I waited several days to see whether Abraham would respond. I’m not surprised that he didn’t, although, of course, it could be that he simply didn’t subscribe to the thread and stopped checking after a couple of days.

Of course, you know what the response would be; we’ve all heard it many times – God is sovereign, it isn’t our place to question Him, and attempting to understand his motives with our finite brains is impossible. As his father said,

He is God. I am but a man. The potter has absolute rights over the clay. Mine is to bow before his unimpeachable character and believe that the Judge of all the earth has ever and always will do right.

You know as well as I do (better, in fact) how often that “potter and clay” metaphor gets trotted out in the evangelical world. This always floors me. On the one hand, we’re free moral agents, utterly responsible to God for any and all “sins” we commit in our frail, benighted human condition. However, when that rationalization stops working, all of a sudden, we have no more rights than does an inanimate object.

I find two aspects of Abraham’s response particularly troubling:

You are right that different answers to this question will lead to profoundly different perspectives.

He believes that God predetermines our perspectives, our responses – then holds us accountable for them. Yes, I’m aware that there are different “flavors” of Calvinism, and they debate the fine points endlessly – but that’s still it in a nutshell. I consider it monstrous; I can’t think kindly of someone who subscribes to this belief. As I said – they’re utterly willing that the vast majority of us should be damned eternally, so that they can have the ontological security blanket for a few brief decades. It reflects the most appalling moral cowardice (and, I would say, intellectual laziness as well).

But it is precisely because our worldviews are so disparate that dialogue is even worth having.

Why would he even value “dialogue”? He believes that we have nothing to teach him, and that the mere fact that we don’t believe is a sure sign of the foregone conclusion of our damnation, so why even bother with us – unless he sees it as a means to better understand us, with a mind toward devising new and better ways to “reach” us with the gospel? But God has already determined whether or not we will accept it! So, God has already saved his “elect” – but it requires someone like Abraham or his dad to some along and “activate” it? It’s some form of entertainment for God? (I actually do think that the dramatic and religious impulses are coming from the same place within the human psyche, so it isn’t surprising to me that evangelicals frame it in this way, even without meaning to consciously.)

I don’t think that most people outside of the evangelical subculture understand what an enormous influence Calvinism has in that world – even upon those who don’t necessarily consider themselves Calvinists. I’m glad that the Emergent Church and Sojourners crowds have developed (although I think you folks waffle a good deal on the issue of salvific exclusivism – “maybe yes, maybe no, we don’t know…”), but there are still far more of them than there are of you – and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

You say, “I simply can’t get past their profound willingness to abandon billions of their human siblings forever.”

I’m not sure what anybody’s willingness has to do with it. It either is the case or it isn’t, regardless of anyone’s opinion. The question, then is “which is it?” not “which one do we want it to be.”

I think there’s a further question here Abraham: if God is the way you and your father say he is, is that God worth following and worshiping? Can I love and worship a God who willingly creates people for the express purpose of condemning them to an eternity of punishment? Is there any possible way in which this can be construed as just and loving?

I confess, I used to read your dad’s books and listen when he came to speak at Wheaton (I was there part of the time with you), and I used to agree with that theology. But eventually I came to realize that if God really is like that, then I didn’t want to follow him. That God was a monster in my opinion. Fortunately for me, hyper-Calvinism isn’t the only biblically faithful understanding of God out there, despite what your dad says to the contrary.

Atheists like to argue with facts and figures, but the way to reach Christians is through stories that touch their hearts. The skeptic-minded folks have a really hard time with this, since they don’t give any value to anecdote. That’s a big mistake.

Skeptical people use anecdotes in a rational manner, as aids to understanding, not as very strong evidence. No anecdote is better than another, they’re worthless as a tool for knowlegde. Even if we branched out into the spreading ignorance business that religion has a monopoly on, they’re only going to pick the anecdote they want, or whatever the church authority is giving them.

It’s not just the practical considerations I have, it also assumes that they can’t be reasoned with, that they’re incapable of seeing the incoherency. It’s the same sort of mindset where some people say religion’s nonsense but other people need to believe it, because they’re weak in some way. I don’t accept that, many, many people can be reasoned with, they just don’t apply reason to their religion, and this is because conditioning and all manner of pressure is stopping them. Why all the effort on religion’s part if they weren’t capable?

Atheists like to argue with facts and figures, but the way to reach Christians is through stories that touch their hearts. The skeptic-minded folks have a really hard time with this, since they don’t give any value to anecdote. That’s a big mistake.

Yeah, you’re absolutely right, Donna. That’s why so often it seems like a huge divide between the two groups – one is leading from the head and the other from the heart/emotions.

That man has some serious balls to say some of the things that he has.

I really believe that “dialogue” is impossible. The world views are entirely disparate, and I simply can’t get past their profound willingness to abandon billions of their human siblings forever, so that they can have the security blanket for a few brief decades. I don’t know how you do it, Hemant.

I disagree. But maybe it’s only those of us who used to be Christians and who are now atheists who can communcate to these people, because they really do speak a different language. Many are also very closed minded, and it takes a lot of patience to get them to look at things differently, even to examine their own beliefs and to state them in their own words, rather than quoting scripture or something they heard from the pulpit.

Atheists like to argue with facts and figures, but the way to reach Christians is through stories that touch their hearts. The skeptic-minded folks have a really hard time with this, since they don’t give any value to anecdote. That’s a big mistake.