William Lobdell
WHEN Times editors assigned me to the religion beat, I believed God had answered my prayers.
I wanted to report objectively and respectfully about how belief shapes people’s lives. Along the way, I believed, my own faith would grow deeper and sturdier.
But during the eight years I covered religion, something very different happened.
My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago — probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.
Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don’t. It’s not a choice. It can’t be willed into existence. And there’s no faking it if you’re honest about the state of your soul.
#58. Such hostility for the mere expression of a contrary opinion! Truly thou must be a Christian.
And Stalin learned the tolerance in the seminary …
#59 – Gary Marks
“So far, my biggest problem is that the audience always seems to root for Sluggo (Satan), which seems to distort the whole message of the Bible ”
Gee Mr. Hands, it sure is nice in this garden, I just wish I had some company!
Oh, OK, Mr. Bill, we can fix that! I’ll just need one of your ribs!
Oh, NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!
When Mr. B comes to, there’s Sluggeve… 😉
LMAO, Lauren. That’s the ticket!
I lost faith when I went to confirmation class. Everything they say is just to get around something else that doesn’t make sense.
Lengthy reading but needed in this post: I believe this man says it well.
Those who suggest that the existence of a benevolent God is impossible in light of human suffering often wish for a better world than this one. Yet they cannot describe the details necessary for its creation and maintenance. When—in a vain attempt to “improve” the world in which they live—they begin to “tinker” with it, invariably they find themselves worse off.
Instead of blaming God when tragedies strike, we need to turn to Him for strength, and let suffering remind us that this world was never intended to be a final home (Hebrews 11:13-16). Our time here is temporary (James 4:14), and with God’s help, we can overcome whatever comes our way (Romans 8:35-39; Psalm 46:1-3). In addressing these points, Franklin E. Payne Jr. observed:
“Numerous Bible verses demonstrate the New Testament emphasis that God is more concerned about eternal values that are determined by the Christian’s handling of such situations in life, than His concern for physical comfort. Ultimately, the purpose of suffering is the believer’s reflection of the glory of God. His glory results when the person shows His power to overcome and His deliverance of His people through trying circumstances “(Job 42:1-6; Ezek. 20:9, 14,22,33,39; 2 Cor. 11:24-33) [1985, p. 189].
#65. Thank you for your response, but
“Ultimately, the purpose of suffering is the believer’s reflection of the glory of God. His glory results when the person shows His power to overcome and His deliverance of His people through trying circumstances”
is a monstrously cruel doctrine. A just god inflicts spina bifida on a little girl in order that believers might reflect his glory? Even if our time on this earth is meant to be a prelude, the pain and heartbreak and suffering of the innocent are no less real.
Like a neutered dog Mustard, you just don’t get it.
Stating that I need evidence to give any credence to a hypothesis, especially one as fantastic (literally) as the god hypothesis is not the same thing as religious faith. Let me try one more time to explain it. First I need to calm down though. I usually just fly a few laps around my living room to calm down. One sec.
Ahhhh. Boy I love flying. Now, how much credence do you give to the hypothesis that I did indeed just break the laws of physics and fly around my living room? If your answer is none, why?
I think I’ll become invisible for a little while now. Cool. No one can see me now. I love this stuff. I’m typing and, if anyone walked by, all they’d see is the keys being pressed and the words on the screen.
What? You don’t believe that either?
But you can’t disprove it. You must at least allow for the possibility that I just flew around my living room and am invisible while typing this.
See the difference now with atheism? It’s sort of a “show me” attitude. And yeah, with something as ludicrous as god, I’m not giving it any credence at all, not even a smidgen of doubt, until someone gives me at least one credible piece of evidence.
Now, if you can call that faith, you really are deluded.
>>Stating that I need evidence to give any credence to a hypothesis,
>>especially one as fantastic (literally) as the god hypothesis is not
>>the same thing as religious faith.
I’m not talking about what you DON’T give credence to, Scottoline, I’m talking about what you DO give credence to. Namely, your blind-faith belief that God DOES NOT EXIST. The things I “don’t give credence to” are legion; the things I actively deny the possible existence of is a much smaller subset. And the things I actively deny the possible existence of where I BADGER, RIDICULE, PERSECUTE, and SLANDER those who DO believe in the existence of…well that’s a much tinier subset still. And when their belief has no impact on the life of me or my loved ones, well, then it pretty much shrinks to nothing.
You know, they sell silicone testicles for castrated dogs. I’ll bet you could get a veterinarian to prescribe a pair of those for you.
Musty –
You still, quite conspicuously, avoid the issue. You keep feigning ignorance. You keep pretending that there is any real-world difference between “God doesn’t exist” and “Sure, God might exist, but since His probability is on the order of 0.00000000000001, that is the same thing as “GOD DOESN’T EXIST,” because that astronomically remote chance cannot be taken seriously by any sane, intelligent, honest person.”
Get it? There is a FORMAL, LITERAL difference between “one chance in quadrillions” and “zero chance.” But there is NO difference in the REAL WORLD.
NO SANE PERSON REGARDS ANYTHING WITH SUCH STUPENDOUS ODDS AGAINST IT AS AN ACTUAL POSSIBILITY – SINCE, OBVIOUSLY, IT ISN’T AN ACTUAL PROBABILITY, ONLY AN ABSURDLY REMOTE PURELY THEORETICAL CHANCE. Capisce?
…and now to sit back, once again, and watch you avoid that fact that blows your argument to Kingdom Come. 🙂
Well, Mustardichka, it seems to me that you still have a real misunderstanding of my views. When I give no credence to a hypothesis, I say “I believe hypothesis blah is false.” That is as far as it goes. When applied to the god hypothesis, it comes out as “I believe there is no god.” It’s the same damn thing. It’s not religious.
I’ll gladly give credence to the hypothesis upon the first piece of credible evidence. That is another key difference. When religious folks are faced with conflicting evidence, big bang, evolution, etc, it does not create any doubt.
#66, your response to #65 is great, but there are some other points contained in #65’s response to the problem of evil that should also be addressed.
1. The ‘best of all possible worlds’ argument. If we changed anything, we would get a worse world. So it can’t get any better, so there’s no problem of evil.
This argument, of course, misses the point (why have any world at all?). And, it’s patently false. All that has to be shown is that there could be less evil in the world than there is, and we’ve shown that this is not the best of all worlds. So… how about a world where that little girl didn’t get spina bifida? God’s all-powerful, but he can’t make that happen? A very tiny bit of thought will produce infinitely many such counterexamples.
2. God helps people through suffering, so it’s really good overall. (“His glory results when the person shows His power to overcome and His deliverance of His people through trying circumstances”) As #66 pointed out, it’s a monstrous doctrine, and particularly so when applied to innocents. It’s also demonstrably false.
Recently in England there was a case of a four year old girl beaten to death by her mother and her mother’s boyfriend over a period of several days. Here we have no “power to overcome” and no “deliverance of His people through trying circumstances”. What we have is a little girl who died in a horrible fashion, with no one to comfort her. Glory? There’s no glory here.
Nothing quite like armchair philosophers duking it out on a blog.
Passive aggressive-tastic!
Getting back to discussing the article itself, I liked it. It was sincere, brought up some great points and had some tragic but relevant anecdotes. The writer wasn’t condescending and didn’t take cheap shots. Can’t say the same for these comments….