Some Problems with Religion

I know that some of you are expecting the punchline of this post to be, “Christianity is not a religion.” I’m sorry to disappoint. In my mind, this saying is very similar to “it’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.” It means that you are more dedicated and more serious than you have been about any religion (or diet) that has come before. When it comes to Christianity, I agree completely with the connotation of this phrase but not the literal meaning (with diets I agree with neither because I have never taken a diet that seriously…). A “religion” is “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.” By this definition Christianity is very much a “religion” because we have belief, worship, and a superhuman God.

The problems with religion I reference in this title are actually famous questions in philosophy of religion. You have probably asked your pastor, Sunday school teacher, or Christian mentor one of these questions without even realizing it. These are the types of questions to which such a figure typically responds, “well, you just have to have faith” or “we aren’t meant to understand everything.” While we should have faith, this answer can be perceived by non-Christians to be a cop out way of avoiding a difficult question. Before we begin to look at some of these problems, it is important to note that ultimately those religious figures are correct; there are no perfect answers to these questions. There are, however, some really good possible answers to those questions. Further, I have personally seen non-Christians more willing to take Christianity seriously once they realize there are potential answers to these “paradoxes” that they think disproves the existence of God.

As Christians, we all agree God is omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-good). Most of the problems in philosophy or religion involve seeming contradictions to God having these three attributes and elements of the world we observe. Because we use these words a lot, and they are definitely 50 cent words, we often just say“triple O God” or “OOO God”.

The first problem we will look at is known as the “omnipotence paradox”. The most common rendition of it is, “Can God create a boulder so large that God cannot lift it?” This question dates all the way back to the Medieval Era. My favorite answer to this question, and one of the most widely accepted, comes from Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic Saint and influential philosopher from the 13^th Century. Aquinas’s answer to this problem is simple, “God can do anything that can be done.” According to Aquinas, God can part the Red Sea, raise the dead, turn water into wine, etc. but He cannot violate the laws of logic. There is precedent in the Bible for restricting the omnipotence of God such as Hebrews 6:18 which says “…God cannot lie…”.  This solution is nice because it allows us to begin to solve many of the problems of philosophy without contradicting anything in Bible (nowhere in the Bible do we see God break the laws of logic).  As I have already said, there is no such thing as a perfect solution to any of these questions and this one is no different. If we contend that our God cannot break the rules of logic, then we must also contend that there are solutions to all the logic-related problems of religion that follow.

You may choose instead to argue that logic is merely a human institution and that God can in fact break it; this would certainly exempt you from all logical problems of religion. René Descartes is one of very few philosophers to ever defend this position, but the problem with this solution is that it requires us to give up logic as a universal truth. He is known for saying, “God can in fact make a square triangle.” This position leads to all kinds of questions about how we can know or believe anything with any amount of certainty. While Descartes thinks he answers all these questions with his famous phrase, “I think therefore I am,” many people, myself included, find this utterly unsatisfying. Additionally, it is hard to understand why an omnibenevolent God would let us believe logic is true without once telling us otherwise.

Personally, I can’t make myself believe that God can break the rules of logic, no matter how convenient it would be. This means I must believe there are satisfactory answers to the remaining problems of religion. In my next post I will look at one of these called “the problem of evil” which asks how evil can coexists with an OOO God. In a previous post, Ian has already told us what the Bible has to say about this issue. In my post, I’ll share two of my favorite solutions, one from John Hick and another from Eleonore Stump.

As a final disclaimer, in this post I talked only about our Christian God; however these questions are typically posed to Abrahamic religions in general (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). If you Google one of these problems to learn more, you may come across content written by authors who are one of those other two religions – this is okay. For many of these questions a single answer may be satisfactory for all three religions (remember, as Christians many of our beliefs actually come from Judaism). Just always realize that what you are reading is written by an imperfect human, and always compare what they are saying to the Bible and see if it lines up.

What do you think? Is a God that can break the laws of logic palatable for you? Why or why not? Do you have another favorite solution to the omnipotence paradox? Are there other problems in the philosophy of religion you would like me to introduce in future blog post? Let me know in the comments!