this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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If you do, why do you believe in God? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 day ago by sloppysol@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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As simple as possible to summarize the best way you can, first, please. Feel free to expand after, or just say whatever you want lol. Honest question.

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[–] Libra@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I see a fair amount of Christian-related posts in your post history so I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that this is probably a conversation you don't want to have. I'm trying not to be an asshole here, but I am very well read on the subject of Christianity, so suffice to say that contradictions exist, they are widely known, and I find Christian apologia on the subject wholly unconvincing.

That said, if I'm really the person you would like to go on this journey of discovery about your religion with then I will take you, but I can't say that you are very likely to enjoy the results.

[–] Manmoth@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm an Orthodox Christian our theology (which is that of the first thousand years) is likely different from anything you take issue with from Catholic or Protestant traditions in regard to soteriology, ecclesiology, sanctification etc

It's great that you have interest in Christianity but Orthodoxy leans on 2000 years of scholarship and tradition. With all due respect you're not going to ask any new questions or bring up any novel points. I don't claim to be an expert but have Orthodox resources I can draw from.

[–] Libra@lemmy.ml 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Fair point. I am not very familiar with Orthodox Christianity at all, save a little of the very early history. You also sound fairly well-educated on the subject, which makes you twice over not the usual kind of person who responds to my comments about religion.

So, first, let me apologize for making assumptions; the usual kind of person I get is an American evangelical protestant who hasn't read most of his or her own bible and is of the opinion that anything important for them to know would be whispered on the wind directly into their ear by god himself, so they have a pretty dim view of learning in general, but also of learning about their religion in specific. That's clearly not you. My bad.

Second, it's my understanding that Orthodoxy (probably not the right word, my bad) uses fundamentally the same scriptures as Catholicism and Protestantism, with some additions to the Old Testament. My issues come from the bible's descriptions of god, events, and people, so I'm going to assume there's enough common ground that my these translate to Orthodoxy as well as the others. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I have 3 core issues with Christianity:

  1. Original sin: imposing the consequences of one person's actions on others is called collective punishment and it's a war crime, and needless to say baking a metaphysical war crime into the very heart of a religion - its origin story - is just not ever going to fly with me. It certainly doesn't help that this is further complicated by #2.
  2. Omniscience/free will: either god is omniscient (lit: all knowledge, which includes perfect knowledge about the future) and free will is impossible so we can't choose to love god, or he isn't omniscient. His claims about moral authority are held together by this linchpin, and honestly either way it falls doesn't look great. If we can't choose to love god then punishing us for 'choosing' otherwise is effectively god punishing others for his own crimes since he made us unable to choose otherwise, so we're right back on the war crimes train. If he's not omniscient then he doesn't have a plan, can't judge sin in the hearts of men, etc. Is he even still a god at that point? Also that would make him a liar, which again is not a great foundation upon which to build a claim to moral authority.
  3. Vengeful/loving god: the Old Testament is full of examples of god as an angry, petty, vengeful tyrant, only for him to change his ways or something in the New Testament and be all about love. There are exceptions in both, obviously, so I'm referring to general trends. I think Jesus had some great ideas (best summed up by Bill & Ted as, 'Be excellent to each other'), but the rest reads like infantile revenge-porn. And I'm not buying that 'hate the sin, love the sinner' thing either (that's probably an evangelical thing), because god sure wasn't raining fire and brimstone and calling for the wholesale slaughter of the sins, that was inflicted upon the sinners. And their sin mostly seems to boil down to not believing in god.

These, to me, seem like unsolvable, unavoidable paradoxes. I see two paths when faced with them:

  1. I'm forced to admit that the 'perfect eternal Divine Truth' is neither perfect nor eternal (re:god's nature purportedly changing) and therefore also not true.
  2. What is being passed off as divine truth was either created or corrupted (which doesn't necessarily imply malicious intent; simple error will suffice) by flawed humans and thus is also not true.

I don't begrudge people who believe or find comfort in it, mind you, but it's not for me. I'm searching for Truth, not a search for 'it's probably not true but I guess it's a nice idea?'

[–] Manmoth@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

First of all “Orthodoxy” is accepted as a shorthand referent to Orthodox Christianity so no issues there.

Secondly no worries on the assumptions I also anticipate Protestant hand waving when it comes to certain topics such as canonicity.

Now for your core issues…

  1. Original Sin - This is where Orthodoxy is different from everyone else. The Orthodox perspective is that the guilt of Adam and Eve’s sin is theirs alone. The consequence of their sin, death, is inherited however. This factors into the sotieriology (e.g. salvation doctrine) of the Church. The nature of man entered a state of fallenness due to the sin of Adam and Eve. Since God cannot be in the presence of sin Adam and Eve had to be expelled from the garden. This expulsion brought with it struggles such as the pain of childbirth, toil, hunger, sickness etc. This is, however, a mercy because despite entering a fallen state humanity has an opportunity to sanctify itself in this life and rejoin with God in death. This is a unique feature to humanity. Heavenly beings are in a static state. It is why Satan is jealous of humanity because the state of his soul cannot be changed and he will be eternally damned. The human soul can no longer change its spiritual state when this life ends. Human beings for all the struggles they have on earth can persevere in their faith and enter the Kingdom when they repose.
  2. Omniscience/Free Will - This is a false dichotomy and is highly dependent on what you mean by free will. Just because God knows all things doesn’t mean he orchestrates all things (e.g. foreknowledge ≠ predestination). God is incomprehensible and operates outside of time. This is part of what makes God a transcendent all powerful being. Furthermore because the Orthodox don’t believe in Original Sin the theological allowance for how man moves and works in the world is different. Man can live in the world and freely choose between Good and Evil. Salvation is achieved through a process of working together with the Holy Spirit in all aspects of life. This process is called Theosis.

Orthodoxy doesn’t conceive of God’s knowledge as something that competes with human will. Because God is not bound by time, His knowledge isn’t predictive—it’s participatory. We remain free precisely because God allows our freedom to unfold within His omniscient love. This is the mystery of synergy with the Holy Spirit.

What we perceive as logical already presupposes the existence of God, because logic itself depends on the existence of objective truth. If God is bound by created laws, He ceases to be God; He is the source of all order, not subject to it.

  1. Vengeful/loving god - This is primarily a postmodern critique of scripture by people like Richard Dawkins although ancient Marcionites and Gnostics love this critique as well. The Orthodox wholly reject this critique as a shallow reading of scripture that does not take into account the context of passages in and of themselves or scripture in its entirety. While God does render punishment in the Old Testament he is also endlessly loving despite being heartbroken by the wayward sins of his people who repeatedly abandon him for other Gods that can’t save them. There is love and wrath in both the OT and the NT. (e.g. OT - Jonah, God saving Nineveh when they repent; NT - Jesus over-turning tables of Money Changers) This is more of a squishy critique than the other two so I’m not sure what else to add.

Two paths forward…

I’m forced to admit that the ‘perfect eternal Divine Truth’ is neither perfect nor eternal (re:god’s nature purportedly changing) and therefore also not true.

The revelation of God is one that compounds on the past. Creation, Expulsion, Punishment, Enrichment, Liberation, Exile etc until you reach God incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ who uses the history of human failures to illustrate the grace of God and the establishment of a new covenant that saves all people. This is a logical progression.

What is being passed off as divine truth was either created or corrupted (which doesn’t necessarily imply malicious intent; simple error will suffice) by flawed humans and thus is also not true.

I haven’t seen a compelling case that divine truth has been fundamentally corrupted. It seems more a result of your sentiment than a critical analysis.

I recognize you may disagree with the points I adequately communicated or have questions about ones I failed to describe well. I am a fallible human after all 😂. You may find that many of the contradictions you’re grappling with don’t exist in Orthodox thought in the same way they might in some Western traditions. I’d encourage looking into Orthodox apologia for a perspective not burdened by the theological inheritances of later Western heresies like penal substitution or strict determinism..

An aside about "war crimes" -- I will not expound on this too much because it's a whole separate topic but be wary of using a modern lens when assessing the ancient. You're smuggling in a moral framework to critique a metaphysical one. It's easy to forget that secular ethical ideas such as "war crimes" typically find their origin in Christian morality to begin with (at least in the West). What is the epistemic justification for Good and Bad in a world where everything is relative? Philosophically it is an arbitrary critique without grounding.