3 Thought Experiments That Shook My Faith (And Might Shake Yours)
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1. The Repeat-Offender Problem (The Omniscience Trap)
Imagine a judge who is perfectly good, perfectly powerful, and knows every crime that will ever be committed. He also knows exactly who will commit them.
One day he catches a serial child-rapist and mass murderer. Instead of locking him up forever or executing him, the judge says, “I’m going to give you a huge territory — say, 71% of the planet’s surface (the percentage of the earth that is water, but let’s call it “the world” for simplicity) — and let you run wild for thousands of years. Billions of victims will suffer, but don’t worry; I’m doing this for a noble purpose: free will.”
Every conservative I know would scream for that judge’s impeachment. We spend fortunes keeping violent predators off the streets because we believe true love and justice means protecting the innocent, even if it limits the criminal’s “freedom.” Yet this is precisely the story Christianity tells about God and Satan.
God is omniscient → He knew Satan would rebel.
God is omnipotent → He could have unmade Satan the moment the rebellion formed in his mind.
God is perfectly good → He hates evil and the suffering of children more than we can imagine.
God is omnipotent → He could have unmade Satan the moment the rebellion formed in his mind.
God is perfectly good → He hates evil and the suffering of children more than we can imagine.
So why, in the name of “free will,” does He give the cosmic equivalent of a playground to the worst being in existence? He doesn’t grant that kind of leniency to human criminals we catch. Why grant it to the original criminal? Stephen Fry said it bluntly: “Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world so full of injustice and pain?” The free-will defense collapses the moment you apply the same moral standard to God that we apply to a human judge.
2. Who Invented Evil?
Most Christians will happily say, “God didn’t create evil; Satan did. Evil is just the absence of good, or it came from the misuse of free will.”
Let’s test that.
If I build a robot and give it free will, and the first thing it does is slaughter a kindergarten, every court on earth holds me responsible. I created the robot, I gave it the capacity to do that, I am the source.
God created Satan. God gave Satan free will. God foresaw all outcomes of free will.
Satan chose evil and became the principle of evil. Therefore, traceable to God's creative act. There is no possible world in which Satan becomes evil unless God first says, “Let there be Lucifer with the capacity to hate Me and torture My children.” Parents who permit their children to misbehave are held accountable, but why isn't God?
In Ayn Rand's moral universe, you are responsible for the logical consequences of your creations. If everything that exists was foreseen and intentionally allowed to exist by an omnipotent God, then evil was either slipped past Him (which denies omnipotence) or was permitted on purpose (which denies perfect goodness).
3. The Child-Rescue Paradox
“Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” (Psalm 82:3-4) Beautiful.
Post-worthy scripture every time someone asks why Christians should care about human trafficking or foster care. One night I read it again, and the question hit like a brick: why is this a command to us instead of a job description of God?
If God exists and is omnipotent, He is the best-equipped being to do exactly what the verse says. He could snap His fingers and every abused child would be in safety before the next heartbeat. No social worker burnout, no failed placements, no child protective services backlog. Instead, He tells us to do it, knowing most of us will fail, some will do nothing, and the kids keep suffering.
Imagine a billionaire standing outside a burning orphanage, holding a fireproof blanket and a megaphone shouting “Somebody really should save those kids!” while doing nothing himself. We would despise that man. Why do we call it profound humility when God does the same thing on a cosmic scale? The world looks exactly as it would if nobody is coming to save the rescue.
Afterthoughts
If any of this feels like a gut punch that just ruined your Sunday, I get it. I lived there for years. But here’s the beautiful part: you don’t have to spiral into nihilism or start robbing liquor stores the moment you stop believing. Objectivism picks up the baton and runs farther than Christianity ever could, because it never has to stop and make excuses for why a perfect being created childhood cancer.
You don’t have to waste another minute wondering why an all-loving Father picked this script for your kid, or for the little girl currently being trafficked in some motel off I-75. There is no script. There is no author. There is only us. And that is unbelievably liberating. Morality isn’t handed down on stone tablets from God. It’s built by men, every day, who decide that protecting the innocent and building something great is worth doing because life is worth it, not because someone’s watching from the sky or might reward you after death.
Love of family, pride in honest work, the refusal to live as a parasite or let others live as one, the fierce protection of individual rights aren’t “Christian values” at their core. They’re human values. America has wrapped them in Christian language for a couple centuries. Strip the paranormal away and the values stand taller, because now they’re yours. You own them. You don’t have to share credit with a deity who, if we’re being honest, has a worse track record on child welfare than most county foster systems.
So no, letting go of God doesn’t mean America collapses into barbarism. It means we finally grow up and take full responsibility for the guardrails ourselves. The family unit, justice, goodwill, earned pride — all of it survives just fine. Actually, it gets stronger, because it’s no longer chained to a story that requires evil to exist “for a reason.” You’re allowed to keep every good thing Christianity gave us without insisting we keep the bad baggage.
The kids are still waiting.
Let’s get to work.