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What Is Anti-Gay Speech? And How Protected Should it Be?

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An actress was fired from a British theater production after she expressed her Christian views about homosexuality. She is now suing her agent and the theater.

This story pits Christian anti-gay viewpoints (which I hate) against free speech rights (which I like). Where is the right balance?

Background of the case

In September 2014, actress Seyi Omooba wrote a Facebook post that expressed her conservative Christian views about homosexuality. Her father is a pastor who advocates gay conversion therapy (so you can see where she gets it from). She said, in part:

It is clearly evident in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 what the Bible says on this matter. I do not believe you can be born gay and i do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it legal doesn’t mean its right.

Fast forward to March, 2019, and she’s offered the role of Celie in “The Color Purple,” a character who has sex with another woman.

Another UK actor noticed the conflict between her conservative beliefs and those of her new role and tweeted:

Do you still stand by this post? Or are you happy to remain a hypocrite? Seeing as you’ve now been announced to be playing an LGBTQ character, I think you owe your LGBTQ peers an explanation. Immediately.

The tweet promptly generated a negative response, and Omooba’s agent asked her to retract her comments. She refused and was fired by the theater and dropped by her agent. She recently decided to sue them both.

The Christian Legal Centre, which is supporting Omooba in the case, said,

This is another in a string of cases involving Christians being hounded out of their careers because they love Jesus. . . .

This story sends a chilling message that if you express mainstream biblical views, you will be punished and lose your career if you do not immediately renounce your beliefs. This cannot go unchallenged and we are determined to fight for justice in this case.

Is this a “mainstream biblical view”?

She’s just sharing what the Bible says. What’s wrong with that?

What’s wrong is that her views aren’t what the Bible says but one interpretation of what the Bible says. It’s like Westboro Baptist Church, the tiny band of troublemakers with the “God hates fags” signs. Westboro has Bible quotes to back up everything they say. The reason millions of mainstream Christians aren’t rallying to their banner is that, here again, this is just one viewpoint. The Bible says lots of contradictory stuff and can be interpreted to say just about anything you’d like.

The interpretation a Christian picks is a choice. Omooba can’t say that her hands are tied and the Bible says what it says, so don’t shoot the messenger. She’s picking a conservative interpretation over an interpretation that would be more palatable in the West in the twenty-first century.

I do acknowledge that she may not be as free to change views that have been indoctrinated in her by a Christian upbringing as if she were, say, picking from a menu. My point is that she can see that her views are in the minority and that other Christians have chosen different views but worship the same god. She has no grounds for thinking that her view of homosexuality is the only one.

Free speech

(Note that this case was filed in the UK, so “free speech” is defined by UK laws.)

Omooba filed her lawsuit because “I want to make sure no other Christian has to go through something like this.” She says she’s fighting for the right to express her religious views.

But where’s the problem? She had and continues to have the right to express her religious views. What she’s unhappy about is that free speech can have consequences. She’s free to state her opinion, but then everyone else is free to object.

Omooba’s guarantee of free speech came from the government. The theater company presumably still had a contract with Omooba that allowed them to fire her for cause. Any theater company would be wary of a production that is controversial or might even be boycotted, and an anti-gay cloud is not what a theater would want for a show with a gay theme.

Part 2: the justification from her legal defense team + what the Bible actually says about homosexuality.

You want people to show your religion respect?
Then your religion is going to have to do
what every other organization on earth
that wants respect has to do:
stop being such a monumental, obnoxious
pain in the ass and earn it.
— seen on the internet

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Image from Vlah Dumitru, CC license
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Insight Into the Evangelical Persecution Complex

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The Kim Davis story is just one log on the fire of imagined Christian persecution. Here is what their environment tells conservative American Christians:

  • Louisiana governor and presidential candidate Bobby Jindal said, “If you disagree with gay marriage, they put you in jail,” a perhaps deliberate misunderstanding of the Kim Davis fiasco.
  •  “Christian convictions are under attack as never before,” Republican candidate Mike Huckabee said. “We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.”
  • Rick Santorum’s 2015 film, “One Generation Away,” reveals how long he fears we have until religious rights are swept away by the jackbooted liberals.
  • God’s Not Dead, a film that imagines an America in which Christian students are persecuted by professors for their beliefs, was a surprise success in 2014 (my critique). Persecution porn is good business, and two sequels have followed (here, here).
  • Ratio Christi promoted God’s Not Dead 2 with “If Christians don’t take a stand today, will we even have a choice tomorrow?”
  • Pundits assure us that laws forcing pastors to conduct same-sex marriages are around the corner.
  • Pat Robertson, always quick to add thoughtful insight to bring a topic into focus, said, “Christianity, the founding principle of this nation, is criminalized. You go to jail if you believe in God and stand fast for your beliefs against the onslaught of secular humanism.”
  • Tom Gilson said, “Could it reach a tipping point, where it boils over into widespread, active anti-Christian violence? Yes. Most of the pieces are in place.”
  • Rev. Robert Jeffress recently said, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office, I’m afraid it will cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.” Utah senator Mike Lee said something similar in 2018. And Rev. Jim Bakker in 2017.
  • And doesn’t the War on Christmas seem to come earlier each year?

Christians are told that if they’re not seeing Christian persecution they must not be looking hard enough. The Bible makes this clear in a dozen places.

All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12).

Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you (1 John 3:13).

Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man (Luke 6:22).

Not only is persecution to be expected, it’s a blessed thing, and conservative leaders capitalize on this. They fan the flames of persecution to help rally (and shake money and votes out of) the faithful.

Atheist response

Most atheists and those who insist on secular government would be surprised to find themselves accused of being behind this persecution. The Persecuted may point to other countries where preaching the Bible’s anti-gay message is prohibited, but that’s not the United States. More to the point, in any situation where pastors were forbidden from preaching or Christians were jailed for being Christian, every atheist I know would rally to their side. (Ignoring the bluster to the contrary, Kim Davis wasn’t jailed for being Christian; she was jailed for not doing her job.)

Freedom of speech means nothing if it doesn’t protect offensive speech, and a society where Christians can’t freely speak is (or may soon be) a society where atheists also can’t freely speak.

Imagined persecution is kept alive by Christian excesses—a public school with a Jesus painting, a Bible quote on the wall, or coaches who force students to pray, for example. When they are sued to force them to stop, conservative Chicken Littles whine that the sky is falling, but there’s a difference between Christian rights and Christian excesses. When you have an unfair privilege and then that privilege is removed, you’re not being persecuted.

Why the persecution has traction

With atheists making clear that they want a secular public square where everyone can participate (yes, Christians, too), where’s the problem? Why doesn’t this defuse conservatives’ predictions of apocalypse, at least partially? I think the idea of persecution against Christians is a sticky idea because, if the roles were reversed, persecution is exactly what they’d do!

Let me illustrate with an anecdote from the book The Man Who Stayed Behind about Sidney Rittenberg, a U.S. soldier who helped the Chinese against the Japanese during World War II. He came to appreciate the struggle of the Communists and remained in China to help after the war was over.

During the Cultural Revolution, he worked as a translator in a press agency. Society was chaotic during this period, with little central control, and one faction within the organization took control. This faction acted in the traditional Maoist manner by stamping down all dissent. Rittenberg was part of an opposing group that said that one of the goals of the Cultural Revolution was openness, and that all voices should be heard.

Eventually, Rittenberg’s faction was able to seize control, but the story doesn’t have a happy ending. Despite Rittenberg’s efforts, his faction reverted to the only way they knew to rule, the same tactics they’d been fighting—totalitarianism. Openness was important when it suited them, but they in their turn shut it down when it became inconvenient.

Maybe it’s the different moral thinking that governs liberals and conservatives. Maybe Christianity’s totalitarian past reveals a theme that still animates Christians today. Efforts by some Christian leaders (or conservative politicians, who are often indistinguishable) to have things their way without compromise, reveal their view of how power should work. If atheists gained more power, they imagine, wouldn’t they do things the same way?

For a quantitative example of how secular America is the good guy, consider one of conservative Christians’ favorite demons, the ACLU. The ACLU (dedicated to preserving “the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”) has taken on two hundred religious legal cases in the last twenty years. In more than half of them, the ACLU took the side of Christians. The ACLU defends free speech and religious rights for all Americans, Christians included. Similarly, atheists want a secular public square for the benefit of everyone.

Lay Christians are surrounded by conservative leaders eager to amplify perceptions of persecution, but if those ordinary Christians would listen to us, they might find that secularists simply want a society that benefits everyone.

Ignorance, misery, and fear
[is] the soil in which religion flourishes best.
— Linda LaScola and Daniel Dennett

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/11/15.)

Image credit: Wikimedia
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Outrageous Kim Davis: JFK Showed How It’s Done

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In 2015, Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis decided that she would ignore the obligations of her job and pick what parts she would and wouldn’t perform. She imagined that the Bible makes a clear, relevant statement against homosexuality (it doesn’t) and refuse to issue marriage licenses because some of those would be for same-sex couples (more in part 1).

Let’s turn to a more famous church/state clash to see a different, less selfish way to approach public service.

We’ve seen this before

John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960. Some Americans were concerned that JFK, as a Catholic, would see the pope as a higher authority and answer to him rather than the Constitution or the American people. One radio evangelist of the time said, “Each person has the right to their own religious belief [but] the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical system demands the first allegiance of every true member and says in a conflict between church and state, the church must prevail.”

In other words, how did we know that JFK wouldn’t do a Kim Davis?

JFK famous responded to this challenge:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; [and] where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials. . . .

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

JFK explicitly rejected what Kim Davis embraced. That’s how it’s done.

The U.S. Constitution calls the tune

The bottom line is that the Bible isn’t the supreme law of the land—the Constitution is.

Be not confused: the United States doesn’t exist and run because God said so; instead, Christians can preach and worship because the Constitution says so. If the law offends you, you can argue that it’s unjust, you can work to have it changed, or you can leave. We have a 100% secular constitution that defines a 100% secular means for making, changing, and upholding laws.

I hear Pakistan puts God first in their law—maybe Kim Davis would like that better.

“The sky is falling!”

Conservatives were quick to tell us that this incident was the beginning of overt Christian persecution. A Christian Post columnist at the time said, “For years now I and others have been warning that committed Christians could soon face jail time in America for holding to our convictions.”

Not really. Christian county clerks can object to same-sex marriages, Christian pharmacists can object to emergency contraceptives, Muslim flight attendants can object to serving alcohol, and Christian bakers and photographers can object to same-sex weddings, but do your job. Don’t sign up, then claim oppression and refuse to do what you promised to do.

To anticipate some jobs that a devout Christian might belatedly realize conflict with biblical principles, Huffington Post has a list of jobs to avoid. You wouldn’t want to be a clerk selling mixed fabrics (which are explicitly prohibited by the Bible), fishing for shellfish (prohibited), or teaching as a woman (prohibited). Are these examples ridiculous? Then ditto a clerk who objects to same-sex marriage (not explicitly prohibited) but has no problem with marrying divorced people (prohibited).

Another Christian Post columnist said, “Every serious biblical Christian will have to consider what to do now—whether a baker being asked to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage against her conscience, a county clerk faced with issuing a marriage license to a homosexual couple, or a pastor being requested to perform a wedding between two women or two men.” Let me answer that for you: the baker is obliged to follow public accommodation laws that prohibit discrimination, county clerks must do their jobs, and the U.S. has laws protecting pastors.

This last one is always on the list, even though pastors are protected, both by the First Amendment and by Supreme Court precedent. Remember Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court decision that made mixed-race marriage legal? That is binding only on governments, not pastors. Pastors can and do refuse to perform mixed-race marriages. The same is true for same-sex marriages. Even the Family Research Council (a Christian organization) agrees. Hysteria about constraints on the clergy is popular because it rallies the troops, not because it’s realistic.

This reminds me of Glenn Beck’s hysteria on the eve of the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage. He declared that there were upwards of 10,000 pastors “that I think will walk through a wall of fire, you know, and possible death.”

Who did he imagine on the other side with the flaming torches?

Kim Davis: another Rosa Parks?

Rosa Parks was the African-American woman who refused to sit in the back of the bus in 1955. One of Kim Davis’s supporters finds much similarity between the two women. If Rosa Parks shouldn’t have to get off the bus, why should Kim Davis? He asks, “Will Kim Davis be the Rosa Parks of the movement?”

The difference, of course, is that Rosa Parks had her civil rights infringed upon, while Kim Davis is trying to infringe on the civil rights of others. If Kim Davis feels that the Bible has something to say about Obergefell, she can express that view, and every atheist I can think of will support her right to free speech. What she can’t do is impose that outside the law.

Will Kim Davis be the Rosa Parks of the conservative anti-same-sex marriage movement? A four-times-married person setting herself up as the arbiter of marriage might indeed be an appropriate saint for this ridiculous up-is-down and Ignorance-is-Strength movement.

Related post: “Being on the Wrong Side of History on Same-Sex Marriage? Worse than You Think.”

If you have to explain,
“I’m doing this out of love,”
it ain’t love.
— seen on the internet

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/8/15.)

Image credit: Wikimedia
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Another Attempt to Explain God’s Hiddenness (or Nonexistence) Fails (3 of 3)

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Why doesn’t God make himself more obvious? This concludes my response to the answer to this question from Christian apologist Tom Gilson. (Part 1 here.)

We’re in the middle of Gilson’s analysis of the speculation of atheist Lawrence Krauss* about the evidence he’d need to justify Christianity’s supernatural claims.

Who’s ready for an irrelevant puzzle??

We’re nearing the end of the article, still waiting for a direct, relevant answer to the question Gilson raised. What we get instead is yet another tangential puzzle:

So if God proved to Dr. Krauss that He exists, the famed physicist would still have to decide whether he wants God to exist.

No—go back. If God proved to Dr. Krauss that he exists, that would be huge. That would’ve actually addressed the question you set out to answer!

Let me say that again: Gilson imagines answering the question he introduced in the title of his article but, instead of considering the consequences of that remarkable result (or showing how it could happen), he tosses it aside to pick up a new argument, something by which to misdirect his audience. Again.

Gilson clearly can’t answer the question—if he had an answer, he would have given it.

He’s scuttled his own ship at this point, but let’s play along. Gilson challenges us: if we knew God exists, we’d “still have to decide whether [we want] God to exist.”

My answer: no, I don’t want God to exist if he’s the Bronze Age barbarian plainly described in the Old Testament, and yes, I do want God to exist if he’s actually a benevolent and wise god who wants the best for us and would make that happen. But why ask? How is our desire relevant? God either exists or he doesn’t. Gilson says he can resolve that issue, but he comes up empty. He wants to invent human shortcomings and focus on them when we’re simply asking a question that any Christian would find reasonable in any other context.

Once more, with feeling

Adding a final flourish to this turd of an argument, Gilson scolds his readers for not misunderstanding the problem as he does.

Getting the right answer to the question, “Does God exist?” isn’t the point. God won’t reduce Himself to being a mere true/false quiz answer.

Remember that Gilson’s article was written to answer the question, “Why doesn’t God make himself more obvious?” and, here again, he admits he can’t. He knows that’s embarrassing, so he uses tangents and bravado to pretend that the actual issue is elsewhere. He wants us to imagine that it’s demeaning to God (whom we’re assuming into existence for the purposes of this argument) when we demand evidence that he exists.

Huh? Let’s explore this ploy by asking, “Does Tom Gilson exist?” With this question, have I now reduced the significance of Gilson’s existence to “a mere true/false quiz answer” (whatever that means)? Have I demeaned or insulted him at all by asking and answering the question? If not, what does God have to whine about?

Gilson needs to rethink who his enemies are. Skeptics who ask reasonable questions are giving him and his claims the most respect they can. They assume that we’re all adults and that we agree that remarkable claims must be supported by excellent evidence. This is much better treatment than Gilson gets from those who dismiss Christianity with a laugh, giving him no chance to even make his case.

Gilson’s protecting God from demands for evidence is especially ridiculous when, according to the tales in his own book, God has no problem providing evidence. According to the stories, he supported Elijah in his public contest against the hundreds of priests of Baal, dramatically proving who actually existed. And Jesus did his healing miracles in part to provide evidence of his claims.

Not only do God and Jesus have no problem being tested, Christians delight in making evidence claims where possible—that the Shroud of Turin is tangible evidence of the resurrection, that the thousands of Bible manuscripts add to the Bible’s reliability, and so on. Evidence is apparently acceptable currency for God, making his hiddenness today unexplainable.

Conclusion

To call Gilson’s argument an argument is to call a rusty pile of spare parts a race car, but I don’t mean to single him out. This might be the best that he can do given the worthless hand he’s been dealt.

His argument does nothing to argue for God because he assumes God’s existence at the start. Either God’s absence is justified by his super-secret Plan, or it’s our fault for not perceiving it (our hard hearts blind us to the evidence, or something). But drop the God presupposition and follow the evidence, and the clues fit together easily. Natural explanations are sufficient, and God becomes unnecessary, just a solution looking for a problem.

We understand what good and bad relationships look like. Christians claim that a relationship with God is the best of all, but God’s role is unlike that in any healthy human relationship. When something goes wrong, it’s always your fault; you’re obliged to love God, but God has no obligation to earn that love; and God never stoops to show that he even exists. This is much like battered-woman syndrome, where the victim takes responsibility for any failings in the relationship, falls into learned helplessness, and fears for their safety if they do the wrong thing.

Gilson’s handwaving and subject changing make clear that he can’t answer his own question. “Where is the evidence for God?” is the question, and the answers suck. All this handwaving is just a “look—something shiny!” attempt to change the conversation away from the original one: why isn’t there good evidence for God? Why is God so hidden?

And to that, we’re given nothing.

More posts on the problem of divine hiddenness:

*Gilson made a mistake—it’s actually not Lawrence Krauss. I explain the error at the top of part 2.

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions,
they don’t have to worry about the answers.
— Thomas Pynchon

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Image from Alexander Krivitskiy, CC license
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Outrageous Kim Davis: Homophobe and Hypocrite

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Kim Davis is the county clerk in Kentucky who, following the 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, prohibited her office from issuing any marriage licenses because, “To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage [by which she means straight marriage], with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience.”

That gave her fifteen minutes of fame as the darling of the Right. Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee welcomed her after her five-day stay in jail. She won a “Cost of Discipleship Award” at the 2015 Values Voter Summit.

Today, not so much. She ran for reelection as county clerk, but apparently her constituents had had enough of her shenanigans, and she lost last November. She’s also stuck with $220,000 in legal fees.

Kentucky’s GOP governor claims to still support her actions and yet threw her under the bus by declaring that the state shouldn’t have to pay.

Davis argued that Kentucky should pay, “because Davis acted as a state official for purposes of marriage licensing.” That’s right: Kim Davis the citizen isn’t liable for the bills because the state (in the form of Kim Davis the county clerk) caused the problem. Doing the right thing supposedly guided her actions at some point, but owning the costs she’s incurred is inconvenient right now.

In a further complication, a recent court decision allows Davis to be sued for damages as an individual, and two same-sex couples plan on doing just that.

Kim Davis’s selfish argument

Davis’s choice of God over country seems odd, because as a candidate she never admitted that she’d pick and choose the laws she’d follow. In fact, she promised to “follow the statutes of this office to the letter.”

Davis justified her reversal by arguing that the “So help me, God” tacked on to her oath of office meant that acting on her Christian beliefs was obligatory and trumped the laws she was promising to uphold.

This fails in many ways: that phrase is not part of the official oath (nor is the Bible you might put your hand on), and if she swore to God to uphold the law, she’s now breaking that oath. (A thoughtful analysis of this is by Noah Feldman.)

In addition, the Bible itself makes a clear statement about respecting the government.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves (Romans 13:1–2; see also 1 Timothy 2:2, Titus 3:1, and 1 Peter 2:13).

An easy solution leaps to mind: if your conscience says you can no longer perform your job then quit. You could even make a bold public statement by saying that a government job that pays $80,000 per year isn’t worth compromising one’s principles. But no, she wants it both ways. She imagines that she gets to apply her personal interpretation of Christianity to her job.

Does she imagine every other government official gets to apply their individual religious interpretations to their jobs? The Bible says all sorts of crazy stuff in favor of slavery, genocide, and polygamy; could any such religious belief be applied by any government employee? Are beliefs from Islam, Satanism, and other religions also valid?

I suspect that she wanted to reserve that privilege for herself. We certainly find hypocrisy in her own situation. She wanted to pick and choose which secular laws to follow, and incredibly, she did the same with God’s laws. Jesus said, “Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 5:32). Davis cast that one aside, since she’s been married four times. And she remarried her first husband, violating Deuteronomy 24:1–4.

Davis began her job in January, 2015, when she knew that same-sex marriage might become legal within months, but she swore her oath of office anyway. She’s like the pacifist who willingly joins the infantry, knowing that killing the enemy was a possibility. With her unit deployed to a war zone, then this soldier decides that she can’t do her job.

Continue with a famous example that shows how a public servant should act here.

[Kim Davis is] applying for the job of martyr.
— seen on Fox News

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/8/15.)

Image from Robert Bejil, CC license

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Another Attempt to Explain God’s Hiddenness (or Nonexistence) Fails (2 of 3)

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Update: commenter Ubi Dubium of the Question With Boldness blog pointed out that the “Lawrence Krauss” quote used by Tom Gilson in part 1 actually came from their blog. To minimize confusion, I’ve left the Krauss reference in (but now you know the actual source).

Gilson’s error doesn’t diminish the value of the quote, but it should encourage him to be more careful in his future research. Or, given the unconvincing argument that he put together, maybe not.

♦

Why doesn’t God make himself more obvious? Christian apologist Tom Gilson attempted an answer, and this is the second part of my response. (I’ve responded to other articles by Tom Gilson on different topics here and here.)

At the end of part 1, Gilson considered a response by cosmologist Lawrence Krauss. Krauss made a (seemingly) reasonable request for evidence, and Gilson had to step in to defend God, silent as always, to declare that that was somehow inappropriate.

Suppose God assented to your request for evidence—then what?

But Gilson is a reasonable guy. Krauss’s demand for evidence for remarkable claims is obviously out of line, but imagine that God gave him what he asked for anyway. Gilson says:

From what I’ve read of Krauss’s writings, he would admit he’d been wrong, and that God exists after all. Then from denying God, he would move immediately to resenting Him.

So our atheist would go from having no God belief to having a God belief. He wouldn’t be an atheist anymore. Isn’t that a really, really good thing from Gilson’s standpoint? Why not celebrate that? It’s because this would make Krauss’s demand for evidence reasonable and God unreasonable for not providing it, as common sense would dictate.

God just wants love

Gilson hurries on to his next complaint.

Bibles growing on crabapple trees [one example of the evidence Krauss asked for] wouldn’t make anyone love God or trust Him, which is what God really wants.

The issue is God’s hiddenness, so don’t change the subject. God’s providing evidence would resolve the Big Problem, which is God being indistinguishable from nonexistent. Stop apologizing for him. Stop putting words in his mouth. Does he exist? Then let him speak for himself.

And no, love isn’t what God wants. Read about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. About God condescending to Job from the whirlwind. About the Flood. About God as the creator of hell. It’s like Gilson imagines God thinking about us when he looks at his “I wuv you THIS MUCH!” statuette on his desk. No—if God wants any reactions from us, it’s not love but some combination of fear, awe, adulation, and/or respect.

Gilson again:

He doesn’t just want people [to] believe that He is, but that He does good for those who seek Him (Heb. 11:6). He wants us to love Him.

Wow—that ship has sailed. Love is something you earn, and we would love God if he were love worthy. Love isn’t an intellectual project but follows from the conditions being right. Read the Old Testament, and you’ll discover that God is not worthy of our love.

Here again, you’re putting words in his mouth. The Yahweh of the Old Testament demanded genocide, supported slavery, and didn’t bother following his own moral code. He wouldn’t be distressed to discover that he wasn’t loved. Bronze Age storm gods and war gods didn’t care about such drivel. Feed them with food offerings and grovel appropriately, and they’re good.

A Christian correspondent once demanded to know what I’d need to accept that God exists. It was a more provocative question than I realized at first. I’d need to reshape reality to remove immovable obstacles to God belief. In response, I wrote a series of posts titled, “25 Reasons We Don’t Live in a World with a God,” which explored the things that would have to have been different in our reality for us to accept the God hypothesis. Similar reasoning could explore things that would have to be different in Christianity, the Bible, and reality for the Christian God to be lovable.

Is it possible that the God of the Old Testament actually does want us to love him and is worthy of that love? No, but suppose that’s the case. Suppose we’ve misjudged God by reading what he says about himself in his own book. Such a misperception can be corrected. We misjudge people all the time, perhaps because of a hasty first impression, and we’re accustomed to correcting that impression with new information. God, it’s your move.

Let’s return to God’s hiddenness, the point of Gilson’s article. Knowing that God exists would be the first step to Gilson’s goal of us loving him. Instead of changing the subject, Gilson should acknowledge and support our need for more evidence as the foundation of his goal to get us to (step 1) understand that God exists and (step 2) love him. He’s hurrying on to step 2, where he can argue that the lack of love is our fault and not God’s, and he’s hoping we don’t notice that he has nothing for step 1.

The reason, of course, is that good evidence for God’s existence doesn’t exist. If there were good evidence, he’d drop the misdirection and just point to it.

You wouldn’t want God to force his existence on you, would you?

Gilson moves on to another complaint.

God can only force so much on us. Yes, he could force the knowledge of His existence upon us just as the sun forces awareness of itself on us during the daytime, or as much as we’re compelled to believe that 2 plus 2 equals 4.

Yeah, lemme tellya—what I wouldn’t give to be able to turn back the clock to those blissful days before I knew that 2 + 2 = 4! And don’t get me started about what a burden it is to know that the sun exists.

God could make Dr. Krauss know His existence with the same complete certainty; He could “force assent” on him, as the philosophers say it, making it impossible for him not to believe.

Why bring in philosophers? Ordinary people have the superpower of believing in things for which there’s sufficient evidence. It’s not that tough.

Next, he again tries to dance away from the evidence question and return to what he thinks is his stronger point, the love question.

But [God] cannot force anyone to love Him. Knowledge can be pressed upon a person; love cannot.

Yeah, we’ve been over this. First, we have no good reason to believe the ridiculous supernatural claims of Christianity. And second, God is a dick. He gets what he deserves. Love happens for good reasons, and we don’t have those reasons with God.

Gilson approaches this another way. Notice his odd perspective in the second sentence:

God can’t force Krauss, or anyone else, for that matter, to love Him. Love must be freely offered, or it’s fake and ugly.

Gilson wants to see this from the person’s standpoint: “Love must be freely offered” by the person. This perspective allows Gilson to assign blame to the person if the result isn’t right. Of course, he goes into this topic unable to consider that God’s role might be imperfect. (Aren’t things so much easier when you assume your conclusion first? Here, Gilson assumes both that God exists and that God is without fault.)

Let’s recast that second sentence according to how love actually works in healthy human relationships. It goes from “Love must be freely offered” to “Love must be earned.” The burden goes from the person to God, where it should be. If love isn’t happening, the first thought isn’t to criticize the lover but to ask what’s wrong with the lovee.

Gilson is stealing a powerful word and redefining it in the context of battered-woman syndrome. God is a Bronze Age tyrant, and you must love him. If you don’t, the fault is yours.

Concluded in part 3.

If God loves the aroma of burnt offerings,
why don’t they burn money in churches?
— commenter Greg G.

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Image from WATARI, CC license
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