Challenge: Religion Needs the Devil

For this week's challenge: Your friend posts this on your Facebook wall...

What do you say? Can you break down all the specific claims included in this statement? Can you identify the main claim being made here? What are the hidden assumptions? What would you address first? When you're talking to someone and he throws something like this out, you have to be able to get to the heart of his concern quickly and address it. And it might not be something that was explicitly said. If you get too bogged down going step by step through every sentence, you might lose him, but if you can put your finger on the main issue and address that, you should have an interesting conversation.

We'll hear back from Alan on Thursday with his response.

[View Alan's response here.]

Comments

[scblhrm]

A Cube appears, quite necessarily, rather odd, somewhat complex, and even *impossible* to a Straight-Line.

[scblhrm]

Bill is entirely mistaken about the nature of evil's necessity because he views evil as God-And rather than as God-Less-Two.

[philwynk]

I suppose a question like this is good exercise for the readers, but I can't imagine anybody taking a challenge seriously from a blithering ignoramus like Bill Maher.

I just scanned over the answers, though, and it does appear that the readers need the exercise. Not one of the readers made the correction to Maher's challenge that was most germane:

The devil is not God's nemesis, he's ours.

It is not God who is wrestling against powers and principalities, it is we saints. The devil is not in heaven making war against God, he's on the earth making war against us. God is not overcoming the evil one by the blood of the lamb and the word of His testimony, we are.

God is God. He does not have enemies worth mentioning.

So, the reason God does not destroy the devil is the same reason God created the earth and put human beings on it. He's got an eternal purpose that has something to do with training us to rule with him in heaven. It would seem, then, that God does not destroy the devil because we need the exercise of whipping him. Defeating the devil is part of our training.

[WisdomLover]

Phil-

If the war is between us, just us, and the devil, then we're doomed.

I'm going to depend on Christ to win this thing. And if we're being trained to do anything, we're being trained to lean on Jesus.

None of these considerations, of course, would be of interest to Bill Maher...who would still be wondering why God doesn't just finish off the devil.

[Kathy]

People tend to relate to God in human terms giving God human emotions and reasoning. Religion creates the dogma, each one with its own spin.

God is unfathomable and this is the point Bill is trying to make.