Sunday
Feb012009
Who Said That?
Sunday, February 1, 2009 at 09:35PM 
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
OK, who is responsible for this rant? Leave your guess in the comments section below. Please, no google searches or cheating. I'll post the answer next week.
Update on Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 11:42AM by
Kim Riddlebarger
Kim Riddlebarger
As many of you correctly guessed, this quote comes from Richard Dawkin's God Hypothesis (2006), p. 31.
Reader Comments (53)
RE: Apologetics Tactics/God is an Alien
Instead of referring to "Alien" the movie, it's best to think Star Trek, episode 62 where "Kollos" the Medusan ambassador, an alien, so horrible to look at, one dies of insanity. He is amiable yet a being of pure light and terrible power (residing inside a protective cannister.) Only Vulcans can look at him while wearing a special visor. Kollos doesn't mean to kill; his ontological attributes are simply a danger to humans.
I know the analogy breaks down there, but the reference works better than an acid drooling monster bursting out of somebody's stomach.
Pass the spagetti....
r.
"I love it when these aggressive new atheists get pissed off. Is not that what the law is supposed to do to us? The law is to keep all of us rebels in line- God plays hardball and knows who we are. Richard does not get that yet-..."
That is more less what I was suggesting in my pevious comment. Since there are plenty of angry Christians, Dawkins' problem isn't that he's ticked but, like any pleasant pagan, he lacks true faith. Psychologizing faith one way or another has more in common with the spirit of the age than revelation.
Yes, that is a given. He would not be so angry if he was in possession of true faith. But that is the psychology we have to deal with and try to look beyond without reacting defensively. His anger is fueling his convictions and from what he understands of the scriptures and some theologians he has read he does not like the answers found their. He obviously trusts his subjective reasoning skills more than the objective Words of God. I do not think he has a deep understanding of the overall theme of the scriptures and rejects much of the "silly" explanations for the fall of man,etc. So, the conclusion I have come to and which many who are fueled by anger refuse to look at is the possibility of revelation and I think B.B. Warfield's apologetic techniques are the most clear in this regard.
I am not so sure about your Kollos character being the right image of what I was trying to communicate. I was referring to God's wrath and He means to pour out vengeance on evil. Now the Alens wrath is rather random and has no particular purpose in mind from what I could draw from the movie. It was simply because the creature was destructive by nature. God is only destructive against evil and that which resists His benevolent will and purposes. It is a rational wrath and has no element of chaos and meaningless destruction in it. Ultimately, perfect goodness is a much more fearful attribute than total evil. At least for us fallen human beings. Richard Dawkins is blind to God's goodnes and see's God's wrath as revealed in the Old Testament as petty and cannot seem to get beyond that yet.
In order to avoid giving an answer of "moralistic therapeutic deism" to these aggressive atheists (which they have and will continue to reject) how do you propose we would do this? What key issues do you focus on? Is it not the nature and grace issue, reason as opposed to faith, subjective as opposed to objective answers (which I find to be a very difficult concept for people to understand in the culture we live in today- most believe you cannot get to objective answers or truth that everyone has access to and can grasp which is not based on your own subjective interpretations), and two-kingdom theology which is inherent in the nature and grace issue. Is not the doctrine of creation also critical?
Another point that you bring up all the time is culture war as opposed to just holding out the Gospel to the culture with empty hands of faith. Warfield stated on several occasions that we should constantly be on the offensive when defending the faith. Defending the faith against opposition is just a sidetrack that we have to deal with on occasion. Do you think Warfield was correct with this attitude? I probably am not being real clear here but I guess what I am asking is how do you avoid an attitude of war against the culture? We should always be involved with our non-Christian neighbors in our vocations and in things which are our common enemies in our homes, neighborhoods, cities and the state. How do you see this panning out?
One last question- who writes with clarity on the doctrine of creation? And who do you suggest I read.