During my younger years, I easily believed what my parents said about God. This was the case up to a year or so ago, when something just snapped in my head. I cannot pinpoint when exactly it happened or what caused it, but from then on, I questioned the concept of God, specifically the traditional Christian concept of God. But I would like to emphasize that I have not become an atheist and stopped believing in the existence of a supreme being, it’s just that I’m no longer inclined to believe the common teachings about him.
The first thing I would like to be clarified about our Christian faith is this: how did Lucifer (a.k.a Satan, Devil) think of rebelling against God? The explanation I heard from our pastor (I am/was one of the so-called “Born-Again” Christians) was that Lucifer became too proud of himself. But the thing is, everything that God created was supposed to be good. So how did pride, a negative trait, get into Lucifer’s heart? Did God forget to make Lucifer good? Or did Lucifer create pride?
A related question is this: if God knows everything, why did God still create Lucifer? We assume here that God knew in advance that Lucifer would lead a rebellion against Him. If only He skipped creating Lucifer, then there would have been no rebellion, no Satan, and no evil. There are two possible explanations I have thought so far about this. First, God somehow failed to foresee Lucifer’s rebellion. The other, and more disturbing explanation was that, God did foresee Lucifer’s rebellion but still allowed it to happen. Why? Because He thought a little competition for the souls of mankind would make things more interesting.
As mentioned earlier, Lucifer led a failed rebellion against God. And, according to Christian teachings, Lucifer, now known as Satan, would be thrown into the fires of hell together with other fellow fallen angels and people stupid enough to follow him. So why didn’t God just do this to Satan right after crushing his rebellion? If he had done so, then Satan would not have been able to tempt Adam and Eve at Eden, thus sparing mankind from evil.
Everytime I listen to pastors, I always hear them say that Satan had already been defeated when Jesus came to save mankind. But at the same time, they also warn us about the world becoming more and more evil. Isn’t this weird – a defeated enemy getting stronger and stronger?
Most Christians insist that God created the universe in seven days. If this were true, then all creatures on this planet should have remained exactly the same since creation. However, there is ample proof that even animals of the same species develop unique characteristics depending on where they live and the circumstances they face for their survival. Even people developed unique characteristics based on their location.
The Bible teaches us that everything that God created was good. Supposedly, before the fall of Adam and Eve, there were neither disease nor natural disasters. So where did all these come from? Did Satan create them? Wouldn’t that contradict the principle that only God has the power to create new things?
Why didn’t God allow Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Did he want man to remain ignorant of what is good and what is evil? If so, that means he gave us free will without the knowledge to use it effectively. That’s like joining a game without knowing how to play it!
This next question is actually quite trivial. According to the Bible, Adam and Eve became aware that they were naked only after they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Burt how come there are still tribes up to now where people walk around virtually naked yet unashamed? Did they descend from someone other than Adam and Eve? Or maybe they the curse didn’t pass on to them?
God was supposed to have created us in his own image. One of the things he gave us is free will. Does this mean that God also has free will? If so, can he become evil or commit evil acts if He wished to? Is God good only because up to now, he chooses to act well?
The Israelites, according to the Bible, were God’s chosen people. They were the only ones who knew and worshipped the “true” God. Everybody else was worshipping “false” gods and was a “sinner”. This was supposed to have been changed when Jesus came and made salvation available to all mankind. Does that mean that before Jesus came, persons who were unlucky enough to have been born in other tribes or kingdoms went straight to hell when they died? Where’s justice in that?
Why did most, if not all, of the world’s major religions develop before the advent of modern science? How come all of the so-called miracles take place before the existence of scientists?