Ann Morgan appears to have no idea that she’s in completely over her head here. Her anti-Christian reasoning is specious and rests on a foundation of ignorance and error.
Christianity generally fails when one or more of a few things happen:
1.
Those who claim something is ‘sinful’ cannot give any reason why it is,
other than ‘Because God says so’. In the absence of actual proof of
God, functionally, that statement is no different than ‘Because I say
so’.2. A person is promised various rewards during their life
for being ‘good’, only to have the promise broken, and the rewards
either not given out at all, or given to those who were not good. Sooner
or later, they will conclude that the promise of an afterlife is just
one more promise that is going to be broken.3. The wealth earned
by a person believing in Christian ethics ends up in the hands of those
promoting the Christian ethics. At some point they are going to
conclude that the entire business of Christianity is a con, to trick
them out of their wealth.4. The promise of ‘forgiveness’ sounds
nice, but the way it functions is that people who harm others and their
society their whole lives, get to repent at the end of their lives and
go to heaven. This will end up in some sort of ‘tragedy of the commons’.
If you don’t want the commons overgrazed, you need to be vigilant about
those who are overgrazing it; allowing them to overgraze it for years,
ruin the commons for everyone else while getting fat cattle for
themselves, then tell them everything will be fine because they ‘repent’
is a recipe for disaster.
Even her introduction is false. Christianity does not, and cannot, fail on the basis of any of these points.
- There is no other reason than “God says so”. In the absence of God, sin does not exist. This is hardly philosophical or theological news. However, makes the basic error of confusing an objective statement with a subjective one. For example, it makes no difference whether the Magna Carta exists or not, the statement that “the Magna Carta says you must do X” is materially different than “I say you must do X”. This should be completely obvious, since when the Christian says “God says Y is a sin” and cites a document that existed before he was born, that statement cannot possibly be considered equal to “because I say so” whether God exists or not.
- This is irrelevant. The Bible says that all are fallen and no one is good, save God. Her argument is based on a false premise and indicates her ignorance concerning Christian theology. Luke 18:19: “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.”
- This is observably false, as evidenced by the fact of billions of Christians who have not, in fact, concluded that the entire business of Christianity is a con. It would be a poor con that settles for ten percent when the federal government takes, on average, twice that.
- This is logically fallacious because it rests on a false assumption. The fact is that there are relatively few deathbed conversions and there are billions of Christians who do not wait to repent of their sins. Ergo, no tragedy of the commons. Let reason be silent when experience gainsays its conclusions.