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.

Despite His Technical Proficiency, God's Soft Skills Pretty Much Suck

If HR conducted a 360-degree review of God, one of my comments would be, "God does not communicate well." Another would be, "Despite listing omnipresence on his resumé, I've never seen God in his cubicle." If he doesn't communicate well, then either he doesn't exist or he isn't interested in communicating clearly with us.

A brief note on my approach: In this blog, I am analyzing religion as well as performing a meta-analysis of religion. That is, I look at the traditional problems of religion, but I'm even more interested in the problems created by the very existence of problems. That's because I'm too busy (lazy) to do much more research than I've already done.

So here's the data.

The Bible has many apparent contradictions. For every apparent contradiction, you may have found an explanation that completely satisfies your intellect. But it is incontrovertible that apparent contradictions exist. I'm not that familiar with the Qur'an, but the internet tells me it has problems, too. (I'm not too concerned about the Vedas or the Buddhavacana. More on that in a later post.)

Even if someone were to blindly and/or stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that the Bible has apparent contradictions, you have to acknowledge that there are different ways to interpret scripture. Is salvation by grace or by works? Despite your beliefs, it is undeniable that there are verses that support both views (Ephesians 2:8 versus James 2:17). Is salvation activated by some act of our free will, or is our salvation predetermined? Again, I don't care which one you think is right. There are smart people who adamantly defend both positions. Multiple defensible interpretations of scripture demonstrates that God's word can be unclear, opaque, and confusing.

God (if he exists), by definition, has the technical skills to perform His job. Unfortunately, his written communication skills pretty much suck. As a result, he has been passed-over (rightly or wrongly) in many people's God-selection process. Which has got to be tough for the guy who basically invented passing people over.

In defense of God's soft skills, some people point out that He did not write the scriptures. Humans did - humans with suboptimal written communication skills. So the fact that scriptures are unclear and inconsistent indicates that God either (1) has poor written communication skills or (2) delegates poorly. Either way, it's His message, and the final draft is ambiguous and contradictory.

Based on the data above we are led to the following possible conclusions:

• God doesn't exist.
• God created the world but no longer engages with it.
• Our relationship with God is 100% dependent upon and initiated by Him and 0% dependent upon or initiated by us.

Okay. Maybe that last one is a bit overstated. It wouldn't be overstated, however, to say that our relationship with God could be dependent on God to such an extent that the confusion caused by scripture isn't even an issue.

Regardless, all three of those options - atheism, deism, and Calvinism - require the same response from me: nothing. Maybe openness. But mostly nothing.

Is The Bible Historical Fiction?

I don't read fiction.

The last work of fiction that I read was Crime and Punishment. The second half of the title is true.

C&P is fiction, but I'm not sure if it's historical fiction. Dostoyevsky refers to every character by at least three different names, which is clearly a red flag for identity theft, a subgenre of fan fiction. Regardless, it's fiction, and no one claims that the events in the novel actually occurred.

If God doesn't exist, then the scriptures - specifically the gospels - are historical fiction. My half-assed research indicates that Christian and non-Christian scholars generally accept that Matthew, Mark and John were not written by Matthew, Mark or John, and that they were written at least 30 years after Jesus' death. Luke may have been written by Luke, but he never met Jesus. So if Christianity is not true, then all four accounts of Jesus' life are historical fiction. 

The Guardian explains the art of creating historical fiction as follows:

In creating good historical fiction, it is essential to tell lies. A clear distinction needs to be made here between telling lies and making mistakes. A lie is intentional and purposeful; a mistake is accidental and sometimes unforgivable. 

If the Bible isn't true, then by definition it's fiction. Regardless, I do not believe its authors were malicious liars, just like I don't think Mohammed was a malicious liar. I believe they would have sincerely certified under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of American that, to the best of their knowledge, their accounts were true and correct.

They really believed what they wrote, so even if the Bible (or Qur'an) isn't true, it isn't fraud because of the absence of scienter.

Now, back to The Guardian:

One highly acclaimed and commercially successful recent novel had on page three the statement that there were "no priests within a three-day ride". Taking into consideration the time of year and the location of this statement, I calculated there were between five and eight thousand priests within "a three-day ride" in that year. I could not carry on reading when I realised that author's vision of 14th-century England was so far from my own.

Wow. In Die Hard with a Vengence, I knew there was no way John McClane could keep his balance standing on the roof of a pickup that was being forced through a giant underground pipe by a massive wall of water, but I was able keep watching the movie. This guy writing for The Guardian is kind of a pretentious jackass; however, we should probably be at least as anal retentive at fact-checking the Bible as this nut job is with a "commercially successful novel" set in the dark ages.

Here's the point: details are incredibly important for the Bible and for historical fiction and for fraud examiners who are trying to determine whether or not testimony is true.

Fraud examiners are the sexiest of all accountants, meaning they're still not sexy. These hardass accountants interrogate suspected embezzlers and fraudsters with all the machismo of the Canadian border patrol. 

Fraud Magazine explains how details, or the lack of details, can indicate if someone's jerking you around:

Truthful statements usually contain specific details, some of which may not even be relevant to the question asked. 

Those who fabricate a story, however, tend to keep their statements simple and brief. Few liars have sufficient imagination to make up detailed descriptions of fictitious events. Plus, a deceptive person wants to minimize the risk that an investigator will discover evidence contradicting any aspect of his or her statement; the fewer facts that might be proved false, the better. [Experts] refer to seemingly inconsequential details as "tangential verbal data" and consider their presence to be prime indicators that subjects are telling the truth.

The Bible pretty much kicks butt when it comes to tangential verbal data. In Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell says that somebody else said, "Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable [Biblical] details." I heard somewhere that archaeologists have used the Bible like a treasure map to find archaeological archeology. The Bible's tangential data seem to check out.

Detailed descriptions are everywhere in the Bible. Matthew Chapter One includes Jesus' lineage from Joseph all the way back to Abraham, proving that the only thing more boring than reading Biblical genealogies is reading  Crime and Punishment. Verses 12 and 13 say, "Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, Zerubbabel the father of Abiud." It's minutiae, but it's important because it shows that the messiah was a descendant of King David.

However, details can bite you in Balam's ass. There's another genealogy, in Luke Chapter Three that mentions, "... Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri ..." This contradicts the data in Matthew because paternity test episodes of Maury Povich have taught us that Neri and Jeconiah can't both be Shealtiel's dad.

Some people say the genealogy in Luke 3 is Mary's genealogy, not Joseph's. That'd be better. Since Joseph isn't Jesus' real dad, Jesus' lineage to David would need to be established through Mary. That could also explain why the names aren't the same. But since Luke 3:23 starts the genealogy off with Joseph, not with Mary, I've reached the conclusion that it's Joseph's genealogy, not Mary's.

The Christmas story is also filled with tangential verbal data. 

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

The author of Luke could've just said, "There was a census, and everybody had to go to their own town to register." Caesar Augustus and Quirinius are perfect examples of tangential data which makes a stronger case for the truthfulness of the Bible.

But Reza Aslan, in his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, says that forcing people to return to their ancestral homes for a census was both unheard of and impracticable. So while the historical background of Augustus and Quirinius are accurate, the movement of the story doesn't appear to line up with historical fact.

A lot of people maintain that the Bible has no contradictions or historical errors. However, the genealogies in Matthew and Luke contradict each other, and the manner in which the census in Luke 2 is carried out appears to be an error.

It's easy to blow past something as dull as a genealogy and write off its discrepancies as immaterial, but as a CPA, comparing records like that is exactly what we do to determine if the the overall message is accurate.

But even if the Bible was free of contradictions and errors, historical reliability can't prove the Bible true. Laura Ingalls Wilder's books are incredibly accurate depictions of little houses on prairies, but that's not enough to prove that Nellie Olsen really was a bitch.

Independence, Objectivity & My Inability to Become an Expert on Anything

I like my religious experts like I like my x-variables: Independent.

And that's where I've got a problem.

I don't have enough time to watch Family Guy, so I definitely don't have enough time to become an expert historian, astrophysicist, philosopher, evolutionary biologist, and everything else that seems necessary to come to a solid, well-researched, conclusive position on the truth regarding the possible existence of God.

However, I can't trust anybody, including historians, astrophysicists, philosophers, evolutionary biologists, and everybody else who seems to know the information I need for a solid, well-researched, conclusive position on the truth regarding God's existence. 

I can't trust them because nobody's independent when it comes to religion, and if you're not independent of a thing, I have to assume you're not objective when you give public support for that thing.

You know how we're not supposed to talk about religion in polite company? That's because (1) no one's independent when it comes to religion, (2) people who aren't independent get pissed off, and (3) it's not nice to piss off polite people (no matter how much fun it is to watch them).

Independence is HUGE in the accounting profession because a financial statement audit is worthless if the CPA firm performing the audit is biased. We'd say the firm is "independence impaired." It's more politically correct.

Independence is like pasties for accountants. Without it we may not be allowed to work.

When I say that no one is independent when it comes to religion, I'm not saying that no one can be objective. What I am saying is that everyone's objectivity is suspect because nobody's independent.

CPAs are required to be independent "in fact and appearance." Independence "in fact" means not being affected by influences that may compromise one's professional judgment. It means having a mind set that allows "an individual to act with integrity and exercise objectivity and professional skepticism."

Most religions — either implicitly or explicitly — do not make room for professional skepticism, let alone amateur skepticism. And a lot of atheists will applaud their fellow atheists for doubting all religious belief, but pounce on them for doubting their atheism. 

Independence in appearance means that you conduct yourself in such a way that a reasonable and informed third party would conclude that your integrity, objectivity, and professional skepticism had not been compromised. 

CPAs have identified several threats to independence. I've restated them as they relate to religious belief. Although these threats may not actually impair your independence, they all impair the appearance of independence.

Advocacy threat — If you actively promote or defend a specific position regarding religious truth, your independence may be impaired.

Familiarity threat — If you have a close, longstanding relationship with a religious (or atheistic) community, your independence may be impaired.

Undue influence threat — If a religious (or atheistic) leader attempts to coerce you or exercise excessive influence over you, your independence may be impaired.

Self-interest threat — If you benefit from a set of religious (or atheistic) beliefs being true, your independence may be impaired. 

This independence crap applies to me, too. I can't trust myself to be objective because — just like everybody else — I'm not independent when it comes to religion. 

I get pissed off about religion sometimes. How does that make sense? I'm an agnostic. How can anyone piss me off about religion? If someone says I'm full of shit about God, I believe I'm obligated to say they're probably right. But sometimes I find myself getting defensive which belies my independence.

A material aspect of why I stayed in Christianity as long as I did was because the switching costs were so high. Everybody's religious switching costs are incredibly high. Whatever your worldview is, it's why-adjacent.* When your worldview changes, everything in your life is subject to change. Everything. 

Changing worldviews is possibly the ultimate of self-interest threats. Therefore, no one is independent. No one can be trusted. Not me. Not you. Not Deepak Chopra.

*I'm talking about your Simon Sinek "why": your nearly-impossible-to-verbalize core purpose.

My School Was Not Haunted: How Instincts and Reason Can Mess with Your Brain

Before my career change to accounting, I taught eighth-grade math for eight years at Dixon Middle School in Provo, Utah. The school was crazy old. While I was there, it celebrated it's 70th anniversary. That means lots of dead people suffered the universally traumatic experience of seventh grade on that campus.

Regardless, my school was not haunted.

First off, let's be clear. Any self-respecting ghost wouldn't haunt a middle school. It's too easy. Thirteen-year-olds are tormented enough by each other. A ghost would just be one more in a long line of people telling particularly sensitive seventh grade girls to "get out."

Plus middle-schoolers believe anything. Haunt the faculty restroom at the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and I'd be impressed. Get an eighth-grader to think they saw a ghost standing behind them in the mirror, and you're more of an underachiever of a ghost than the eighth-grader is as an eighth-grader.

As a teacher, every now and then, I would have to go back to school at night to get some work done. The janitors were usually the last ones to leave the building, and they would turn off the hall lights with a breaker switch or one of those weird light switch keys. So if I came back late enough, the lights would be off, and I had no idea how to turn them back on. 

My classroom was about three-quarters of the way down a long hall, and if the lights were off, I would quickly become engulfed in darkness to the point where I would have to run my hand along the wall of lockers, counting the classroom doors to find my room. I would fumble with my keys in the dark to unlock the door, and then slap the wall inside my classroom until I located the light switch.

And every time I had to do it, it freaked the hell out of me.

I mean, I kept it together. But it would freak the hell out of me. I'd get real panicky, and I didn't know why.

Late at night, that school scared the crap out of me. It scared the crap out of me when I was a believer, and it scared the crap out of me when I was an agnostic.

I've never believed in ghosts. When I was a Christian, I believed in the Bible, which meant I believed in demons, but I never believed their level of influence or activity was inversely proportional to a room's lighting. 

So I knew I shouldn't be scared. But I was, and I couldn't help it.

But the school WASN'T HAUNTED. 

I realized through that experience that it may be possible that the human perception of a supernatural realm could be completely explained as a collision of instincts and logic.

My instincts were telling me that I was walking down the hallway of death. Makes sense. In prehistory, I would've had a better chance of surviving if I had an overriding visceral repulsion to places where I couldn't see that bear. The one that wanted to eat my face.

Our incessant determination to find causal relationships also aided our survival. If we were able to determine a cause-and-effect relationship, we could leverage it for survival. But if we misinterpreted mere correlation as causation, we were (generally) not any worse off for it. 

So in the hallway, my feeling of dread was real. I knew there was nothing in my physical environment to cause the feeling of dread, but my brain wanted to create a narrative to arrive at a cause-and-effect relationship. 

It's easy to see how early civilizations could arrive at the conclusion of a non-physical universe that coexisted alongside the physical. This would give rise to superstition which would lead to belief in the supernatural which could eventually be codified into religious belief.

Despite my first-hand experience of how spooky it feels at night, there are no ghosts at Dixon Middle School. Similarly, 2004 was the only year in the history of the school that the teachers lost the faculty-versus-student basketball game. Many students thought that was evidence of God's existence. But since that was the only year I ever played, it's merely proof that my basketball skills can ruin a 70-year winning streak.

Personal Revelation & Minor Miracles: I Should Probably Be Mormon

My big brother, Bob, liked to tell me what he learned in youth group. He also like to tell me how he was going to change his life based on what he learned. That was how he would witness to me.

So one night he declared, "I'm gonna stop fighting you." (We fought a lot.) "I might try to defend myself if you start coming after me, but I won't fight back. Instead, I'll let the Holy Spirit thump you."

And at that moment, it was on.

I'd never won a fight, I'm two years younger than him, and he just green lit an ass whoopin'. Please realize, I wasn't mad, and I had no reason to fight him. My heart wasn't in it, but he just wrote a check with his face, and my fist was going to cash it.

Figuratively. We didn't punch too much. We wrestled to submission. So after a few seconds, I was sitting on his chest, pinning his arms with my knees, and slowly lowering a loogie towards his face.

After the loogie-lowering ritual and an extended period of sternum-jabbing, I went through the kabuki theater of repeating, "I'm calling a truce, and I'm gonna let you up now. Are you gonna be cool?" You have to say it about ten times before you confirm to yourself that you have no idea what's going to happen once you release your humiliated, loogie-faced, torture survivor.

Eventually I let him up, and he didn't jump me. As a matter of fact, he did exactly what he said he would do. And as I walked away from this decisive victory, my brother's voice echoed in the back of my mind: "I'll let the Holy Spirit thump you ... I'll let the Holy Spirit thump you ... " 

And I realized at that moment that I was getting thumped by the Holy Spirit. 

Personal revelation: Evangelical Christianity is true.

Six years later, I was a freshman at the University of Washington. I was getting ready to transfer to Brigham Young University. God had called me to be a missionary to Mormons. In preparation for my new ministry, I was meeting with Mormon missionaries for hours on end and attending a class called "Philosophies and Doctrines for Non-Members" at the Mormon Institute of Religion. I had dropped all but two of my classes that quarter. I was spending so much time analyzing Mormonism for weaknesses that I only had time for linear algebra and vector calculus. (That's a ten on the 1 to 10 humble brag scale.)

One afternoon, I was sitting in my dorm room, and started to pray. My prayer - as best I can remember it - went something like this: "God, I've been so focused on all this Mormon stuff. It seems like it's been a long time since I've just said, 'I love you.' Well, I love you." 

Without missing a beat, a voice in my head immediately said, "Then why don't you join my church?"

Personal revelation: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is true. 

There are Mormons who would punch their moms during sacrament meeting to have a testimony that good. If I converted to Mormonism, I would have been a rock star with that testimony. I would have been the Kurt Cobain of the LDS Church, mostly because I had voices in my head.

Fall quarter of my sophomore year was pretty amazing, spiritually. I got thrown together with a random roommate who would end up being the best man in my wedding. He's a fantastic guy with a big heart. And he was a Christian just like me.

One morning, he told me about the role I played in a miracle. The night before, he was having a hard time falling asleep. A girl from Bible study was on his mind. He felt like he should go to her dorm room to check on her. But he's such a quality guy, he was worried about his motivations. Maybe he was fabricating some fake prompting of the Holy Spirit just because she was cute. So he was stuck, unable to sleep and unwilling to act because of his doubts about the veracity of this spiritual prompting.

So he prayed for God to show him a sign if He indeed wanted him to go talk to the hottie. And immediately, in my sleep, I said, "Praise be to God! Glory to Jesus!" This was at least the second time God performed a miracle using a talking jackass.

My roommate found her awake in the lounge. He delivered a message of God's love that she really needed to hear that night.

He wasn't lying to me about my ecstatic unconscious utterance. He's one of the most honest, solid guys I know. I didn't consciously experience the miracle, but I have no reason to doubt that it happened.

Minor miracle: Evangelical Christianity is true.

One year earlier, I was attending one of the best classes I took in college: Comparative Western Religions. One day the professor (who was clearly not Muslim) told us a story about a trip he took to the Middle East. The final leg of his flight was filled with passengers who were openly Muslim. In the middle of the flight, the plane hit some pretty strong turbulence.

Turbulence is scary shit. Yeah, you play it cool on the outside, but sometimes you hit a patch of rough air that makes you realize that when a baby bangs a can of Pringles on her stroller, it's pretty fucking scary for the Pringles.

My professor ascertained that the majority of the passengers were quite poor, and this was very likely one of two flights they would take in their entire lives. Bad turbulence is even worse for inexperienced fliers because they're confident that they're going to die.

At this point, a Muslim lady stood up (breaking the fasten seat belt commandment) and prayed a prayer. Immediately the turbulence stopped, and the remainder of the flight was as smooth as a freshly ironed burqa.

My professor had nothing to gain from relaying this story, so I have no reason to believe he was lying.

Minor miracle: Islam is true.

Truth isn't discerned via Holy Spirit thumpings, auditory phantasms, ecstatic somniloquies, or well-timed mini-miracles. Otherwise, I'd be an Evangelical Muslim of Latter-Day Saints.