Barry, you ask for answers to your ten questions, but I think your request is somewhat rhetorical, rather than a true search for answers, which is typical of those who challenge Christianity. But because you have not engaged in any rebuttals to the responses already posted, which is an indication that you may truly be seeking answers, I will give my own insight into your questions.
1. You ask for evidence that God created the universe. The evidence is given in several passages of the Bible; not just Genesis 1:1. Also many other religions have their creation storied, all of which state that the universe was created by someone. None say it happened by chance.
So what evidence is there for the belief that the universe did just happen by chance? There is none at all, save for the claims of atheists who don’t want to believe that God (or some other creator, such as a god) created it. Jews and Christians hold to the Genesis 1:1 claim. If others believe otherwise, the burden of proof lies on them, not on those who believe God created it.
2. The Big Bang. Sounds a lot like, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. And the Lord said let there be light, and there was light.” Kaboom! The Big Bang.
Your statements about demonic possession being thought of as the source of illness before the advent of the “germ theory” of disease and neurological disorders (do any theories postulate that neurological disorders are caused by germs?), and that the Norwegian god Thor caused storms before the advent of meteorology, mean that all people believed that “God did it”? Many millions of people probably had alternate explanations. And what does this have to do with the question of the Big Bang?
You suggest that a natural answer for the Big Bang — “if we ever find one” — will account for it. Sounds like the Science of the Gaps to me.
3. Life exists elsewhere in this supercluster, Laniakea. So what if intelligent life does exist in Laniakea or anywhere else in the universe? The same God who created us created them too. It would be interesting to hear what God has told them. It might be the same message He has given us.
4. and 5. Holy water and transubstantiation are not believed by all Christians, and therefore should not be used as an argument against Christianity proper.
The use of holy water goes back to the fourth century, but gained ascendancy in the Middle Ages.
The doctrine of transubstantiation was introduced by a Benedictine monk in 831. It was challenged by the Catholic priest John Wycliffe in the Fourteenth Century, which resulted in the his loss of support of his patron John of Gaunt, the kings’ uncle, and his excommunication from the church. Since then, it has been retained as a Catholic doctrine, but it is not held to be true by other Christians; even by some Catholics.
6. You state that many theists believe that our moral sensibilities are essences or qualities that were given to us by a supernatural source. You do not tell us, however, who these theists are. As a student of Christianity for over 30 years, I have not heard theists claim such a thing. What I have heard is that the standard of morality has been set by God, and we sinful humans consistently fail to live up to that standard because of our inherent sinful nature.
We fail because we disobeyed God and turned away from Him, thinking that we could be like God and be just as wise as He is. Therefore God gave us this world to inhabit, and said, “You think you can do this as well as I can? Here’s the world; let’s see if you can do better.” And we’ve been screwing it up ever since.
Rebellious teenagers don’t want to be under their parents rules, of their teachers rules, or the rule of law. The want to be free to do anything they want, but when they get into trouble, as rebellious teenagers are wont to do, they blame everybody but themselves. They blame their parents, their teachers, and the police for arresting them, but they don’t admit their own fault. Like rebellious teenagers, we human beings have rebelled against God and tried to do things our own way, and made a mess of things. But instead of admitting our own errors, we blame everybody else, and especially God. We continue to rebel against God, creating our own gods to replace Him, and even denying that He exists.
But God so loved the World that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Instead of condemning us as He had the right to do, He gave us the way back to Him through Jesus Christ. Jesus gave us all of God’s standards of righteousness through His commands and teachings, which are found in the four Gospels. We have to do two things to regain God’s favour; admit to God that we were wrong and ask His forgiveness, and then put into practice the commands and teachings of Jesus.
Jesus’ commands are all about how to love God and how to love our neighbour as ourselves. But Jesus’ commands are offensive to our human nature. Jesus commands us, when a person holds something against us, or we hold something against them, we should drop what we are doing and go and be reconciled to that person. Our Human nature tells us to continue to resent that person, and even to seek revenge against them. It takes an act of grace to be able to overcome the wrong, and to make up with that person.
Jesus commands us to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us, but our human nature tells us to hate them back, and curse those who do us wrong.
Jesus tells us not to judge, or we too will be judged, and yet our human nature has us standing in judgement of our fellow human beings every day.
Christian morality is not given to us from above, but taught to us from above. It is up to us to learn it and put it into practice, or disobey it and continue living by human standards.
You say that morality is an “emergent property” of evolution. If this were true, then after 300,000 years of evolution, the whole world would be following the same universal standard of morality. And yet we can easily see that the standards of morality in the world are far from universal. In fact, what seems to universal is “man’s inhumanity to man”, to quote Robby Burns.
7. You compare miscarriages with abortions. Miscarriages are as much a part of nature as conception. They happen on a regular basis, and although it is a painful experience to the expectant parents, they are not something we have control over. But can we blame God for this? There is much pain and suffering that we endure in this world, but then we chose to live in this corrupt world rather than staying in paradise and accepting God’s rules, so we have only ourselves to blame. We must stop finding fault with God, like rebellious teenagers, and admit that we were wrong.
Abortions, on the other hand, are not a natural occurrence, but a choice that we make to end a life before it has even had the chance to grow. How can you impugn God for miscarriages, and then excuse people for choosing to abort a viable fetus, which in the US, is done far more as a last resort for birth control than for the mother’s health.
8. The story of Jonah spending time in the belly of a great fish can be seen as an allegory or a miracle. But the Bible is not a book of hard facts to be believed as literal truths, but is a book of lessons. The important teaching of this episode in the book of Jonah must be seen in the overall context of the whole book. The lesson here is that if we disobey God and try to run away from Him, He will often bring us back and give us a second chance to do His will.
9. You see Hell as being a celestial torture chamber that God created. That view of Hell is based on Medieval and Renaissance imagery, and is not found anywhere in the Bible. In those images, Satan is seen as ruling in Hell, and his demons torturing the souls of condemned human beings. According to the Bible, the souls of the dead are sent to Hades, which is not Hell, but a holding place for all souls to stay while they await the final judgement. It is a place of suspended animation, in which the subjects do not seem to realize the passage of time, and Satan and his demons are not present.
Hell, on the other hand, according to the Book of Revelation, is opened up only on the Day of Judgement, on which Satan and his demons will be cast into the Lake of Burning Fire, and then all those people who refused God’s offer of mercy will be thrown.
Hell, then for human beings, is a choice. All people are given the offer of God’s free gift of salvation. We cannot acquire this gift on our own terms, but on God’s. We must confess our sins, beg God’s forgiveness, and then accept His free offer of salvation by His grace.
Sadly, so many people are so bound by their pride and self-righteousness that they will refuse this offer, choosing to remain in their state of rebellion. They are the ones who will follow Satan and his demons into hell.
10. You say that if Satan is the great deceiver, it means Satan could be pretending to be God. This is a red herring argument, designed to lead the unwary off the track. Actually, the name Satan in Hebrew means “accuser”. He is the one who accuses humans before God of all our sins and wrongdoings, but God is always the righteous judge who does not listen to Satan’s accusations, but judges us according to His own standards. Satan, therefore, could not pretend to be God, because although he might strive to mimic God’s purity and righteousness, he could not fool those who truly know God and His righteousness. He can, however, lead many astray who do not care to know the one, true, living God, but who choose to follow other “gods”, including the god of atheism.