In "the sermon on Mars Hill" (Acts 17: 22-31), Paul seems to deliver a spicy dash of apostolic sarcasm to the assembled Greek philosophers and men of science. He observes their many statues of deities and sees that a certain one has this inscription: "To the Unknown God." The Greeks, you see, were wily enough to include an all-purpose default god — for an emergency — if (God forbid) they had missed one. That overlooked god would perhaps accept this token gesture, and thus any godly wrath could be forestalled.

 

Paul, looking at the statue to the Unknown God, says in effect: "I observe that you got only one god right: the one you admit you don't know. That's the God I will tell you about."  Paul could afford to be this familiar with the Mars Hill philosophers; it seems he was congenially received, this goodwill owing to the fact that this bunch of Greeks loved to hear fresh and extraordinary ideas. Paul no doubt satiated their hunger for "any new thing."

 

The Greek statue to the Unknown God appears to be a sincere act by polytheists to attempt to placate a god they may have failed to detect and name. As such it wasn't a straw man, that is, a god made so absurd and flimsy that it stands easy to knock down. Many virulent atheists, however, erect a pantheon of straw men gods and then fool themselves into thinking they are knocking over sturdier deities. "Fool..." now where have we seen that word before in this God question?

 

The All-Good God

 

First in the atheist pantheon of straw man deities is the God so good, and exclusively good, that if He existed His goodness would negate all badness. In the universe of the All-Good God, nothing bad or harmful can befall any creature. Therefore as this flawed syllogism goes: If any God exists, he would be all-good; An all-good God would prevent anything bad from happening. Bad things do happen; ergo: No God exists.

 

I have no problem with the first major premise: "If any God exists, he would be all-good;" I, along with virtually all orthodox Christian believers, believe that God, if He exists, must be a good God.  Bad (naughty, mischievous, scalawag)  gods are only found scurrying about on mythical Mt. Olympus. As the atheists construct their first straw man god, we can at this point all agree that God is not Lex Luther.

 

It is the second major premise that is not necessarily true, therefore depleting the whole syllogism of truth value: "An all-good God would prevent anything bad from existing." Not so: God is all-good, and yet He did allow sin and human depravity, with all of its suffering and resultant judgment, into existence.  

 

How can an All-Good God do this and retain His goodness? The answer is that God allowed free-will to be a gift to all sentient creation. In this act of imparting free will, God did not create a pre-programmed universe of automaton angels and humans whose every act and thought are determined by a puppet-master God. If God is a puppet-master, He is also not all good. 

 

Whence Sin?

 

Therefore, hear the story of how sin entered the universe by the permissive will of an All-Good God:

 

I enjoy relating the astonishing biblical facts of the origin of sin in this universe according to orthodox Christian theology. I love it because I believe it, but that isn't the only reason. I love it because skeptics, atheists, and screamers at the heavens hate it. Nothing makes militant, proselytizing atheists tear their hair out more than hearing a good, steamy rehashing of all this otherworldly content:

• Lucifer,

• the angelic rebellion,

• the fall of a third of the heavenly hosts,

• Adam and Eve,

• the Garden of Eden,

• the serpent,

• and the fall of humankind through Adam's sin.  

 

Or, as the average, foam-at-the-mouth anti-Christian skeptic would call them: Paul Bunyan Tales. Great fun. 

 

Who or what sinned the first sin of creation? The non-automaton Lucifer, who was not only an archangel, but at the time, he was the greatest reasoning sentient creature to date. Lucifer was a created (as opposed to eternal) living being. He thought, sensed, felt emotions, communicated with other angels and the Godhead, and was created powerful, impressive and accomplished — but not perfect — he was, however, created innocent and guileless and possessed of a free will. 

 

Lucifer's first initial sin, and the first sin of eternity, was not leading the angelic rebellion against God. By the time the rebellion took shape, Lucifer had already sinned a thousand sins of pride, arrogance and rebellious intentions. The very first sin? It was the imp of pride that first leaped into existence. And by the time the rebellion gathered steam, a third of the angelic hosts (believed to be millions) had also sinned myriad sins of pride, rebellious thoughts and acts of subterfuge and conspiracy. The rebellion itself was the significant sin, but it followed all the abetting sins perpetrated by perhaps millions of plotting, scheming (and delusional) angelic beings.

 

By the time God banished Lucifer and his minions to exile on the planet earth (we humans think Mars or even better, Neptune would have been a safer choice, but what do we know?), the heavenlies were full of sins, all wrought by angels gone bad.  Is there an atheist anywhere who, upon hearing this mind-bending saga, will not have a furry bird? Sin came not by an All-Good God, and not by non-thinking cyborgs with no choice, but by angels possessed of a free will. Believe it or not. Don't believe it? I couldn't care less.  

 

But whether or not one believes these things is not the issue with the validity of the above atheist syllogism. The fact that I can reject a major premise based on other possibilities renders the premise, and therefore, the conclusion unacceptable. The syllogism does not have unassailable truth value, and it is therefore rejected based on its lack of universally accepted premises: I reject the premise that an All-Good God would block the existence of all sin, suffering and human travail, and my rejection of that premise is based on the possible existence of other conditions that render the premise not necessarily true. The first requirement of any syllogistic statement in deductive logic is that all major premises must be accepted as true.

 

Above, I mentioned that it was Adam's sin that plunged the human race into depravity, but did not Eve sin first?  That she did, and Paul the Apostle is careful to point this out in his first letter to Timothy (2:15). However, even though the first sin was Eve's, through deception, Adam's sin was one of lack of faith (that God could make this right). Adam, as the progenitor of the race, is the only one who could introduce sin into the line of humankind. Adam, seeing Eve's fallen state, and knowing that she was now spiritually distant from him, having lost her innocence, could see no way that she could be restored to him, and thus, in his faithlessness, also sinned in order to lower himself to her. Had he instead trusted God to sort this out, he could have maintained his innocence, and God would have worked. How?..we cannot know, but Adam did not need to sin in order to retain his helpmeet. God had a solution.

 

Any raging, religion-loathing atheist who gets a load of the above will choke on his bile and spittle. If the choking is, alas, unto death, ask God about it, not me.   

 

 

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(This essay is still being composed)