I don't remember if I have blogged about this before or not. Since most people probably only skim read my posts anyways, I suppose it doesn't really matter.
I was re-reading The Everlasting Man today and also arguing sort of with someone on facebook. Which, interestingly enough, Chesterton proved to have an answer to one of the person's objections. I haven't brought it up yet on facebook.
The person objects to the idea of God on a few different levels one of which is that the idea of God was forumulated out of mankind's ignorance of the natural causes of Thunder and science in general. That man needed an explanation and God seemed to be reasonable at the time. That the idea of a all-powerful God takes away some of our stress and worry. We don't have to fear death because of heaven.
The basic idea behind this is in part true. Man hungers for something. I don't think that it is as simple as just wanting an explanation. Have you ever read a fairy tale and wished it were true? Even though you know that it would be ridiculous. We want there to be magic and fairies and ghosts. They might not explain anything really, but that doesn't mean that we don't want them to be true. We aren't satisfied with a purely natural world. We have a need in us for it to be supernatural. That need doesn't mean that we made up God. If anything it means God exists. We hunger for food and we thirst for human relationships, in fact there aren't many things that we have a "need" for that don't exist. I don't think that there has ever been any recorded race of people that didn't believe in the supernatural at one point or another. Peoples who had no contact with each other at all had this idea, this need.
Chesterton describes pre-christian paganism as the hunger and Christianity as the food. They are similar in the way that a picture is similar to a real face.
On a side note it is interesting to see that inventing God never really gave us the things that atheists claim we invented him for. We all still fear death, and most of the time get stressed out about stuff too. I don't believe in God because I am stressed by exams and need a job. Those things still stress me because I know that God isn't going to study for me and fill out my applications. I trust that over all things are going to turn out well, but I highly doubt that they will be easy and stress free. That isn't what God promised, in fact he said that things are going to be hard and we will have to bear crosses. Life will absolutely suck sometimes. There is a struggle inside sometimes to just fight through stuff and not take the easy way out. Often times I end up doing the harder more stressful thing because of God. It is a lot less stressful to cheat on an exam or on your taxes ( if you know that you aren't going to get caught). If anything not believing in God seems to easier sometimes.
5 comments:
I love your post! You should really study philosophy, you already sound like a philosopher. Awesome, awesome, awesome...(I was just told not to ever call someone awesome, but I am going to disregard that for the time being).
About your last part of your post, how it is easier if you don't believe in God, I just think about how people go searching for "their church" to fit in with. How they will feel comfortable, like they find the church that goes through some loopholes so they can still be a good Christian in comparision with their church. Ok, this might be going in the wrong direction.
So if they don't want to believe in God, then they don't have to impress anyone, because there is no superior being to them to judge them.
I think you are correct that everyone in time believed in "God" or another supernatural being.
Ok Tom, maybe being lukewarm is the easiest. But if you compare hardcore Christian with Atheist, I think it is easier to be atheist.
People say that values aren't determined by religion and that atheists can be moral and have a ethical system not based on a God. Which is true. But I have met so many people who have this vague sense of right and wrong. A sense sort of based on how it makes them feel and whether it is PC compassionate.
Then mixed with their sense of entitlement, they get some "rightious anger" emotion and all their selflessness goes out the window.
That prof is unfair, other people cheat, and who's to say that it is really "wrong". One test, just so that I can pass. What's important is that I get this degree. No one is going to care about one little test in one little class.
Which honestly, is probably the way that a lukewarm person would think too.
i think its easiest to just not think about God. people go along in life all the time without giving much thought to him or his plan for them. these people might say they r christian, or agnostic, or whatever, but it really means that they haven't put enough thought into God's exsistence to figure out what they really believe. i think this is because life is going pretty well for these people. its easy to not go to church, not pray, etc.
n e ways.. back to sarah's point...
i wouldn't push the fairy thing.. just because personally i've never really wanted them to be real. i think someone could argue to point about every cizilization having a religion at one point because they coudl say that they needed that at one time but now which science we don't need it... but i like that idea of God not making things easier. that is a really important message that i think a lot of people should understand.
btw-blogger made me get a new name for some reason.. grr
Ok that is kind of what I was wondering. I think that there is a better way to put it, but it isn't absolute. I think that in a general sense there aren't many people who are so practical that they haven't wanted there to be more then the natural.
We look for meaning, which is different than the explanation that science gives us.
Does the fact that we look something mean that that something exists? I guess that is the question/point I am making.
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