, etc., etc..
I still think there’s something satisfying in the idea that “My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than yours.” – God.
Cheers,
Peter
A retired photographer looks at life
Peter Pazucha dot Com
Life Unscripted on WordPress
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Oh, I disagree. When the beliefs that people display involve telling others that they are ‘wrong’ and ‘evil’ for the completely harmless expression of their nature, religion becomes an illogical force that should be countered. While there is no way of knowing whether a supernatural force exists outside our realm of existence, it’s clear when examining the facts, that religions are irrational, man-made superstitious practices, that have roots in nothing more extraordinary than fear. It’s the duty of every rational atheist to poke fun at the absurdities inherent within these harmful, man-made religions, in the hope that more people will embrace logic and a pragmatic view on life that in turn will reduce the problematic behaviours they promote.
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Trying to catch up on some of your past blogs – I missed quite a few.
This one is excellent.
A genuine masterstroke of logic and common sense underscored by its brevity.
I especially loved the last paragraph.
And yet , there had to be a christian comment that piddle on the cornflakes which, rather than refute the topic at hand merely reinforces how utterly ridiculous belief in gods is.
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Thank you! I’m really pleased you like it. You may not be surprised to learn that PeW inspired it. However, you may be surprised to see that he didn’t comment, and in fact has ceased to communicate with me since I published it. Could I have hit a nerve?
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I give up … where is that blasted bumble-bee I’ve got to look at?
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Is this bee not good enough for you? There’s a bumble here, hidden in the flowers:
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He’s a lovely bee!
But I don’t want just any ol’ lovely bee, I want the b-all of all bees, the one I read about that has even Ark on the ropes … now to follow the link …
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Deities don’t need supernatural tricks … but their PR guys, that’s a different story.
Would you worship a god if He dressed like you (okay, like me) and went to the pub on Friday nights before taking his two little girls to the netball on Saturday morning? Put out his recycling bin every due date? Jacked up His car to change the flat tyre? Fretted about his tax return and swore at the blasted Muslims for blowing up buses and swore at the blasted Yanks for encouraging them? Of course they have to be that little bit more … unreal.
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