The Moral Objection, Part 4 “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.” Richard Dawkins 1. “If God is good, why is there so much suffering and evil in the world?” “Paradoxically, then even though the problem of suffering is the greatest objection to the existence of God, at the end of the day God is the only solution to the problem of suffering. If God does not exist, then we are locked without hope in a world filled with pointless and unredeemed suffering. God is the final answer to the problem of suffering…” William Lane Craig 2. “Christianity is oppressive to women.” “In my 30s, I started to explore the historical question of whether Christianity is good for women. The answer? A resounding, ‘Yes.’ This cuts against what most of my non-Christian friends believe. In their minds, Christianity is repressive and demeaning to women, and any differentiation of roles is anathema. But they don’t realize that many of the things we take for granted when it comes to the value of women were given to us by Christianity.” Rebecca McLaughlin 3. “The Bible promotes slavery.” -Different ethnicities/one race...all people created equal, regardless of skin color (Gal. 3), 4. “God is a genocidal maniac.” 5. “Christians hate all things gay.” “Having a legitimate need for intimacy cannot justify illegitimate ways of fulfilling that need…If the only thing that really turns me on sexually and emotionally is Activity B, yet only Activity A is sanctioned by God, then I cannot rewrite the rules to accommodate my taste.” Joe Dallas “Nothing is so easy as to deceive oneself; for what we wish, we readily believe.” Demosthenes 6. “God can’t be just because he consigns people to eternal hell.” “Speaking for myself, if the biblical heaven and hell exist, I would choose Hell. Having to spend eternity pretending to worship a petty tyrant who tortures those who insult his authority would be more hellish than baking in eternal flames. There is no way such a bully can earn my admiration.” Dan Barker, godless, 170. “Scripture sees hell as self-chosen…Hell appears as God’s gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose, either to be with God forever, worshipping him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves.” J.I. Packer “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.” C.S. Lewis