If God Exists, I Hope He's Not Walter White: The Trilemma Revisited

Let's say some guy specializes in estate tax return prep. Due to Obamacare's lack of death panels, revenue is down, so he decides to generate some business by throwing old ladies with net worth greater than $5.34 million off of the subway platform.

No Question. That's bad.

But what if it's just him and John Kerry's wife alone on the subway platform, and before he has a chance to hip-check her into the chilly embrace of Form 706, she falls off the subway platform on her own. I don't know why. Maybe she got dizzy from the subway's inescapable smell of hot piss. She begs him to pull her up, and he could totally do it because he did CrossFit that one time. He explains to her that he's not going to help because he needs the work so he can afford to go to the Cheesecake Factory. She tells him that she's already got an estate tax guy on retainer so he wouldn't get her business anyway. 

But he still won't pull her up. He has the power to execute an easy rescue, but he doesn't. He just stands by and watches her get Wile-E-Coyotied by a train.

Everyone agrees that's bad, too.

The main thing that made me throw in the towel with Christianity is the following problem:

God is hidden - or as C.S. Lewis says, God is not "sensibly present." Christianity claims that God is good and that he sends people to hell for wrong belief. I argue that God cannot (1) be good, (2) choose to be hidden and (3) send people to hell for wrong belief. At most two of those three things can be true about God.

I other words, if God chooses to be hidden, he can't send people to hell for wrong belief and still be good. (For more on this, see my earlier post "The Trilemma of Hiddenness + Goodness + Hell.")

A friend of mine called BS this argument. He said God does not send people to hell for wrong belief. People wind up in hell because of their sin. Therefore, God's goodness is unimpaired because my sin is the proximate cause of my eternal torment in hell, not God's apparent capriciousness. 

Proximate cause was explained to me like this: If an ambulance doesn't make it to my house fast enough, that's NOT the proximate cause of my death. The EMTs won't be held responsible. They didn't murder me. They're not bad people. The proximate cause was autoerotic asphyxiation, and I should have know better.

But what if an omnipotent EMT doesn't make it to my house fast enough? Does that change things? If he's omnipotent, he could have performed an easy rescue, but he chose not to. Probably because he's grossed out by autoerotic asphyxiation.

But what if this omnipotent EMT saved some other autoerotic asphyxiaters, but he didn't save me? Would he have been less just for saving me than for saving other autoerotic asphyxiaters? If not, he's just like the guy who let John Kerry's wife spoon a train. He's just like Walter White watching as Jesse's girlfriend dies.

So the question is, Does the trilemma hold if the third statement is changed from "God sends people to hell for wrong belief" to "God refuses to save people from hell for wrong belief"?

Nope. God can't choose to be hidden AND refuse to save people for wrong belief AND be good.

A List of Religions I'm Cool With (But Don't Believe In)

I'm cool with Hinduism because you get as many chances as you need to figure it out. If Hindus are right, I hope to get reincarnated as one.

I'm cool with Buddhism and Taoism because they're religions without gods and without hells. Fortunately I have no desire to be a Buddhist. I do, however, consider myself to be a Taoist, just an inactive one.

I'm cool with Deism because it preserves mystery and explains the mysteries. It's the belief in an intelligent designer who doesn't want to hang out with stupid people.

I'm cool with Calvinism and Reformed Christianity. These traditions believe that only the elect - who have been predestined since before the creation of the world - shall be saved. So God doesn't send people to hell for wrong belief. He just sends people to hell because he's a dick. And if it turns out that God exists and he's a dick, what are you going to do?

I'm cool with the Jehovah's Witnesses because they believe that only 144,000 people get to go to heaven and everybody else will just cease to exist. Right now, there are 7.9 million active Jehovah's Witnesses, including Prince, so even if I converted, I have less than a 2 percent chance of making the cut. And with my luck I'd place #144,002. Right after Prince.

I'm cool with Mormons because they don't believe in hell. They do believe in "outer darkness" which is reserved for apostatized Mormons to whom the truth was revealed to such a degree that to deny the truth of the Mormon church would be to deny the existence of the sun. I do have a bit of risk exposure here because in 1991, when I lived in Seattle, a voice in my head told me to join the Mormon Church. But that only happened exactly once, and in Seattle in 1991 the sun came out exactly twice. (Mormons are also cool because they have guns and food. Always good to know a bunch of people with guns and food. In case modern society collapses or you feel like shooting tuna.)

I'm cool with Universalism. It's the belief found in certain Christian and Islamic sects that everyone get's saved. That sounds like something a loving, mysterious, all-powerful God would make happen. And don't call a Hitler foul on Universalism. If a deeply compassionate, all-powerful God exists, his redemptive love can kick Hitler's evil's ass.