Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
The Other Seed Magazine
Rev. Hal Seed is Pastor of the New Song Community Church in Oceanside, California. Seed has self-published a book entitled "The God Questions: Exploring Life's Great Questions About God".
[link] For Seed, faith in God is not found with blind surrender but upon evidence found in the Scriptures. "If you understood every Scripture in context, there are no contradictions," he said adding that he uses the Scriptures to explain the questions posed in his book. "It takes more faith to be atheist than a theist."
Ah. Circular logic and a misunderstanding of what the word "evidence" means. Typical. There is no "evidence" in the Bible - just anecdotes. "Anecdotal evidence" is not really evidence at all - and should not be treated as such.
Seed asks what he considers to be the "biggies":
- Is God real?
- Is the Bible true?
- Do all roads lead to heaven?
- How could a good God allow suffering?
The first three seem like good questions at first blush - but are they really?
More below the fold...
Question number one is badly phrased to say the least. Which "God"? What the heck do you mean by "God"? An more precise way to ask the question would be "Does a god exist?" Even so, we still have to assume a lot of things at the outset - that we all share a common baseline definition of what a "god" is. The problem with Seed's question is that he obviously means "Is Pastor Hal Seed's own personal interpretation of the Christian God real?"
The second question is merely a re-statement of the first. "Is the Bible true" is just another way of asking "Is God real?", but asserts that the "God" being referred to is the Christian God - before that is a known fact. If you cannot answer the first, if you cannot determine which god, then the second becomes superfluous.
The third question is even deeper into the assumption that everyone is Christian and hold the same basic set of beliefs. It's just a load of crap. What exactly is "heaven"? Where is this "all roads lead to" stuff quoted from? Oh! The Bible, you say?
As you can see, the first three questions assume that "God" is the Christian God, and that the Bible is a divinely inspired document (subtly assuming yet again that the Christian God exists), and that the common understanding of the Christian heaven is a real place.
Pablum. Preaching to the choir.
The fourth question is the best of the bunch. The Problem Of Evil is an old and venerated philosophical field of study. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus stated it perfectly more than 2200 years ago:
"God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, he is weak -- and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful -- which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?" --Epicurus (from "The Epicurus Reader", translated and edited by Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson, Hackett Publishing, 1994, p. 97)
A defense or explanation of the seeming paradox of a good god allowing evil to happen is called a "theodicy". I would love to read Pastor Hal's own personal theodicy - but somehow I don't think it'll be much more than general, feelgood, Christian backslapping and gladhanding - with a healthy dose of "God works in mysterious ways".
I could be wrong. But I don't think so.
[Pastor Hal Seed] At first glance, that’s not a very satisfying revelation. “God reveals some things, and doesn’t reveal others.” But, on second thought, I like that answer. I don’t want a God who is so small He can explain everything to me. When my children were little, there were things I wanted to explain to them, but they couldn’t understand. I want a God like that. I want a God so big that He knows things He couldn’t possibly explain to me.
Like I said, "God works in mysterious ways". Nothing new here, just the same old weak arguments used for years by apologists. Re-packaged and marketed to fellow Christians - who are the only ones who would be impressed with his apologetics. That is to say, those who already believe.
Isn't that missing the point of evangelizing? Or maybe the point was never evangelizing at all, but rather something else entirely? Like making money? Or becoming popular?
What are your thoughts?
(Find may find out more about Pastor Seed's books at his website - www.halseedbooks.com)
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Permission to link to your comments
I am the webmistress for Hal Seed Books. We are in the process of building Hal's website.
We would like to add your comments and a link to your page on Hal's Book Review page.
Hal believes that by including negative as well as postive reviews he is being open and honest about how people react to his books. Plus, it helps create dialog about these important topics, which is a vital part of the process for anyone seeking answers. Don't you agree?
1. Do we have your permission to reference your comments?
2. Would you be willing to add a LINK to Hal's website (halseedbooks.com) so that those that MIGHT be interested in exploring answers on their own have the resources to do so?
THX, Amazeinc
re: apologetics
I don't think that the arguments of apologists serve to "convert" anyone -- I agree with you that they just help the faithful prop themselves up with the pretense of intellectual security.
tantum religio potuit suadere malorum
Lucretius
Ha. Ha.
Question number 4 is a sample of the extremely goddy waters we swim in all the time without noticing it. The question presumes a god, and most readers are so immersed in our culture that they can't even see that.
On the brighter side, yet another couple of god-frauds have begun a very public meltdown:
"Brazilian mega-church leaders Sonia Moraes Hernandes and Estevam Hernades-Filho spent the last two decades building one of Brazil's largest evangelical empires."
And then they came to the U.S. with a little extra cash on them. Um, a bit more than the $10,000 they declared at Customs.
I love this part:
“Agents found the first extra bundle of cash, $9,000, tucked into the cover of Sonia's Bible. They found other bundles of money squirreled away in various places, including inside a CD case, in a folded jacket packed in a suitcase and in the backpack of their young son, Gabriel, according to the arrest affidavit. The grand total: $56,000.”
Insert loud, horrified evangelist voice here (Deep South accent optional): TUCKED INTO THE COVER OF HER BIBLE! SWEET BABY JESUS!!
“The couple – already under investigation by Brazil's federal organized crime unit for charges including tax evasion and money laundering – preside over an empire of about 1,200 churches in Brazil, as well as television and radio stations. Their Reborn in Christ Church is considered the second largest neopentecostal church in the country.”
“The couple's arrest has sent shock waves through the evangelical world in Brazil, and tremors through the Brazilian religious community in Florida, where the couple has at least two churches, one each in Deerfield Beach and Orlando.”
Oh, but it’s no big deal, because:
“One of the pastors at the Deerfield Reborn in Christ Church said the arrests of the husband and wife – known as the Apostle Estevam and the Bishop Sonia to their faithful – were part of a ‘religious persecution.’ ”
They were arrested by the FBI at Customs, bailed out, then arrested again by Immigration the instant they were released. And then, bad news back home:
“A Brazilian court issued arrest warrants for the couple last week, after investigators there argued that the charges against them in Miami were proof that they were laundering money, evading taxes and that the cash they brought to the United States might eventually be used to flee Brazilian justice.”
So sad. They’re accused of taking church donations and buying “mansions, real estate and other valuable assets worth millions of dollars both in Brazil and in the United States," according to Jose Reinaldo Guimaraes Carneiro, a prosecutor with Sao Paulo state's organized crime unit.
Like Jim and Tammie Faye Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and so many others, the long carefree campaign of preying on the sick and weak comes to a very nasty, very public end.
And yet too many of us will see this and say “Gosh those were bad evil people, using religion to prey on innocents. Not like all the GOOD televangelists.”