is God real?
I stumbled upon this article on the Newsweek website that speaks of the debate between believers and atheists. It presents many interesting arguments for and against the faith and goes in line with what we've been doing in YC all these months. Have fun chewing on it! I hope I'm not breaching any copyright laws...
Is God Real?
by Jon Meacham
Newsweek
April 9, 2007 issue - All men need the gods.
—Homer, ca. 800 B.C.
A certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the gods.
—Plato, ca. 400 B.C
Later, when Blaise Pascal tried to get it all down on paper, he wrote in bursts, capturing flashes of what he thought he had seen in the vision—a vision that, by empirical standards, could only be called fantastical. There was no doubt in Pascal's mind, though, that it had happened, and happened in time and space, in a way his mathematically trained brain conceived of things as happening. Pascal remembered the exact time—between the hours of half past 10 and half past midnight on Monday, Nov. 23, 1654, the feast day, in the Christian calendar, of Saint Clement, pope and martyr. Jesus appeared to him; God was real; the Christian story true: "Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ. My God and your God." In a collection of writings found after his death, published as "Pensées," Pascal blended his two passions, mathematics and faith, to lay out what has come to be known as Pascal's Wager. It is rather simple: it is smarter to bet that God exists, and to believe in him, because if it turns out that he is real, you win everything; if he is not, you lose nothing. So why not take the leap of faith?
.
.
.
There are many levels of argument between believers and atheists; Warren and Harris touch on many of them. Here are just a few. There has to be a God, the religious say, for the Bible (or the Qur'an) says so; this is the assertion of the literalist, and depends on an uncritical reading of Scriptures that some believers say were written (or dictated) by God. There is the moral-sense argument—there must be a God, the religious say, because human beings have an innate understanding of right and wrong, an understanding that God planted in every heart. There is the design argument—that the world is so complex and makes so much sense that there had to be a guiding intelligence at the center of it all.
.
.
.
There are, of course, religious counter-counter-arguments to these counter-arguments; the debate goes on world without end. With the exception of explaining the origin of the physical law that brought the universe into being 14 billion years ago, atheists can easily mock the religious for believing in fantastical stories of ascending saviors, parting seas and burning bushes. With little trouble the atheists can pose devastating questions; if God is great, then why do babies get cancer? Why do the innocent suffer? Why do the religious kill in the name of their God, when their God is supposed to be love incarnate? Why did God stop performing miracles on a large scale a couple of months after the first Pentecost?
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
Click here for the complete article.
Is God Real?
by Jon Meacham
Newsweek
April 9, 2007 issue - All men need the gods.
—Homer, ca. 800 B.C.
A certain portion of mankind do not believe at all in the existence of the gods.
—Plato, ca. 400 B.C
Later, when Blaise Pascal tried to get it all down on paper, he wrote in bursts, capturing flashes of what he thought he had seen in the vision—a vision that, by empirical standards, could only be called fantastical. There was no doubt in Pascal's mind, though, that it had happened, and happened in time and space, in a way his mathematically trained brain conceived of things as happening. Pascal remembered the exact time—between the hours of half past 10 and half past midnight on Monday, Nov. 23, 1654, the feast day, in the Christian calendar, of Saint Clement, pope and martyr. Jesus appeared to him; God was real; the Christian story true: "Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ. My God and your God." In a collection of writings found after his death, published as "Pensées," Pascal blended his two passions, mathematics and faith, to lay out what has come to be known as Pascal's Wager. It is rather simple: it is smarter to bet that God exists, and to believe in him, because if it turns out that he is real, you win everything; if he is not, you lose nothing. So why not take the leap of faith?
.
.
.
There are many levels of argument between believers and atheists; Warren and Harris touch on many of them. Here are just a few. There has to be a God, the religious say, for the Bible (or the Qur'an) says so; this is the assertion of the literalist, and depends on an uncritical reading of Scriptures that some believers say were written (or dictated) by God. There is the moral-sense argument—there must be a God, the religious say, because human beings have an innate understanding of right and wrong, an understanding that God planted in every heart. There is the design argument—that the world is so complex and makes so much sense that there had to be a guiding intelligence at the center of it all.
.
.
.
There are, of course, religious counter-counter-arguments to these counter-arguments; the debate goes on world without end. With the exception of explaining the origin of the physical law that brought the universe into being 14 billion years ago, atheists can easily mock the religious for believing in fantastical stories of ascending saviors, parting seas and burning bushes. With little trouble the atheists can pose devastating questions; if God is great, then why do babies get cancer? Why do the innocent suffer? Why do the religious kill in the name of their God, when their God is supposed to be love incarnate? Why did God stop performing miracles on a large scale a couple of months after the first Pentecost?
© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.
Click here for the complete article.
posted by ihmyc at 1:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home