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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Converting from Christianity to Atheism
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Dioptre
Apprentice
# 10705
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Posted
Recently, as a skeptic, I've found myself challenging my own Christian beliefs. I'd be very interested to hear counter-argument.
The train of thought goes something like this:
- P: I believe in God
- A: Where's the testable evidence for God?
- P: God doesn't interfere directly in the world
- A: And there's an invisible dragon in my garage
- P: But God could act through people who believe
- A: Then why doesn't he have a clearer method of communicating with believers?
- P: He does - the Gospels
- A: And where's the testable evidence that they are recounts of the truth?
- P: I have faith
- A: I don't
How do I get back from here?
[changed thread title for archiving]
[ 16. July 2006, 06:45: Message edited by: RuthW ]
Posts: 11 | From: Brisbane, Australia | Registered: Nov 2005
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Laura
General nuisance
# 10
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Posted
This has come up repeatedly here, of course, but the bottom line is that a religious belief system isn't about what you can prove through empirical enquiry. You can't prove God exists that way.
However, the view that all that exists must be provable through empirical enquiry or human perception is as much an unsupported philosophical position as the existence of God or a dragon in your garage.
In the end what gets you there is faith and the experience of God. I find that we all have dry patches. For these I use prayer along the lines of "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief."
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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm
Posts: 16883 | From: East Coast, USA | Registered: Apr 2001
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craigb
Shipmate
# 11318
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Posted
G'day Dioptre
I noticed you said you are a sceptic challenging your own beliefs.
This is a healthy thing to do, to ask yourself what you believe and why? I don't think true faith is a blind faith, there are many reasons to believe in Christ and what he has done for us. There are many reasons why you can believe the gospel message is historically true, using all the facilities of your mind - if you are truly open to listening to the truth of it.
I would recommend reading some of Josh McDowells books, such as More than a Carpenter, and Evidence that Demands a verdict, which look at the historical evidence of the scriptures to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are historically factual.
If they are historically reliable, then the message of the scriptures are as well.
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Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see... The Lord has promised good to me,His word my hope secures;He will my shield and portion be,As long as life endures.
Posts: 993 | From: Tahmoor | Registered: Apr 2006
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
This has come up repeatedly here, of course, but the bottom line is that a religious belief system isn't about what you can prove through empirical enquiry. You can't prove God exists that way.
Maybe not through empirical inquiry, but one can in principle show God's existence through rational inquiry. Admittedly, since in practice this relies on some deep metaphysics, no universal consensus is likely. I for one find that "Aquinas' five ways" are quite a good sketch of the type of argument that works. A specific defense of the rationality of such metaphysics against philosophical counter-arguments is provided for example in "Faith, Reason and the Existence of God" by Denys Turner. Whereas a more general overview of the path that leads through metaphysics to God is provided in "The Degrees of Knowledge" by Jacques Maritain.
For a more hands-on approach, I would point to the simple fact that empirical enquiry cannot show that any human being exists as a person (rather than as a complex "meat machine"), nevertheless there is not a single human being in the world who really believes himself to be a mere "meat machine". (Of course, some - IMHO rather hypocritical - scientists and philosophers claim that they are just that. But of course, they think, speak and act most of the time just as if they were a person and believed to be one.) Perhaps it's not so difficult to accept that there is a Being who can say "I Am Who Is", if we are beings who can say "I am".
A decent background in metaphysics certainly enables one to "find God". If I may say so as a working scientist, I think cutting edge natural science is approaching a stage where it also becomes conducive to "finding God". There are real problems in natural science of both specific (fine tuning of cosmology, consciousness, ...) and more general (intelligibility of the universe, the success of maths, emergence, teleology of systems, ...) form, which suggest that we might be starting to see the shadow of something "bigger" behind nature.
All this would not necessarily lead to the Christian God, of course. One may well become a Deist of some other type. But at least it's compatible with Christian beliefs. When queried by Napoleon where God fit into his new celestial mechanics, Laplace is supposed to have replied, "Sir, I had no need of that hypothesis." I think the next century or so will show that this is a good working principle for natural sciences, but not for humanity's rational knowledge of itself and of the universe as a whole.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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daronmedway
Shipmate
# 3012
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Posted
Dioptre, the very fact that this type of question is of the slightest concern to you is evidence enough that God is at work in your life. In my opinion. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posts: 6976 | From: Southampton | Registered: Jul 2002
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Less helpfully to you perhaps but it seems to me that you have assumed the end in your beginning. Your argument cannot fail ... but it is no argument for all that. A positivist approach to God cannot help but prove itself. It's a classic category failure masquerading as rationality.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
How about this?
P: I don't have faith
A: I do.
P: Why?
A: It feels right.
P: That's not faith.
A: What's faith then?
P: Coming to a position of being convinced by rational argument.
A: But that's not faith, that's conviction. Or knowledge. That's what mathematicians do.
P: So what do you call faith?
A: When it feels right.
P: Okay, we're going round in circles. Why does it feel right?
A: Well I was in church today and there was just a sort of whooshy intangible something that made me think, "Yes, this is a world where God has lived among his people, and lives today in bread and wine." Sorry for quoting Betjeman.
P: Who?
A: That last bit. Betjeman.
P: Oh.
A: See, faith isn't a shopping list of propositions. It's knowing where you are and who you belong to.
P: Oh.
B: (Arriving on the scene) Who are these P and A people anyway?
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
What's so terrifying about atheism? Try it on. If God is a bit like a dragon in the garage - a hypothetical being who may or may not exist - then God does not exist (ask Aquinas or Denys Turner).
I think you have to abandon theism and see what's left. You can't spend the rest of your life basing everything on an unconvincing argument. It's like letting go of the side of the pool and starting to swim. Kierkegaard said faith is like swimming over 20,000 fathoms, a terrifying thought, but if you can swim, what difference does the depth make?
So, there's no God. So what do you still care about? What really matters? What do you take utterly seriously without any reservation? Ask those questions and your faith will start to come into view.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Kierkegaard said faith is like swimming over 20,000 fathoms, a terrifying thought, but if you can swim, what difference does the depth make?
Most excellent. Thanks, hatless.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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PhilA
shipocaster
# 8792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dioptre:
Recently, as a skeptic, I've found myself challenging my own Christian beliefs. I'd be very interested to hear counter-argument.
- A: Where's the testable evidence for God?
Why should there be testable evidence? You have no testable evidence that, when sitting in your living room at home, the pub at the end of the road exists. You cannot sense it in anyway - does it exist? Of course it does, but without using some equipment other than your own senses, you can't empirically verify it. I have no empirical evidence to hand that the moon exists, but because something cannot be empirically tested does not mean it does not exist.
quote:
P: God doesn't interfere directly in the worldA: And there's an invisible dragon in my garage
Not sure how these comments are directly related.......
Many people would argue that God does interfere directly in the world, after all, the idea of revelation requires it and tells us of instances where God has and does interfere in the world.
quote:
P: But God could act through people who believeA: Then why doesn't he have a clearer method of communicating with believers?
I'm not sure that this is a very good model of God you are basing this on. This appears to imply that God would act more if he had a better line of communication. Which in turn implies that God can't act at the moment.
Perhaps another way of looking at it would be to say that we should act more and stop blaming a lack of good in the world on God. In the West, we are so concerned about believing the right thing, we sometimes forget to do the right thing. In fact, we've made sure that 'salvation by works' is a theologically untenable position. We've made such a good job of it in fact that when the brown smelly stuff hits the rotating device, we automatically blame God for it rather than taking responsibility for our own actions (or lack thereof) and accept that we have to do something about it.
quote:
P: He does - the GospelsA: And where's the testable evidence that they are recounts of the truth?
We are back to testable evidence about God aren't we? Is this what it all boils down to? What we can prove?
Are you married? If so, can you empirically prove that your wife/husband loves you?
There is so much that people believe and know that cannot be empirically verified, that I wonder where this insistence comes from. To attempt to put a scientific methodology onto theology is as ridiculous as trying to put scientific methodology onto history, or relationships, or art, or philosophy etc. Theology is a different discipline to science and must be treated as such.
quote:
P: I have faithA: I don't
How do I get back from here?
That's up to you. You either will be persuaded by the arguments or you won't. There is no such thing as a knock down argument for the existence of God, let alone a knock down argument for the Christian understanding of God. Such a thing does not exist, which is why we need faith.
It is good to have doubts and uncertainties and to try and learn and discover more. Your faith will hopefully be strengthened in the long run by it.
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To err is human. To arr takes a pirate.
Posts: 3121 | From: Sofa | Registered: Nov 2004
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
From PhilA
quote:
There is no such thing as a knock down argument for the existence of God, let alone a knock down argument for the Christian understanding of God. Such a thing does not exist, which is why we need faith.
Indeed! But also ...
There is no such thing as a knock down argument AGAINST the existence of God, let alone a knock down argument AGAINST the Christian understanding of God. Such a thing does not exist, which is why we need faith.
Of course if your (the OP'er, not PhilA) positivism rules out faith then you have indeed started from where you intend to arrive ... my point about bias. I don't need the gloomy Dane's irrationality to expose that.
[ 09. May 2006, 07:56: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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ed the big crazy bear
Apprentice
# 11330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
This has come up repeatedly here, of course, but the bottom line is that a religious belief system isn't about what you can prove through empirical enquiry. You can't prove God exists that way.
However, the view that all that exists must be provable through empirical enquiry or human perception is as much an unsupported philosophical position as the existence of God or a dragon in your garage.
In the end what gets you there is faith and the experience of God. I find that we all have dry patches. For these I use prayer along the lines of "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief."
In fact, it is very difficult to prove the existence of anything. Soren kierkegaard said that when you try to prove that a stone exists, you are not proving existence, you are proving that the thing in existence is a stone. The existence of something is never in doubt, it is whether the thing that exists is what you describe it to be. Trying too prove existence is futile, so is trying to prove the existence of God, the believer, or unbeliever, always starts with a prejudice, he believes, and then tries to prove. In this sense, there is no such thing as being objective. How can anyone be objective? any, belief, argument, or proof, is always subjective, regardless of how strong the evidence is.
Posts: 28 | From: Bristol | Registered: Apr 2006
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Earthling
Shipmate
# 4698
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Posted
I feel I may be in a similar position to the OP; though I feel I'm more drifting towards agnosticism rather than atheism.
A couple of you have made points like, there is no empirical evidence that the pub down the road/the moon/the love of your partner exists...
But, we could walk down the road for a pint at the pub... we can look up in the sky and see the moon... we can look in our partners eyes and see their pupils widening, or we can remember the loving things they have done for us...
What can we do to find God? And how do we know when we've found him?
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Art thou in the Darkness? Mind it not, for if thou dost it will fill thee more, but stand still and act not, and wait in patience till Light arises out of Darkness to lead thee. James Nayler, 1659
Posts: 105 | From: UK | Registered: Jul 2003
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
I was an atheist for a long time. It wasn't so bad. In my opinion, if your thoughts lead you that way, it makes more sense to persue that line of inquiry and see where it leads, than to try to base a religious faith on arguments that are unconvincing. Far better to be an honest atheist with intellectual integrity, in my opinion, than a self-deluded Christian -- if that is what it takes for you to remain a Christian.
For my part, I think that people who ask for a `proof' of the existence of God, or empirical evidence for the existence of God, are asking too much. I don't think it's in the nature of God to be amenable to empirical observation in the same way that physical objects are. And it's difficult to `prove' the existence of anything, let alone God. I have some sympathy with IngoB's view that the existence and nature of God are amenable to rational -- although not empirical -- enquiry; but in the end I've never really found such arguments totally convincing. Even Alvin Plantinga -- a philosopher who has been active in this field for about 40 years -- is on record as saying that he is a Christian because he was raised in a Christian household, and has never come across a good reason to change; not because he can prove the existence of God (although he claims to be able to, in a way).
And, as IngoB also says, philosophical enquiry has nothing to say about the historical-factual claims of any system of religious belief. If you believe in (say) the literal ressurection of Jesus, then (presumably) you do so because you trust that the observations of people nearer the events were reliable, and recorded reliably, and have been transmitted to us reliably. I can quite see why not everybody has such trust.
In the end, I believe that most thinking Christians believe what they believe because they find it personally compelling; because it makes some difference to their lives. They don't worry all that much about proof and evidence. Having said that, I suspect that most Christians do wonder, from time to time, whether the whole thing is a heap of nonsense.
In my opinion, the best thing you can do -- anyone can do -- is to talk to as many sensible and balanced Christians about why they are Christians, and decide as honestly and impartially as you can whether their reasons could be your reasons. But if you expect anybody to give an irrefutable logical argument why Christianity is right, you're going to be disappointed.
Posts: 2718 | From: East Dogpatch | Registered: Dec 2005
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Earthling:
What can we do to find God? And how do we know when we've found him?
It's not, says Augustine, like looking for a friend in a crowd. You know what your friend looks like, you don't know what God looks like. But when you find God you know. It's like coming home.
I think you have to get lost first. You have to let go of all you thought you knew, including everything you thought you knew about God. You have to say you were wrong before.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
You know what's really wrong with positivism? As far as I know, nobody has ever used the word "fabulous" to describe positivism. The world of the positivist is a world without fabulosity. Or fabulousness, if you prefer.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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craigb
Shipmate
# 11318
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Posted
Hmmmmmm I suddenly worked out what I didn't like about this Op, "Converting from Christianity to Athiesm"
This converting from Christianity means that you must have been first converted from a agnostic or athiestic belief towards Christ in the first place, somewhere in your life.
So your not really converting to Athiesm, you are renouncing your initial conversion as being a load of hogwash -for you can't convert to a belief system that doesn't have a belief system.
So to remounce your Christian faith, you first have to renounce it, and to truly renounce your faith, don't you have to tell God you have had enough, you aint going to follow him any more, you don't care about what Christ has done for you, even though you know full well what it means, I'm still turning my back on you.
Then the quandry kicks in, if you are telling God that you are renouncing him, and going to take on Athiesm, you are still guilty of believing in him, as you just had a yakkk to him.....
Perhaps you are not as athiest in your belief system as you initially thought
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Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see... The Lord has promised good to me,His word my hope secures;He will my shield and portion be,As long as life endures.
Posts: 993 | From: Tahmoor | Registered: Apr 2006
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ed the big crazy bear
Apprentice
# 11330
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Posted
We have this assumption that atheism is safer than theism. But it is still a faith claim. You have to believe that this is it, there is nothing more, that when i will die i will rot.
"believe in God, and you will face hours where God's existence looks rediculous, be an atheist, and you will face times when, actually, God's existence looks pretty likely". Imagine two people on a road, one thinks it leads to a celestial city, the other nowhere, along the way they see things that make things seem that there isn't a celestial city, other times it seems that there is. One of them must be right, and there is only one way to find out...
Posts: 28 | From: Bristol | Registered: Apr 2006
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by craigb:
So to remounce your Christian faith, you first have to renounce it, and to truly renounce your faith, don't you have to tell God you have had enough, you aint going to follow him any more, you don't care about what Christ has done for you, even though you know full well what it means, I'm still turning my back on you.
No. Losing your faith is not like handing in your letter of resignation. To lose your faith is not to reject God, it is to accept that your initial reasons for accepting God were mistaken. You can't turn your back on something that you don't believe exists.
Although I am not (any longer) an atheist, I believe that a Christian can become an atheist with absolute integrity. Maybe such a person is, in fact, wrong to do so; but that doesn't make him dishonest, or wicked.
Posts: 2718 | From: East Dogpatch | Registered: Dec 2005
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
I tend to see things differently. Through revelation, the Christians ended up with a way that leads to an intimate relationship with God. This way is safer and more effective than the ways other religions have developed. Therefore, one has only to follow the steps (which, roughly speaking, are contained in the gospels) and see for himself whether the whole thing works or not!
In my opinion, it is wrong to make God's existence an issue where, if the wrong answer is given, man is condemned to hell. While faith in God is a precondition for someone to follow the Way Christ gave us in the gospels, doubt is not something that condemns man (as often movies seem to imply).
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
Posts: 11285 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
Posted by CrookedCucumber: quote:
Losing your faith is not like handing in your letter of resignation.
Just so. Speaking from experience (as someone who loses about a faith a week, though this week's is holding up remarkably well so far), losing your faith is much more like when a friend dies. It's not glancing down your list of beliefs one morning and realising that you can't tick the boxes next to nos. 7, 14, and 23 today. It's more like the ache in the heart when it hits you that someone who was once there will never be there again.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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ed the big crazy bear
Apprentice
# 11330
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Posted
A lot of the time though, people who lose their christian faith simply "slip away", rarely, though it does occur, does somone reason out of it. It is often prevailing circumstances, tragedy, wealth, etc, that change your faith. Not a rational but an emotional blitz. You may have got involoved in a sin, that it would be very convenient of you if God didn't exist right now. This is the biggest reason that non christians give me as to why they are not christians
"i am happy with my life as it is"
Posts: 28 | From: Bristol | Registered: Apr 2006
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by craigb:
Hmmmmmm I suddenly worked out what I didn't like about this Op, "Converting from Christianity to Athiesm"
This converting from Christianity means that you must have been first converted from a agnostic or athiestic belief towards Christ in the first place, somewhere in your life.
So your not really converting to Athiesm, you are renouncing your initial conversion as being a load of hogwash -for you can't convert to a belief system that doesn't have a belief system.
So to remounce your Christian faith, you first have to renounce it, and to truly renounce your faith, don't you have to tell God you have had enough, you aint going to follow him any more, you don't care about what Christ has done for you, even though you know full well what it means, I'm still turning my back on you.
Then the quandry kicks in, if you are telling God that you are renouncing him, and going to take on Athiesm, you are still guilty of believing in him, as you just had a yakkk to him.....
Perhaps you are not as athiest in your belief system as you initially thought
craigb, this is a remarkably black-white view. The reality for those of us who struggle with faith at various times in our lives is very much as Adeoatus has said.
Some days I believe in God, the fulness of his promises, the cross and the Kingdom. Some days it seems like proposterous lies or a mirage dangling in the distance to tempt a thirsty desert traveller but never quite seeming to be within reach. Mostly I'm not sure.
But the cross-over between belief and unbelief, in my experience, is not to accept or reject a set of propositions.
Belief, like hope, is a much more fragile commodity than you suggest, I believe. It is more akin to the tightrope walker who must steady his nerves, keep his eyes looking ahead and attempt to keep his self belief.
At some point I am sure that even the most experienced tightrope walker struggles and it is all he can do to make himself put one foot in front of another.
In my experience, it is those who do not recognise the fragility of their personal faith-walk who fall most spectacularly.
And FWIW, Josh McDowell is largely useless in this respect. There is no point offering the man evidence for propositions he is not sure he can accept any longer. Rather you need an argument why the propositions are reasonable things to believe in the first place. Those two are completely different.
I'd recommend the book
orthodoxy by G K Chesterton, a book that sets out why christianity is something worth believing in.
Also let us remember the attitude of the Christ to those struggling with belief and unbelief.
C
[removed a sarky comment]
[ 09. May 2006, 08:51: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
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arse
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Vesture, Posture, Gesture
Shipmate
# 10614
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Posted
I would try and disprove God's existence first and use that as a starting point.
Almost certainly, you will not be able to do so which will leave your paradigm as that of having to take 'a leap of faith' either to believe in Him or not to.
I think you need to think about what God is (or what a Christian conception of God is) before comming back to those questions posed in the opening thread. If God is the Creator, he is not going to be inside His creation is he ? After all He would be outside the Universe !
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An undergraduate proudly told Benjamin Jowett, the great 19th Century Classicist that he was an agnostic. Jowett replied "Young man, in this university we speak Latin not Greek, so when speaking of yourself in that way, use the word ignoramus"
Posts: 427 | From: London | Registered: Oct 2005
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The Great Gumby
Ship's Brain Surgeon
# 10989
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
No. Losing your faith is not like handing in your letter of resignation.
Quite right. As someone who's been through a lot of doubt and uncertainty recently (and been greatly helped by hanging around on the Ship), I'd say there are a lot of different issues at play, but it certainly isn't like saying "I've decided I don't want to be a Christian any more".
In fact, I frequently cried out to a God I hoped was out there, but was starting to suspect didn't exist at all. All I wanted was something, anything, to indicate that there really was someone out there and get me through the next couple of days. I wasn't handing in a letter of resignation, so much as sending out hundreds of letters asking for confirmation of my contractual status, and getting more and more worried when I didn't get a reply. I definitely did want to be a Christian, but I couldn't if there was no God.
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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman
A letter to my son about death
Posts: 5382 | From: Home for shot clergy spouses | Registered: Feb 2006
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PhilA
shipocaster
# 8792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ed the big crazy bear:
We have this assumption that atheism is safer than theism. But it is still a faith claim. You have to believe that this is it, there is nothing more, that when i will die i will rot.
"believe in God, and you will face hours where God's existence looks rediculous, be an atheist, and you will face times when, actually, God's existence looks pretty likely".
True, but are there not two types of atheism?
There is a whole world of difference between saying "I don't believe in God" and saying "I believe there is no God."
quote:
Imagine two people on a road, one thinks it leads to a celestial city, the other nowhere, along the way they see things that make things seem that there isn't a celestial city, other times it seems that there is. One of them must be right, and there is only one way to find out...
We could take this one step further and say that it is safer to believe in the celestial city, because if you don't and there is one then you won't be allowed in, but if you do and there isn't one you have lost nothing. But in doing so we only end up with Pascal's Wager. The problem with that is that it logically says one should believe in God, but gives no indication which religion has the right picture of God! For all we know, going to church on a Sunday and worshipping Jesus is making Zeus mightily pissed off and one day soon he is going to thunderbolt the lot of us. Or maybe Christianity is right and all the Muslims are in trouble, or maybe the Jews are right and everyone else is in for it....... Or maybe it just doesn't matter and we're all going to be OK, or maybe there is nothing out there but believing in something is important for the human psyche - we can't logically, reasonably or scientifically know - we have to rely on our gut feeling and faith.
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To err is human. To arr takes a pirate.
Posts: 3121 | From: Sofa | Registered: Nov 2004
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I'd recommend the book
orthodoxy by G K Chesterton, a book that sets out why christianity is something worth believing in.
I agreed; and would add that the text of this book is now in the public domain, and available from the Gutenberg Project, and elsewhere. As is Everlasting Man by the same author.
It can be argued that Christian writers like Chesterton, MacDonald, and even CS Lewis, were not as fully informed about the arguments against Christianity than we are today. Consequently, I'd recommend Polkinghorne's Faith of a Physicist, or Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief (which, I have to say, is a hard read). These are books by sensible, well-educated, smart, articulate people who, being fully aware of the opposing arguments, nevertheless think that Christianity has something going for it.
Posts: 2718 | From: East Dogpatch | Registered: Dec 2005
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by m.t-tomb:
Dioptre, the very fact that this type of question is of the slightest concern to you is evidence enough that God is at work in your life. In my opinion.
That's what people used to tell me whan I was losing my faith.
Perhaps I should have another look behind the fridge?
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
You may or may not believe this, but Chesterton and the attempt to falsify athiesm have indeed slowed down my descent into apostacy and have, I would say, made me more open to the possibility that I was right in the first place than I would otherwise have been.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I found the point at which faith faded was when it no longer seemed either a convincing explanation for anything, nor an active help to a happier life.
It is a great relief: the earthquake that kills thousands is not a judgment - it is not even, in and of itself, an evil. It is nothing that tectonic plate theory cannot account for. In the biological sphere, all of observable nature is a system of parasitism and predation - nothing lives but by the death, and very likely suffering, of something else.
Some might argue that our sense of entitlement to something else argues another order - but then we get to our Not Happier reason.
Ultimately, I found Christian doctrine required that I be what I am not - but not in a good way; in a way that seemed to me to offer only an inauthentic life.
[ 09. May 2006, 11:33: Message edited by: Firenze ]
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
It is a great relief: the earthquake that kills thousands is not a judgment - it is not even, in and of itself, an evil. It is nothing that tectonic plate theory cannot account for.
And this differs from the Christian view how exactly?
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
It doesn't require a God who sends such things as a punishment, which Christinity, or most forms thereof, explicity does, at least in my experience.
Firenze - yes, I agree. Christianity became less and less convincing, both intellectually and morally, so I eventually simply junked it in.
When I realise I didn't need to preted to like the God of my youth, or to give a damn what He thought, it was a huge relief. It was a giant weight off my shoulders. I felt free, for the first time in a long time.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Ultimately, I found Christian doctrine required that I be what I am not - but not in a good way; in a way that seemed to me to offer only an inauthentic life.
Inauthentic, impoverished, dishonest and demeaning, for me.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
It doesn't require a God who sends such things as a punishment, which Christinity, or most forms thereof, explicity does, at least in my experience.
I don't think that's true. I've only rarely encountered people who claimed earthquakes were God's judgement in Christian circles.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Posted by CrookedCucumber: quote:
Losing your faith is not like handing in your letter of resignation.
Just so. Speaking from experience (as someone who loses about a faith a week, though this week's is holding up remarkably well so far), losing your faith is much more like when a friend dies. It's not glancing down your list of beliefs one morning and realising that you can't tick the boxes next to nos. 7, 14, and 23 today. It's more like the ache in the heart when it hits you that someone who was once there will never be there again.
Or that they had never been there is the first place.
There was some grief, and some shame, when I concluded that I had just had an imaginary friend, but mainly there was relief.
Ahhhhh. Finally, I can breathe.
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
It doesn't require a God who sends such things as a punishment, which Christinity, or most forms thereof, explicity does, at least in my experience.
Ahh, the Pat Robertson school of theology... That you've suffered under stupid Christianity does not mean that there is no other kind, or for that matter that the majority of Christianity is stupid. I recommend the article "Evil" in Herbert McCabe's excellent book "God Matters" to you. (And as RC Dominican he's not presenting a point of view there that is in any way or form at odds with orthodoxy...)
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Papio, I think we should elope.
Crooked Cucumber: you might not want to identify with those Christians who see any given earthquake or hurricane or plague as God's judgment on sinners, but it's a long-standing and still practiced response. Even those who accept the scientific 'how' still express difficulty with the 'why [now/them]'.
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Dave Marshall
Shipmate
# 7533
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dioptre:
P: I have faith
A: I don't
How do I get back from here?
I think there's two issues.
The first, is there a God, seems an essentially simple preference for how we think about our existence. Are we being created, or are we the result of some accidental quirk of an impersonal metaphysical system. Either way it's a judgement call. If we are drawn to such questions, it's the foundation of our faith.
The second, how then should we live, looks anything but simple. This, at least if we find the universe at every level reflects something beyond the accidental, is the realm of religion. Unlike the natural universe, religion is a human creation with all the flaws and limitations that come with that.
I used to believe that Christianity had a solution, with its internally consistent theories and long history. Now I'm fairly sure its traditional orthodoxy is no ultimate explanation. But what the Church actually is, a framework of support for multi-layered inter-personal networks within which those of us who prefer God can work out our faith, still seems the place in our culture where God can become most explicitly real.
I don't think losing your faith is anything to get back from. More like a wake-up call perhaps, an opportunity to feed different questions back into whichever branch of Church you feel comfortable with. It's only religion that tends to see faith as some gold standard to be maintained. God I suspect is much happier with an ongoing conversation.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
There's a hell of a difference between struggling with the why them/why now/why at all questions, and believing it's God's judgement.
I'll admit that it's an attractive point to atheism - to think it's all just random and pointless feels as if it might leave one freer to be angry, depairing and grieving over disaster.... but I've met very few Christians who would look you in the eye and say the earthquake in Pakistan was God's judgement.
You might argue that leaves no coherent alternative explanation.... but that's another story.... the point is not many people say it.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I've met very few Christians who would look you in the eye and say the earthquake in Pakistan was God's judgement.
Really?
I've met literally hundreds.
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El Greco
Shipmate
# 9313
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Posted
I've met none.
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Ξέρω εγώ κάτι που μπορούσε, Καίσαρ, να σας σώσει.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
I've met literally hundreds.
You asked them all their views? You had a discussion on the topic with hundreds of people? Or was it a postal questionnaire?
I'm worried that the claim you've met hundreds who thought that suggests you've assumed it of many without adequate evidence. I've certainly not had the converstion with hundreds of people...
I accept many people in pentecostal or heavy going evangelical places might think that - but I doubt many C of E types, RCs or even mainstream evangelical christians would think that.
I certainly don't, and I doubt many posters on the ship do.
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
It was pretty clear from the years that I spent in the church, from talking to people, going to prayer meetings, seeing people in church nod and say "yes" and "amen", from reading church notices, and from reading Christian books and tracts that the vast majority of the Christians I met believed, in general, that "acts of God" in lawyer-speak were, well, vengeful retribution for sin.
[ 09. May 2006, 12:24: Message edited by: Papio ]
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I've met very few Christians who would look you in the eye and say the earthquake in Pakistan was God's judgement.
Really?
I've met literally hundreds.
Well, that alone is sufficient to account for the difference between your world-view and mine, I would imagine. I am aware that there are people who believe such things, in the same way that I am aware that there are people who believe the Earth is flat. But I can't remember ever meeting any, thankfully.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
I've met very few Christians who would look you in the eye and say the earthquake in Pakistan was God's judgement.
You might argue that leaves no coherent alternative explanation.... but that's another story.... the point is not many people say it.
I would have said it was a mainstream position for most of the church's history.
Although on massy pillars built,
The earth has lately shook;
It trembled under Britain’s guilt,
Before its Maker’s look...
But if these warnings prove in vain,
Say, sinner, canst thou tell,
How soon the earth may quake again,
And open wide to hell.
John Newton, 18th Century
and can still be found at the touch of a Google today
Katrina was no accident. Katrina was no haphazard natural disaster. Katrina was no climatic coincident of Mother Nature. Katrina was a warning from the Lord.
Remember, Katrina had to come with the foreknowledge and provision of God. To reason otherwise rejects the scriptures, and denies the sovereign presence of a Holy, Almighty God.
Dr Terry Watkins, Dial-the-Truth Ministeries 21st Century
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Earthling
quote:
What can we do to find God? And how do we know when we've found him?
Look to / at Jesus. Do you belong to a Church that believes that this is possible?
For all ...
I have not long finished reading the following work by the ex-atheist theologian, Alistair McGrath: "The Twilight of Atheism." Simply superb.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
It was pretty clear from the years that I spent in the church, from talking to people, going to prayer meetings, seeing people in church nod and say "yes" and "amen", from reading church notices, and from reading Christian books and tracts that the vast majority of the Christians I met believed, in general, that "acts of God" in lawyer-speak were, well, vengeful retribution for sin.
I have a good friend, whom I would call a Christian fundamentalist (although that isn't a term he would apply to himself), who is keen on telling people that the Bible (by which he means ``my church's interpretation of the Bible'') is a sort of instruction manual for human affairs. He says that to indulge in `sinful' activity is, to humankind, the spiritual equivalent of not reading your car's instruction manual, and putting olive oil in the radiator. Or something.
So `divine retribution' is the natural consequence of, as it were, not following the instructions laid down in the manual.
I don't subscribe to this view myself, as you might imagine; I only mention it because it's the closest to the POV you describe that I've encountered in a living person.
I wonder how many people around here believe that natural disasters are the wrath of a vengeful God?
Come on... hands up
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
That's the evidence, Firenze? A hymn and a single quote from google search?
And even then the hymn is open to interpretation....
What Crooked Cucumber reports is closer to what I've often heard. Like him, even then I don't quite believe it myself.... but it's a long way from the divine retribution story.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
For instance here is the reaction of two mainstream institutions to suggestions the tsunami was divine retribution;
quote:
Other churches are also responding to MacLeod's suggestion.
"The view that the tsunami was some kind of divine retribution is utterly alien to the Catholic world view," reads a statement from the Catholic Church. "Our belief is in a God of love, who suffers with us, not an avenging deity."
A Church of Scotland spokesman dismissed the comments about not observing the fourth commandment, calling the event a natural disaster.
[ 09. May 2006, 12:49: Message edited by: mdijon ]
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
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