Questioning Faith: 500 Questions Every Christian Should Ask
1. Why don’t all people share the same creation story?
2. Why would God fill the oceans with water we can’t drink?
3. Why didn’t God clear out the Promised Land before the Jews arrived?
4. If we didn’t evolve, why do humans share so much DNA with chimpanzees?
5. Doesn’t Intelligent Design contradict itself?
6. How could God just always exist?
7. Why can’t God lift a penny?
8. Why would God create birds that can’t fly?
9. Why can’t we call down fire from heaven? Again?
11. Doesn’t the existence of many religions discredit them all?
12. Why did God give His chosen people so little land?
13. Doesn’t faith make us more susceptible to delusions? (E.g. Harold Camping)
14. Why is God ignorant of His own creation?
15. Did God hang the Earth on nothing, or set it on pillars?
17. Why does God allow children to suffer and die?
18. Why does belief in God and religion decrease as intelligence increases?
19. What evidence is there that humans have a spirit? Part 1: The Science of the Soul
20. What evidence is there that humans have a spirit? Part 2: Near Death Experiences (NDEs)
21. Why does God allow miscarriages, spontaneous abortions and still births?
22. Was God really hoping Adam would find a suitable partner among the animals?
23. Why doesn’t the Bible mention Neanderthals?
24. Why would God create conjoined twins? (Warning, contains graphic content)
25. If the earth is 6,000 years old, how can we see stars more than 6,000 light years away?
26. Why doesn’t God allow humans to regenerate limbs?
27. Do we choose our religion, or does God choose it for us?
28. If someone never hears the gospel, can they still go to heaven?
29. Was Jonah really swallowed by a whale?
30. Should we all stop having children?
31. Can God be both perfectly merciful and perfectly just?
32. Can prophecies prove the Bible is true?
33. Why would God give pigs better sex lives than humans?
34. Did God recycle our DNA to save time?
35. Wouldn’t Eden have become overpopulated?
36. Why do we only find advanced complexity in living things?
37. Is Jesus the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53?
38. Does God appoint evil leaders?
39. Why does the Tasmanian Devil have 20 offspring but only four nipples?
40. Should Noah’s Ark be taken literally?
41. What is the meaning of eating?
42. Why does God allow animals to suffer?
43. Did the Bible accurately predict the future of Tyre (Ezekiel 26)?
I have another question to add to your list….Why doesn’t God punish bad people? I feel they are the most fruitful sometimes.
Good question
Because he isn’t real.
I think it’s a reasonable question, and I think Job (and a lot of other Jews) were once asking the same question. With little or no belief in an afterlife, and little visible benefit to serving God, it was pretty obvious that God wasn’t being very fair. It took the idea of an afterlife to make God appear fair once again.
Though this still raises the question: why does God let some people sail through life, while others must suffer through it? They’re both rewarded with the same eternity of heavenly goodness, but one had to do a lot more to earn it… which doesn’t seem fair at all.
Of course, if He doesn’t exist, that would answer the question.
I found an interesting site, not sure where this post is relevant, so I am posting it here.
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com.au/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html
It creates a whole list of all of the deaths caused or ordered by God. I was overwhelmed by its length. I’d heard of the killings in the OT before, but not on this scale! The site is somewhat biased, but it is definitely useful in gaining a sense of what was happening.
The argument for God killing people is that it is justified as the people were ‘evil’, [the commandment is "thou shalt not murder", not "thou shalt not kill", apparently meaning that jutified killings were okay] but while it may cover some of the deaths, most of them died for… interesting reasons, to put it mildly.
I think that problem of evil should make the list of 500 Questions. Even though the problem has be “solved,” I think that it is more that the original formulation was solved – not the problem itself. Here is something that kinds of strikes me –
1. Evil is defined as that which is against the will of god
2. God is characterized as not being able to act against his own will (*ie. god cannot commit evil or create evil)
3. God existed since eternity, before all other things
4. Evil had a beginning, meaning it was created. This follows logically from #3 (*since there was no being or will outside of god’s in the beginning, there could not have even been potential evil in the beginning as god could not violate his own will)
5. God created all things which were created
Conclusion #1 God created evil. This is impossible, as evil is against the will of God
Conclusion #2 At least one of the propositions #1-5 is false
Conclusion #3 If any of the proposition #1-5 are false, the popular notion of god is fundamentally flawed.
Note – Evil cannot be considered as simply the logical opposite of good, unless we are to grant that evil is eternal, as good (god) is eternal.
Note #2 -We cannot simply say that evil is the absence of good, as god is everywhere – meaning there is nowhere that he is not. Further, this would imply that evil existed in at least a potential form since the beginning. Should god have removed his good presence from a place – the place would have become evil. This is nonsensical as god’s nature is to be everywhere all the time, and therefore it is not possible for him to remove his presence from any place or time. Also, there were no beings or wills in the beginning other than god’s. Therefore, evil could not have existed even in potential, as there were no other wills, and there was no potential that god would violate his own will.
Howdy Alex,
Actually, I do cover that one under question #10 (and the problem of evil comes up A LOT in conversations under question #17):
http://500questions.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/10-why-did-god-create-evil/
But I absolutely agree with your points, and I may need to expand on this question in the future since it’s such a critical one.
One closely related question I need to address is: “How do we define ‘good’?” Is good whatever God says it is, or does a definition of good exist outside of God and He abides by it?
If we define evil as “that which is against the will of god,” we presume that it is God who defines what is good or evil, and therefore He may choose to define everything as good. If that is the case, then even the actions of Satan could be considered good, simply because God says they are. God may even consider having people suffer eternally in hell as “good.” Basically, the word “good” loses all meaning, it’s just whatever God says it is (not what man might imagine). Ergo there is actually no such thing as evil, or acting against God’s will, because all that exists is exactly the way God wants it to be, and to God, it’s all good.
Now, I don’t necessarily agree with that nonsense, I’m just playing the devil’s advocate (pardon the pun).
Thanks for the reply. You are correct, you did go into it on #10. You know, I have thought about this a lot and I realize that believers almost always use the phrase “god allows evil,” instead of “god creates evil.” I just don’t think they have ever addressed where evil, or the potential for evil, came from in the first place. How can god allow something that god never created?
About your second point – most believers subscribe to the “Divine Command Theory.” It says that whatever god says – goes. Many of them would say that god would never say to do something bad – because god is good. They don’t seem to get the question. I have only seen one solution for this dilemma – called the “Euthyphro dilemma.” The supposed solution is that god’s nature is good, and from that good nature god gives commands – therefore they are neither arbitrary nor are they an appeal to an outside source.
I think that your question “but what does being good even mean?” is a good question as a follow up to that resolution to the dilemma. This is because it essentially brings us back to a kind of hybrid of your point and my point above: “when there was no one else but god, what could being “good” have possibly meant? In relation to who or what was god good? Were there any alternatives to being good? Who was the beneficiary of this goodness? And finally…..what is the essential nature/quality/essence of ‘good’ such that it is equally relevant in the timeless, spaceless dimension of god – in which nothing but god exists AND in the convoluted material world? In other words, how does ‘good’ have equal meaning as god exists alone, in a world where there are no relations between god and other things (because they didn’t exist,) AND in the flesh and blood material world?
Indeed, God must create it in order for it to exist. I once got into a conversation with a woman (Tina Mac, under question #17) who blamed Satan for evil. When I pointed out that God created Satan, she replied, “God did not create Satan, that is absurd.” So I pointed to a number of verses that illustrated that nothing in heaven or on earth was made without God, to which she replied, “God DID NoT Create Satan. Everyone but you seems to know that. That makes me angry that you would suggest such a horrible thought.” She never did say how she thought Satan originated, but it just goes to show that some people don’t give it much thought.
I’ll take a look at the euthyphro dilemma when I write about this one later, thanks!
wouldn’t that go into the category of the whole every one is born and free will lets them take whatever path they choose? I don’t know I think everyone who is put on this earth can do whatever they want