{"id":2934,"date":"2012-05-15T08:37:49","date_gmt":"2012-05-15T13:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2934"},"modified":"2012-05-15T08:37:49","modified_gmt":"2012-05-15T13:37:49","slug":"if-we-dont-who-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2934","title":{"rendered":"If We Don\u2019t, Who Will?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Religious believers often try to defend the ridiculousness of God\u2019s commands in the Bible by asking me, \u201cWho are you to question God?\u201d Who am I indeed? I think the question I would like them to answer is, \u201cIf we don\u2019t question God, who will?\u201d<\/p>\n

Now of course God is fictional and so it really doesn\u2019t matter. However, I think atheists have been trying to convince religious believers of this reality for a long time and that a different tactic might just be to inspire religious believers to rebel against their God. When their God doesn\u2019t come around to smite them, then they will stop believing that their deity exists.<\/p>\n

With that said, many atheists often refer to God as a tyrant and this question about accountability proves it. Just as religious believers claim that we must be accountable to God, we have to claim that their God must also be accountable to us. After all, only tyrants believe they are unaccountable.<\/p>\n

This brings us into a full conversation on morality in which religious believers will no doubt ask about our moral grounding<\/a>. We can of course turn this around and ask about God\u2019s moral grounding. If God\u2019s moral grounding comes down simply to God\u2019s whim, than all things are permissible and morality is meaningless.<\/p>\n

Enter the \u201cGod is perfect\u201d argument and all we have to do is point out that we only have his word on that and his actions according to the Bible seem to contradict that word. We can then either point out our favorite atrocity from the Old Testament or even some of the \u201cmetaphors\u201d that Jesus uses that seem particularly violent from the New Testament. Of course the whole concept of Hell (which comes from the New Testament) is also evidence that God is certainly not perfect. Even our justice system as flawed as it is, allows for people to be redeemed rather than sentencing everyone to eternal torture.<\/p>\n

But the point here is that religious believers need to hold their deity accountable. If they don\u2019t, who will?<\/p>\n

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