So I don't do this often but I've been bitten by the philosophy bug and would like to try my hand at formalizing some of my opinions, starting with a common complaint of mine about certain strands of Christianity: how I think that Christianty's favoritism is an argument against it's depiction of an all-loving God.
Introduction
Now, before I show you the argument in full, let me state at the start that there is no single interpretation of Christianity. It is an internally diverse group and in no way can I claim to ever be making a point against all possible interpretations. However, I think this argument works against a broad range of Christianity and as such included "Christianity" in the title.
The version of Christianity that I am specifically addressing with this argument is Christians that believe the following two premises:
P1) Familiarity with the Bible increases the odds of knowing correctly what is sin and what isn't sin.
P2) Knowledge of what is sin and what isn't sin increases the odds of salvation
If you don't agree with the above premises feel free to ignore the rest of this blog post. But if you do feel that these 2 statements are in line with your beliefs as a Christian, let's continue.
The argument
First I will give the entire argument in condensed notation. For a more informal expansion on the argument, see the section "Explanation" below.
B = familiarity with the bible
K = Knowing what is sin and what isn't sin
S = salvation
C = % of birth country that is Christian
F = Favoritism. Defined as showing bias towards or favoring a subset of the population due to factors out of their control.
G = all-loving God
P1) P(K | B) > P(K | !B)
P2) P(S) ∝ K
C1) P(S | B) > P(S | !B)
P3) P(B) ∝ C
C2) P(S) ∝ C
P4) G is not compatible with F
P5) if C2, then F
C3) If P1 & P2, then not G
Explanation
This sections is for a more thorough presentation of the argument.
Premise 1) P(K | B) > P(K | !B)
Premise 1 says that familiarity with the Bible increases the odds of knowing correctly what is sin and what isn't. There is a higher probability of knowing what sin is if you are familiar with the Bible than if you are not familiar with the Bible.
Premise 2) P(S) ∝ K
When I was a Christian, it was understood that you had to accept Jesus's sacrifice for your sins to be saved. Therefore you needed to know what was sin to be aware that you were living in sin and needed forgiveness. Someone who wasn't knowledgeable about sin might be unaware they were living in sin and therefore miss out on salvation by not asking for forgiveness. So premise 2 says that the likelihood (or probability) of being saved is proportional to how aware you are of sin.
Conclusion 1) P(S | B) > P(S | !B)
Since the probability of salvation is proportional to the awareness of sin, and the probability of having knowledge of sin is higher if you have familiarity with the bible, it can therefore be said, that the probability of salvation is higher if you have familiarity with the bible than if you don't have familiarity with the Bible. If you wanted to imagine this crudely, we could generate 1000 souls, and give 500 of them the Bible. We would then expect a larger percentage of the 500 souls with the Bible to achieve salvation when compared to the 500 souls without the Bible.
I feel that most Christians will find this conclusion uncontroversial. When I was a Christian this was the reason that we had to learn and share the gospel. The stories and lessons in the Bible helped us achieve salvation and that's why it is worth sharing.
Now let's continue.
Premise 3) P(B) ∝ C
I think this is also relatively uncontroversial. The likelihood (or probability) of being familiar with the Bible increases with the percent of your birth country that is Christian. If you took 500 souls and randomly assigned them to 500 births in a country where 10% of the population is Christian and then did the same with 500 souls in a country where 90% of the population is Christian, you would expect that a larger percentage of the souls in the country with a higher % of Christianity would be familiar with the Bible and it's teachings by adulthood
Conclusion 2) P(S) ∝ C
This is where I feel people might hesitate. But the conclusion that follows is purely mathematical. If you agree with premise 3 and conclusion 1, then conclusion 2 naturally follows.
I know the conclusion seems forgone at this point, but let's continue in a formal fashion.
Premise 4) G is not compatible with F
Per the definition of favoritism given above, "showing bias towards or favoring a subset of the population due to factors out of their control". This would be incompatible with an all-loving God, because "all-loving" means equal love given to all souls and no biases based in factors out of their control. Don't worry much about the use of "favoritism" if you don't like it as a word. The focus should be on the definition of "showing bias towards a subset of the population for factors outside their control". I couldn't think of a better word for this than favoritism.
Premise 5) if C2, then F
Conclusion 2 (C2) says that the probability of salvation is proportional to the % of Christians in our birth country. Since our birth country is out of our control, then the likelihood of salvation is partially out of our control. This results in a bias, however insignificant, towards those born in countries with higher rates of Christianity.
Conclusion 3) If P1 & P2, then not G
And we've made it. This is my main conclusion. If you accept the first 2 premises, then I posit that your beliefs are incompatible with an all-loving God because of the presence of favoritism in your system.
This is not an argument against God existing. It is also not an argument against a loving God existing. It is just saying that if a loving God exists, it is not depicted accurately with P1 & P2.
Further Generalizing the Argument
I think this argument can be made to be generalized by replacing B, The Bible, with any other localized source of knowledge on sins: a prophet for example. If the sins aren't intuitively obvious, and exposure to a localized source of knowledge increases the probability of understanding that someone needs repentance, then I do not think such a system is compatible with the idea of an all-loving God. Of course, this also assumes premise 2, that the knowledge of these sins and their need for repentance impacts salvation.
Objections
There are versions of Christianity that don't accept P1 & P2. I will respond to some here.
Objection : The moral law is entirely internal and the Bible is unnecessary to know what is sinful and what isn't.
This is the stance taken by people like C.S. Lewis that argue there is a clear moral law for everyone in their inner consciousness. I'm aware many Christians take this stance. If you do, then my follow up question to you is this: What then is the point of sharing the gospel? Only because it was commanded even if it has no utility?
Objection: lack of knowledge of sins is taken into account by God when judging someone
This Christian stance says that the Bible does indeed give us a better more clear picture of what is sin and what isn't but that ultimately it doesn't matter when it comes to judgment because God is aware of what you know when he is judging you and he is always fair. To this Christian, I would again ask: What is the point of increasing knowledge of sin then? But I would also ask another question: Is it worse then for someone to know sin and reject it? If you have a reason to suspect that someone might reject knowledge in the Bible, is it then better to not teach it to them?
Objection: P1 & P2 are true but I'm a Calvinist / I believe in Middle Knowledge so that the maximum number of people are being saved.
I'll address these positions in later posts. Just want to acknowledge that they are not addressed here in this post.