Religious Atheism
Religious Atheism
Living in 21st century America is an interesting experience. While being surrounded by those who are intolerant towards Christianity because universal salvation is not taught, at the same time being told that you must be tolerant of other religions that teach the exact same thing! As I write this, I realize this is the most politically incorrect and infuriating thing that can be written within my own culture. To have the audacity to proclaim that someone’s personally held religious beliefs are worthless is a crime in this day and age. But, for me to not do so would be to compromise my own belief and sacrifice truth on the altar of popular opinion.
Christ is the offense to all other religions. Within the pages of the New Testament he claims to be God. He is the author and finisher of our faith. He is said to be the creator, sustainer, giver of life, the truth, the only way, and the God of the Old Testament (YHVH). God has revealed himself as Triune. He is not bound by time and space. He is not limited within creation. He is all powerful (omnipotent), all knowing (omniscient), outside of time where everything is immediately in his presence (omnipresent). He is being itself, the greatest conceivable being, possessing self-existence known as aseity. We can philosophically deduce what God is by understanding what He is not. These are known as the incommunicable attributes of God. To divest Him of any one of these attributes, He would cease to be God. You would then be left with Atheism and not Theism.
Whatever the religion is, whatever worldview it holds, whatever book or books it calls holy, whatever theology is presented, if God is not articulated as a complete, simple, and necessary being, then they have no God at all.
As an example, let us look at the Pastafarians. This is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The claim is made that to believe in God is no different than believing in the creation of an unemployed slot-machine engineer. But, is this an accurate comparison? By definition the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) does not share the same attributes as the God of the Bible.
First of all, the FSM necessarily must exist in time and space, for he cannot fly out side of time and space, since flying requires time, space and matter or physicality in which there is something to indicate movement in relation to something else. To exist outside time and space would be to deny one of his defining attributes.
Second, spaghetti is not only physical but made up of parts. You need flour, eggs, water and time in order for these elements to combine in order to get the right type of pasta in which spaghetti can be made. There is a time when it is not, which logically pulls it into the realm of finitude. The question can be logically asked of this god, “Who created it?” Time is more powerful and predates the FSM, which brings in the question, “Who created Time?” Does this make Time a god? Since you cannot have an infinite regress of moments (time being measured by change), you can only have a finite number of moments to work from. Infinity by definition cannot be traversed. As you can see the FSM is no god at all and has more in common with Zeus or Apollo than with YHVH.
Which brings us to the question of legitimate religions. Since, most religions in the world are either polytheistic or at best henotheistic, this would leave only monotheistic Unitarian belief systems. Let’s look at the god of Islam for example.
Islam believes in a god called Allah. The Qur’an is the primary source for the understanding of this god. This being the case, our information must be drawn from here. We need to understand that the Qur’an is viewed as authoritative. The Qur’an is accepted as the revelation from Allah given to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel. It is considered to be uncorrupted, so anything that we derive from it is the word of God.
Now lets put Allah to the test of omniscience. The Qur’an states that Christians profess to believe that Jesus and Mary are Gods. The way the Qur’an proves that they are not Gods is by pointing out that both Mary and Jesus defecate (Surah 5:73-75). And in the same chapter vs. 116 says:
“And behold! Allah will say: “O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, worship me and my mother as gods in degrogation of Allah?” He will say: “Glory to thee! Never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, Thou I know not what is in Thine. For Thou knowest in full all that is hidden.”
As we can see from this passage of the Qur’an, Allah is all knowing, even of the things that are hidden.
There is not one creed within Christianity that says as orthodox Christians we are to worship Mary. This demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of the articulation of the Trinitarian formula. The council of Nicea solidified the articulation of the Trinity in 325 AD. In 381 the Council of Constantinople added to it the Filioque (and {from} the Son) in regards to the Holy Spirit. Subsequent Councils after Nicea reaffirmed the understanding of the Trinity that was given. This is not something that was done in secret. Yet, how is it that Allah doesn’t understand this? The Trinity is one God who eternally exists in three consciences (or persons), namely God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. This shows that according to the Qur’an, Allah is not all knowing. He is limited to the knowledge and understanding of Mohammed. This is no God at all.
What about Jesus? Didn’t he exist in time? Wasn’t he a human made up of parts? Isn’t the Trinity three in one? Didn’t he say there were things he didn’t know? These questions will be dealt with later when discussing the hypostatic union of Christ as Theanthropos the God-Man. We will show that there is no confusion of his Godhood and manhood. That each retains fullness and completeness of both. I’m becoming more convinced that almost every theological heresy beings with the misconception of the nature of God.
This is probably the most uncomfortable post to read.