{"id":2475,"date":"2011-09-02T08:07:11","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T13:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2475"},"modified":"2011-09-02T08:07:11","modified_gmt":"2011-09-02T13:07:11","slug":"evidence-equals-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2475","title":{"rendered":"Evidence Equals Force"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be this disconnect for many Christians. I have come across it multiple times. When asked why God doesn\u2019t present evidence for his existence, I often hear Christians tell me that God gave us Free Will. I don\u2019t really see how that addresses the problem but it seems that many Christians equate evidence with forced worship.<\/p>\n<p>The view is that God loves us and so he wants us to love him out of a free choice. So I ask, how can I love a God if I have no evidence for the existence of such a being? How does presenting evidence of his existence impede on human\u2019s free choice to worship him or not? If anything, it makes the choice more informed and therefore more meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>This is where I often tell the Christian believer that even if I knew that the God of the Bible existed, I still wouldn\u2019t worship such a being. While I couldn\u2019t consider myself an atheist any longer, I certainly would not be a Christian.<\/p>\n<p>This often blows their mind. But the point of this is not to astonish them in this way, but rather to get them to acknowledge that there is no challenge to free will if God were to have given us all knowledge or at least strong evidence for his existence. We would still have free will to accept and worship him or not.<\/p>\n<p>So why aren\u2019t we all born with absolute knowledge of God? Here Christians sometimes argue that we are, be just don\u2019t know it. Well, if we know it but we don\u2019t know it then we don\u2019t really know it, do we? Duh! These are the word games Christians often try to play in order to get around the obvious problem that they are asking us to make an uninformed choice. This goes beyond free will and faith and into willful ignorance.<\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size: 1em;\">Related articles<\/h6>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2455\">More Evidence for Jesus Than for Me?<\/a> (dangeroustalk.net)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2467\">You&#8217;re Not Worthy of The Evidence<\/a> (dangeroustalk.net)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/foxholeatheism.com\/the-problem-of-divine-hiddenness\/\">The Problem of Divine Hiddenness<\/a> (foxholeatheism.com)<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li\"><a href=\"http:\/\/renetaxian.wordpress.com\/2011\/08\/30\/magical-thinking\/\">Magical Thinking: a religious deconversion (Atheism\/Agnosticism)<\/a> (renetaxian.wordpress.com)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=c76a1a29-d2a4-42b8-9e51-51d179bc7c6a\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2475\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be this disconnect for many Christians. I have come across it multiple times. When asked why God doesn\u2019t present evidence for his existence, I often hear Christians tell me that God gave us Free Will. I don\u2019t really see how that addresses the problem but it seems that many Christians equate evidence [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1039,310,589,42,219,134,702],"tags":[278,2215,37,11,123,658,2241,2216,1325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions\/2476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}