What Would An Omni God Have Done?

How could a omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent 
God who has no needs, Acts 17:24-25 [thus there was 
no need that hell even exist] create a humanity with 
free will and the ability to sin--knowing the horrific  
outcome Mt 7:13-14, when he could have created this 
humanity, like him, with free will and the inability to sin?
Thus in truly loving fashion, preventing billions of humans 
from suffering ETERNAL, unimaginable agony in hell-and 
the Bible actually teaches that he doesn't want anyone 
to go to hell 2 Peter 3:9! So there is no reason he couldn't 
and wouldn't have accomplished this--IF this alleged god 
of the Bible has all of these omni characteristics the Bible 
writers claim that he has.

From the Errancy  Discussion list, April 17, 1998:

Some Things To Consider

I left the Church of Christ and Christianity in 2006. The following is a letter I wrote to a member of the congregation that I was a member of shortly after I left--I never received a reply:

by Kenneth Hawthorne

I have some things I would like for you to consider based on our talk at Panera Bread in Sept. Plus some thoughts and questions on the eternal hell taught in the Bible. I have had most of this letter ready for some time, but have just now decided to send it. I have presented some of this information about an eternal hell to you before--with no reply. You have asked me, "Kenneth, how could you?" (i.e., leave Christianity). Well, contained in this letter are some of the reasons how I could and why I did. You obviously think I made a bad decision to leave Christianity; then I would appreciate it if you would tell me why you disagree with the information in this letter. I will be more than happy to listen to what you have to say. 

An Omni God And His Eternal Hell (2)

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

The Bible presents its god, Yahweh, as having amazing supernatural characteristics:

1) Omniscient- It is claimed that this god knows all, past, present and future. One very interesting bit of knowledge that this god is claimed to have is found in Mt 7:13-14. This verse teaches that man's ultimate destination is either heaven or hell. And that this god knew before creating the first human, that if he went ahead with this plan to create man found in the Bible, that this version of man would be so flawed that most would wind up in hell.

What About Scientific Foreknowledge in the Bible?

From *The Skeptical Review*, July-August 1990:

by Farrell Till
Any challenge to the Bible inerrancy doctrine will sooner or later encounter the scientific-foreknowledge argument. "If the Bible is not the inspired word of God," the inerrancy spokesmen ask, "then how do you explain the many examples of scientific foreknowledge in it?" The claim implied in this question is that men writing in an age of relative ignorance indicated in various passages of the Bible that they understood scientific truths that were completely unknown at the time. The response the question seeks is that these scientific facts could not have been known to Bible writers without God's having revealed them during the verbal inspiration process. They see this as a compelling argument for the inerrancy doctrine.

A basic problem with this argument is the same as the one found in the familiar harmonious-content, unity-of-theme, and fulfillment-of-prophecy arguments so often presented in the Bible's defense. It is based more on speculation, imaginative interpretations, and wishful thinking than on verifiable facts. As I write this, I am engaged in a written debate with a Church-of-Christ preacher who, in trying to use this argument, threw a volley of speculatively conceived questions at me in his second affirmative manuscript. How did Moses know of woman's seed being involved in the conception of children, (Gen. 3:15)? How did Isaiah know in his day that the earth is round, (Isa. 40:22)? How did Job know that the earth rests on no material foundation, (Job 26:7)? How did Moses know that life is in the blood (Gen. 9:4), when medical science didn't know it until a late date? How did David know of the moon's bearing witness (Ps. 89:37) to the sunlight on the other side of the earth? How did David know that there are paths in the seas (Ps. 8:8) long before oceanography and Matthew Maury's work found it so?

These are the questions exactly as he fired them at me. Not once did he take the time to explicate scripture references to show reasonable proof that the writers meant what he was interpreting them to mean. He just tacked the references onto his questions as if this alone were enough to establish that the writers had intended the meanings he was attributing to them. Any verbal communication, however, whether oral or written, must be interpreted before it can be understood, and this is doubly true of written statements. 

Scientific Boo-Boos In The Bible

From *The Skeptical Review*, January/February 1991 issue:

By Farrell Till

Bibliolaters claim that the Bible is inerrant in every detail, in matters of history, science, geography, chronology, etc., as well as faith and practice. It is a claim that has won wide acceptance among fundamentalist Christians, but, as is true of most zealotic tributes that have been paid to the Bible, it has no basis in fact. As past articles in TSR have clearly shown to anyone who really wants to know the truth, the Bible is riddled with mistakes. Many of those mistakes were scientific ones.

The creation account in Genesis divided time into days and the days into evening and morning for three days before the sun was even created (1:1-19). "There was evening and there was morning," we are told, "one day... a second day... a third day," but as any astronomer knows, evening (night) and morning (daylight) result from the earth's rotation with respect to the sun. With no sun, there would have certainly been evening or night, but there could have been no morning.

On the fourth day when God created the "two great lights" (the sun and the moon), he created the stars too. This creation of the rest of the universe was treated by the Genesis writer(s) as if it were little more than an afterthought: "he made the stars also" (v:16). To the prescientific mind that wrote this, it probably made sense. To him (her), the earth was undoubtedly the center of the universe, but today we know better. The solar system of which earth is only a tiny part is itself an infinitesimal speck in the universe. Surely, then, the creation of the stars would not have occurred so quickly and suddenly if six days were needed to create the world. Scientists now know that the creation of stars is an evolutionary process that is still ongoing. Matter coalesces; stars ignite, shine, and eventually burn out or explode. From the existence of heavy elements in our solar system, astronomers generally agree that it formed from debris left over from a supernova that occurred billions of years ago. The prescientific Genesis writer knew none of this, however, and that is why he viewed the creation of the universe as an Elohistic afterthought. No modern, scientifically-educated writer would have made that mistake.

God Is Omniscient?

More problems for biblical inerrantists. From *The Skeptical Review*, January- February 1995:

by Farrell Till

Elsewhere in this issue (pp. 9, 16), we discussed inconsistencies in the biblical claim that God cannot be tempted (James 1:13) and the fact that the Bible also claims that although Jesus was God (John 1:1, 14), he was nevertheless tempted (Mark 1:12-13;Heb. 5:14-15). If we accept the premise that Jesus actually was God incarnate, we have another inconsistency between the passages that teach that God is omniscient or all-knowing (Ps. 147:5) and other passages that indicate that Jesus didn't know certain things.

In summarizing the childhood of Jesus, Luke said that he "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men" (2:3), but if Jesus were truly an omniscient deity, how could he possibly have "increased in wisdom"? To increase one's wisdom is to increase one's knowledge, so if Jesus increased in wisdom, he couldn't have been omniscient when he began to increase his wisdom. Yet we are asked to believe that Jesus was the omniscient god who made all things (Col. 1:16).

In speaking to the apostles about the time of his second coming, Jesus said, "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Matt. 24:36). The problem in this statement is obvious. If Jesus were an omniscient deity, how could it possibly be that he would not know the day and hour of his second coming? The issue of omniscience aside, we might also ask how it could possibly be that the Father would know something that the Son wouldn't know if the Father and the Son were one and the same as the absurd doctrine of the trinity teaches.

Some scribes must have recognized the problem that this passage poses, because some Greek manuscripts of the New Testament made no reference to "the Son" in this verse. The ASV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, and other versions of the New Testament have a footnote to inform readers that "some ancient authorities omit 'nor the Son,'" and the KJV and NKJV omit the reference entirely. However, the fact that "some ancient authorities" don't mention "the Son" in this verse is of no benefit to inerrantists, because the exact statement is in Mark's parallel account of Jesus' discourse on his second coming (13:32), and there are no footnotes in Mark to inform us that "some ancient authorities" omitted the reference to "the Son." Hence, the problem remains. God is omniscient, Jesus was God, yet Jesus didn't know when he would come again, even though the Father, who is the same God that Jesus is (was) did know. Was Peter wrong then when he said to Jesus, "Lord, You know all things" (John 21:17)? And if Peter was right, were Matthew and Mark wrong when they said that Jesus said there was at least one thing he didn't know? And if there was even one thing that Jesus didn't know, how could he have been an omniscient god?

Maybe some enterprising inerrantist can explain all this to us dumb skeptics.