This fellow's piece rides of the assumption that all who share the Christian philosophy are viewing God, the Bible, and creation in the exact same manner. If he had put in any decent amount of time researching the philosophies he is seeking so 'logically' to disprove, he would realize that adopting the teachings of Christ has never tethered that believer to a certain total understanding of what is presented therein.
His real assumption is that all who "share the Christian philosophy are viewing God, the Bible, and creation" in
his manner -- which makes all the questions based on a fallacy, even that rather potent first one.
He's also projecting his approach to dealing with difficult questions: get uncomfortable, rationalize, and stop thinking about it. That's what he's really doing by claiming that all Christians come up with the sort of irrational foolishness he coins at the end of various questions.
I will seek to answer these questions from my personal understanding of Christianity.
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2. It is our job to care for our own brothers and sisters, God is not a nanny. God has blessed our species with the required traits to change our world for the better, and also for the worse. It is that free will that is reflected in our deeds. There are also many prosperous people on this planet who have taken God's gifts and exercised them as they were intended. As far as the 'raise' comment, again, God is not a genie. Also, he assumes all view God as an all-loving entity.
Here's a place where his basic fallacy becomes really pointed: he assumes that everyone who conceives of God as loving and caring does so with the same (shallow) ideas he himself does. His use of that phrase exposes more of his own shallowness than it reveals about Christians (even the numerous shallow ones).
You do a fair job of aiming at his fallacy here: he's imposing on God his own standard of "loving and caring" and not even looking at what the Bible has to say about why conditions are as they are. This is perhaps the most common fallacy with attacks on not just Christianity, but any system of thought: assuming that one's own worldview is right, and imposing it on a very shallow perception of something else, and then declaring a judgment. Doing that, the only thing you've judged is yourself.
3. God is vengeful, wrathful and jealous, it says so itself.
Here he shows that he ignores whatever data doesn't fit his preconceptions. He'd do better to skip the emotional appeal, and go right to this: if as it says, God is love, how can He be vengeful, wrathful, and jealous?
Of course he continues the fallacy of imposing his own definitions onto his subject matter -- kind of like the technicians who confused inches and centimeters and screwed up a very complicated spacecraft. If he's looking at a different system, he has to use its measures, and "innocent" is something with its own measures.
But then he gets just plain stupid and fails basic grammar: he chants "God demands that we...", like someone reading an ancient document and insisting the U.K. is trying to tax American tea.
4. The Bible was written thousands of years ago to an audience of laymen who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. This is a process called 'storytelling' and 'mythos.' If described in a such a fantastical manner, the primitive mind can entertain such thoughts. For example, what is obviously a meteorite in the Bible is described as a 'mountain of fire.' Imagine if it were written, in equivalency to the laymen, that a 'meteorite would strike the Earth with the power of so and so megatons of TNT.' Frankly, that wouldn't make a lick of sense. However, meteorites are big chunks of flaming rock. Big chunk of rock, mountain.. you know?
This fellow is assuming that all view the Bible in a literalistic manner. Why do adults write seemingly nonsensical stories for children to explain the complications of the adult world to one so small? Because they cannot understand at the time. We are God's children after all, and now we are not as young as we were then. God is still having his creation recorded, it is through a process we now call 'science.'
He also just plain lies; that it's a common lie doesn't make it less of one: the Bible does not say that God created the world 6,000 years ago (it doesn't really say He did it in "six days", either, but that gets a bit technical). The Bible gives not the least indication of how old the world is, and if the man had a decent education in what he's talking about, he'd know that. Then he switches to a less common lie, that the Bible says there was a "worldwide flood that covered Mt. Everest" -- that position is someone's spin, not the actual story.
He needs a course in communication, really -- if he was honest, he'd be saying, "These things are nonsense to me", and "It makes no sense to me".
5. Men are proponents of slavery, men also contort the wisdom they are given for their own pursuit of power, and men penned the Bible. This has no actual foothold in the Christian philosophy and is moot.
Quite so: God is not a proponent of slavery, and there's nothing in the Bible to support his proposition -- again, a lie. And he totally ignores the fact that the forces which brought an end to slavery in the Western world were Christians who'd grasped the implications of a couple of foundational truths and so moved to change an institution wrongly supported for centuries.
6. Again, God is not a nanny. We are but a cog in his creation, a very shiny one, but we are not entitled to a life free of the burdens of any other thing is this world. It makes perfect sense, and requires no 'exotic excuse.' Bad things happen to good people because they just do. No where did Jesus state that we get a magical 'No Bad Days' sticker that protects us from all ill fortune.
Right on target!
I think he knows he has no case here; he skips straight from his question to his little chant.
7. Jesus' miracles? Evidence? I am at a loss how you could possibly formulate evidence beyond hearsay. It is not exactly like he sneezed out a layer of pixie dust that would appear in the fossil record that had a different color based on the sort of miracle performed, then left a legend to their correlations etched in diamond. Not a particularly well formulated question, he could have done better. The word of the few historians at the time are all that we have, and ever will base any historical references to the factual Jesus on.
Yeah, I about spewed cocoa on this one. It's a joke, and a weak one, to anyone with the least reasoning ability. Just think of Jesus' miracles -- they involved people (all dead and gone, now; that's sort of common, after all), food (eaten, and 'passed out', as the KJV phrased it), weather (what's he looking for, a permanent water spout over the Sea of Galilee?)... nothing anyone would expect to endure (even those clay jars with the water turned to wine would have gone on the trash heap, oh, nineteen-and-a-half centuries past).
8. I am pretty sure the Queen of England could be at my doorstep by the time I wake up tomorrow, but I doubt she would oblige even if I managed to contact her directly. He does not appear, because there is no reason to do so. Also, he assumes the fact that all people have not had unusual encounters with the unexplained as far as the theoretical existence of 'angels' and all that like.
Good point.
I think his worldview includes the concept that God is a cheap trickster, or maybe a frolicsome spirit, who/which may be summoned on demand for whatever momentary whim may strike someone who possesses the right formula. Or maybe he expects Jesus to run a sort of lottery, and appear once a day to someone who asked?
9. This question actually astounded me. To quote a line from The Boondock Saints "Symbolism... the word you are looking for is symbolism."
LOL
It didn't astound me, because by this point it was pretty evident the guy is ignorant. Didn't he just finish saying that Jesus is timeless and all-powerful? Doesn't he have enough imagination to think that maybe Jesus is talking about real blood... but on a totally different order than the gloopy drippy read stuff we mere humans leak when pricked?
He strikes me here as the reverse of the shallow-minded "theologians" who switch from Jesus being man to being God, ignoring the other Nature, whenever convenient, except that he does it in reverse -- whichever way lets him put Jesus in a bad light.
10. Free will. Marriage is a social contract with religions flavor and connotation, it is not a testament to the existence of God. For the last time: God is not a nanny, nor is he a marriage counselor. It is up to us to find our own mates, just like any other animal on this planet. This fellow also assumes that monogamy is directly enforced by God, which, using the rest of the animal kingdom as a litmus, it is not.
Yeah, he acts like it's some magic ritual -- ignoring that fact that "let no man put asunder" plainly indicates that man can put it asunder! For his question to have any substance, he has to assume that God is a tyrant who appears on command and is subject to rituals requiring him to stifle the free will of people.
I have thought long and hard about my faith, and I can still most distinctly state that I believe the validity of Christ, and that my certainty of the existence of the Creator has only grown stronger as my knowledge of this world expands. What I have formulated for myself are not 'exotic excuses,' but a perfectly logical viewpoint that is in no way compromised as is the targets of this fellow's video. Those of which hold beliefs that, naturally, are indeed rather delusional.
Forgive any obvious functional stumbles, this was written very early.
Whenever it was written, it was written with pretty good thought and insight!
