Recently, Stewart from Insulted proposed a list of what he called 10 Questions Your Pastor Can’t Answer. I’m not sure how difficult these questions would be for my pastor, but they were rather difficult for me. That being said, I do have answers to each of Stewart’s questions.* (I am also in the process of preparing my own “10 Questions Your Local Atheist/Agnostic/Skeptic Can’t Answer”)
You can find the complete questions and context at the above link. I have shortened the questions for the sake of brevity.
1) How could an all-knowing God be all-loving, since He would create people that He knows for a fact would be damned?
The first thing we have to understand is that God does not “know” the future in terms that we can really understand. God exists outside of time (He created it), so there is no future to God only present. Secondly, there are two different ways to answer this question. Calvinists would use Romans 9 and say that God predestines people to heaven or hell. He is God and He can do that.
The flip side is that God does know (although he doesn’t establish) who will accept Him and who will not, but His will for them is that they come to know him (2 Peter 3:9). God has offered them a way to escape the punishment that lies ahead for them. They simply choose to take the punishment.
But to answer the question specifically, He created them the same reason He created humans in general. He wants companionship and fellowship. He wants to be worshiped and loved (He deserves it as well). But if He forced Himself on us or He only created those who would follow Him, He would be violating the free will of man. He would be removing us from the decision making process. How loving is that. Also, forced love and worship is no love and worship at all. For anything to be genuine it has to be chosen.
But looking at some human analogies can help us to understand even if they are not totally applicable. We choose to love people even though that means we will get hurt. We choose to have children even though they will disobey us and hurt us. Just like for us in those situations, God weighs the benefits versus the risks and finds that it is better to have “love and lost than to have never loved at all.”
2) What about all the people who have never heard about Jesus or haven’t heard anything beyond the existence of a religion called Christianity? Why would God randomly (by virtue of their birthplace and time) and cruelly deny people access to salvation? Or does he give them a “free pass’ undermining the requirement of Jesus?
The presupposition of this question is in direct contrast with the first question. The question assumes that God can do anything randomly. God knows who will seek Him and I am sure He places people accordingly. Matthew 7:7-8 and Jeremiah 29:13-14 tell us that God is found by those who seek Him.
Not only does not put people their randomly, condemning them by their birthplace, He allows those in areas not open to the Gospel to experience Him in supernatural ways. There have been many stories of Muslims who come to Christ through visions and dreams of Jesus. Missionaries go into supposedly unreached people groups to find them already worshiping Jesus. He has revealed Himself to them.
Also, Romans 1:18-20 says that people can see God if they only open their eyes and look. Even if God in God’s justice, He gives them a “free pass” that free pass does not undermine Jesus because the pass would be available only because of Jesus and His sacrifice.
In general as far as heaven and hell, love and judgment, God is love, but God is also holy and sinless. Sin cannot enter his presence. So what else could a holy, just God do but punish the sin? But what else could a loving God do but take the punishment Himself and offer people a way out?
Ultimately, we have to know that God is just and no one will be able to say that they were not treated fairly. God loves justice (Isaiah 30:18, 61:8), so He will treat everyone justly.
3) How was Lot more Godly than the homosexual men in Sodom and Gomorrah, when he offered up his virgin daughters to be raped?
This story is found in Genesis 19. There is a big misconception that simply because the Bible reports an action that it condones and approves that action. I don’t believe the action was a very Godly action. It merely showed his fear and reverence for people he say as being from God (something that the men of the city did not have).
Regardless of what televangelists say, Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed strictly because of the homosexual nature of the people. The cities were destroyed because the people there had no fear of God and they were evil in every way.
4) How did two of the hundreds of thousands of species fit on the ark, not to mention all the food and supplies, especially when we know the size of the ark?
They didn’t and they couldn’t. In fact the Bible says that there were more than two of some of the animals (taking in to account Noah’s food). You can find this in Genesis 6 and 7. You substituted your own word for the word that is in the Bible. Genesis does not say two or every species, it says two of every kind (which is similar to the current organizational term of genus). Instead of two horses, two zebras, two donkeys, you would have two from the equine kind. Instead of two dogs, two wolves, two coyotes, you would have two from the canine kind.
It has been calculated that Noah would have needed to take approximately 16,000 animals (not counting insects, since the Bible doesn’t say Noah must take them). If you calculated the volume of the ark it would be around 1.54 million cubic feet, the equivalent of 522 railroad cars. If the calculations of 16,000 are correct and you allowed for an average pen size of 4,800 cubic inches that would give you only 42,000 cubic feet or 14.4 railroad cars. Leaving plenty of room for Noah, his family, all the food and supplies and even the insects if they were on board.
5) How did all the animals get to Noah’s ark since they would have been thousands of miles away and separated by large impassable oceans?
It would be virtually, if not actually, impossible for this to be accomplished today. But, many believe that the pre-flood earth contained one land mass (Genesis 1:9). This would have made it significantly easier. Also it becomes easier when you consider only having to bring two of each kind instead of two of each species. It gets even easier when you believe, as many do, that the climate for the earth was very even across much of the world, so most animals lived in every portion of the world.
6) Where did all the water come from, where did it go, where is the evidence and why didn’t it horribly disrupt every single ecosystem on the planet?
Genesis 7:11 tells us that the water came from “the fountains of the deep” and the “windows of heaven.” The implies both torrential rain and oceans and subterranean water sources. The Bible talks about a “breaking up” which implies fissures on the ground and the ocean floor. A plate tectonics model for the flood indicates that the ocean’s floor would rise rapidly at the onset of the flood up to 6,500 feet, due to an increase in temperature in horizontal movement of the tectonic plates accelerated.
According to Alfred Russel Wallace (the co-discoverer of Darwin’s theory) if the earth was flattened the water on the earth would cover the land over 1.7 miles. Many believe that before the flood, the earth was basically flat with only rolling hills. The violent volcanic eruptions and earthquakes so impacted the earth’s topography that the one flat land mass because broken apart and filled with mountains and vallies. (This is talked about in Psalm 104:6-9)
As to the evidence, numerous things appear to be created by erosion. Evolutionists attribute it to having been created over millions of years. Creationists believe they happened in a short period of time due to the flood.
On the ecosystems, they are surprisingly resilient. The ecosystem at Mt. Saint Helens was supposed to be barren for decades. Within three years 90% of all the original plant species were growing in the formerly “barren” blast zone.
7) What about the evidence of linguistics? And why do Christians believe in the Tower of Babel story when civilizations were already all across the globe when the story says they were scattered?
Again, this question presupposes the Bible to be wrong and is a very leading question.
This is from the end of Genesis 10 and Genesis 11. Today we see several language familes that seem to be related within the families, but seemingly no (or very small) connection between the families (such as the Indo-European and the Sino-Asiatic languages).
Could these distinct language families be from the original languages of the Tower of Babel? It is not impossible to believe that within a few thousand years, hundreds of languages could spring up from an original three or four. It has been said many times, the only reason why we currently don’t break down into hundreds of different distinct versions of English is because of our communication abilities. Even then we see marked differences between Southern American English, Northern American English, England English and Australian English. We see in the Great Vowel Shift of English that language sounds can be completely transformed within 200 years.
8) How can the Bible be original and inerrant when it is filled with stories from older cultures?
Once again, this presupposes the Bible is false. It is hard to argue my points from this questions when it does not allow me the answer that I want to give, like “have you stopped beating your wife yet?”
If the Bible is true, original and inerrant, then there are no older cultures. Stories such as the flood actually happened, the Bible records them correctly and numerous other cultures around the world record similar stories that have very close to the story of the Bible, but not exactly right because they are not the inspired word of God.
9) How can Creationist say there is not enough evidence for evolution, but they believe miracles of the Bible?
This is comparing apples to oranges. Evolution by it’s definition does not allow for supernatural explanation, so it has to be explained purely by scientific and natural means.
Miracles of the Bible are just that – miracles. They are supernatural and cannot by definition be explained by natural means.
But as to evidence (not proof) of evolution or creation. Much of the evidence can be interpreted in favor of either evolution or Intelligent Design. It depends totally upon the way you look at things (ex. similarity in animals, Grand Canyon, fossil layers).
10) Jesus claimed that the world would come to an end before those gathered before Him passed away. How do you explain this passage, knowing that if you allow it to be a metaphor or not taken literally you open the entire New Testament up to that type of reasoning?
I do take his claim literal, but I don’t take your interpretation as accurate. You find the claim in Matthew 24. You have to take the verse (34) in context with the rest of the chapter. Jesus spends the entire chapter speaking of all these specific signs that are to take place before the end. One of those signs was the fact that the Gospel would be preached through out the entire world, clearly this leaves out those in attendance. His claim was that those who saw all of the signs fulfilled would not pass away until the end. (Some narrow the claim down further and say it is speaking specifically about verse 32 and the fig tree is a parable of Israel and possession of their land. But regardless there other explanations outside those you gave.
*Some questions were loaded and asked from a presupposition that I was not willing to accept, so I acknowledged each of those. Some questions were asked in a way that Stewart was looking for answers from the perspective of a young earth creationist. While currently, I hold to that view, I do not treat it as dogmatically as something like the deity of Christ. I believe there are numerous Christians who hold to an old earth and would have vastly different answers to the questions. But the main point would be that there are answers to the questions regardless of which side you take.