The Christian's Fire Escape No. 1

The interesting thing about the internet is that people don't measure you according to your age. Right now, I have an email exchange with a very famous architect who's very old (he's about 55 or 56) who is extremely knowledgeable in religion. He's a devout Christian who actually does not accept evolution. He's really an old man and not a student pretending to be an old man - he's featured in top magazines on his field of work.

He does not agree with the beamishboy on religion and on God. I've examined his arguments and I've noticed a common thread that runs through the arguments of ALL Christians. One would have thought the beamishboy would be reluctant to debate with intelligent old men on religion but I think I've won not because I'm clever but because my beliefs are correct. I've got right on my side.

I have decided to group together what I call the Christian's Fire Escape. When a fundamentalist Christian is confronted with an argument that will shatter his beliefs, his usual response is "Yoopsies doodles, toads and poodles! I'm off to my Fire Escape!!!"

Fire Escape No. 1 is one which this highly intelligent architect uses. To be fair to him, he's only used it in one line of his email but I think it's quite common in Christian circles to use this. I feel obliged to show up its flaw.

FIRE ESCAPE NO. 1 - THE AUTOMATON ARGUMENT

There are a few charges that we can lay at God's door. One, if the Christian religion is so blooming true and all non-believers would perish, why doesn't God make it clear and in unequivocal terms that the triune God is the only true one? The charge can come in various forms. In my email communication with the architect, I explained that I've been studying the human genome and one appalling story I've read is that of Huntington's Disease that is caused by Chromosome No. 4. In the US, people with this horrible genetic disease descend from two brothers who emigrated to the US in the 1600s. Some of the descendants of these two brothers were burnt as witches in Salem.

I stated that these Christians at Salem were honest, sincere believers who wanted to do the will of God. They loved Jesus and studied the Bible and really wanted to do what was right in the eyes of God. The Old Testament says that witches are to be put to death. They killed sufferers of Huntington's Disease in the name of Jesus and out of obedience to what they sincerely believed was God's holy will.

If someone loves me and is going to kill a Huntington sufferer for my sake and out of a misunderstanding that I want that chap killed, there would be no expense that I would spare to ensure that his misunderstanding is corrected. And I'm not even almighty. God, by failing to do this and many other similar things that I'm sure you can think of, must be guilty of the most heinous crime that only the ultimate evil beast can possibly be guilty of.

My correspondent defends God in this manner. God is not responsible for the evil state of human nature. He can't go round eradicating our evil nature and turn us into "mindless robots happy to do His will".

This is the famous Automaton argument. It's a very common argument that every Christian from childhood onwards is taught to resort to when occasion demands it. As in all Christian arguments, this is applicable in a variety of ways. Christian arguments are usually not very precise. They are nebulous and hazy and this is important because just a few arguments are usually recycled and used for a huge variety of problems.

The biggest flaw in this argument is of course the fact that correcting the Salem Christians' misunderstanding is not turning them into automatons. Similarly, making it absolutely clear to people that only a particular religion is true is not turning them into mindless robots. Rather the converse is cruel and unfair especially if not making it absolutely clear to everyone will result in hell fire for unbelievers.