I stayed up late last night to watch Richard Dawkins on The Hour. George Stroumboulopoulos was okay, but I always find it frustrating when such an important figure and a vast topic is speedily addressed between commercials.One thing Dawkins said that I totally agree with:
Just because it is consoling it doesn’t mean it’s true!
He’s right. And one of the things I’ve learned as a pastor and just as a human being is how quickly we’ll cling to a consoling thought and insist on it’s truth simply because it consoles us. I think we are vastly addicted to such consoling thoughts. I remember once a young woman came to church with another man and her husband was sitting on the other side of the church. When I asked her about it later that week, she said that she fell in love with this man and kicked her husband out. I challenged her on that, and she said that because it made her feel so good, it must be from God. It ended her marriage and destroyed her family. Which is why Paul in Romans said, “Should we sin so that grace can abound?”, meaning that we cannot, just because something feels right, go back and say God willed it. I’m sorry for the vivid illustration, but we all do it to some degree. We all find what brings us comfort and pleasure. Then, no matter how twisted our method of getting that, we thank God for it in the end. This is what Dawkins was talking about: even if it isn’t true, if it consoles us, then we’ll believe it to be true. Just some thoughts.
You can catch the video HERE.
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Well put David.
I think that this ties in well with your post on making our own gods. If the God in the Bible makes us feel…well, squeamish/angry/afraid/uncomfortable, then we decide that He can’t possibly be like that and we change him to suit our likes.
That’s sin. It may make us feel better to say, “Well my God wouldn’t do that…”, yet it’s not the truth.
We lie to ourselves enough, we eventually may believe it to be the truth.
Thanks for that highlight…
this is just what i needed to read today.
how crazy is it that God can speak through the mouth of an atheist?
we can never escape Him, no matter how hard we try. even when we shake our fists at Him and say we don’t believe in Him—somehow, some way, God always manages to show up.
now, THAT is a consoling thought.
Eve: “Well. MY god wouldn’t do that – yet it’s not the truth.
If this means that a normal, sane, rational, loving human being would NOT accept any god that relishes babies being ripped out from their mothers’ wombs, who orders his chosen guys to eat barley cake and dung sandwiches, who slaughters infants because their country’s king is being a dick, and all the rest of the vile pornographic bloody primitive B.S. in the “Good Book,” but that nevertheless it’s the “truth… welcome to it.
Say hi to Adam.
There seems to be the standard arguement that atheists cause more destruction than theists and the list of Hitler, Stalin, etc. comes out. I came across this site that notes Hitler was quite religious.
http://profnewport.blogspot.com/2007/04/myth-of-atheist-hitler.html
After reading this it is possible that he might have made a good charasmatic evangelical if he toned down the anti-semitic stuff and replaced it with the word atheist and/or gay.
In response to Eve’s comment that implied that we need to accept the god of the old testament no matter what she might find herself in rather infamous company.
“I have followed [the Church] in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it. [Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, _The Voice of Destruction_, pp. 239-40]“
eve and richard… it is what people attribute to god that i find most disturbing, not the actions of god but the actions of people.
as i said in the previous thread… with the minds we have we are obliged to unpick the truth from the distortion. we know what people are like!
i once suggested to a friend that satan was a human construct… not that that makes satan any less real, just different, any how it was just a thought… he only gets named as a character in the NT except in job. i thought it would make interesting conversation. anyhow, my friend completely did his nut, got very angry and started to panic and then to cry… turns out that the reality of satan for him was his only means of understanding whay he was always beaten up and locked in cupboards by his father when he was a lad! the only way he could understand his fathers actions was in the light of a molevolent devil. i certainly wouldn’t have so cruelly taken away that comfort had i realised what his reaction may be… and it certainly stands as a good illustration of ideas we hold bringing comfort… it is strong stuff and when we play with constucts we are possibly in danger of mentally unhinging half the planet!
ps. still not sure what satan is… i reckon the serpent is just that, a serpant! adam fails to take authority over it, therefore breaking gods first command to him. no need for the serpant to be satan then to make sense of that passage.
Terrance,
Actually, I was simply saying that God is who He is-regardless of who we’d like Him to be.
I did not say that He loves destruction. He does allow it, because of our choices.
Richard,
The Bible indicates that God does not change. He is changless. If so, how can you sepatate the God of the Old and New Testament?
I’m not advocating leaving out logical reasoning- God gave us a brain to use. There is no way, though, that a creature of finite mind (us) can totally understand the ways of an infinite mind (God). Many things we learn along the way and many things we go by faith.
Jon,
“it is what people attribute to god that i find most disturbing, not the actions of god but the actions of people.”
I agree. If anything bad happens, most people attribute that to God.
The Bible says that Satan is Lucifer-a fallen angel.(Isaiah 14:12-17)
Thanks for the initiation, guys! *grin* Oh-Adam says hi
I am amazed at how many points I am in agreement with.
He says, The Mysteries of this life that we don’t know are far more profound far more interesting, far more uplifting than anything you will find in the bible or any other holy book (Paul says this in 1Co 2:9).
He also said “I think it is a tragedy to base your life upon something for which there is no evidence and never was any evidence when there is so much to know when the real truth is so wonderful “ He is so right The real truth is so wonderful!
He goes on to say that,â€it is a tragedy in a time when there is so much to know that people are actively led astray by midlevel Bronze Age myths and writings over 2000 years old and what really matters is the truthâ€. I couldn’t agree more
He refers to faith as a Virus Well again I say he is right it is a gift from God that one can only acquire from being ever so close to him.
Richard reminds me of the Apostle Paul, Paul was vehemently seeking out Christians to stone them in effort to do what he believed to be the truth until God got a hold of him and revealed to him the real truth that being Jesus Christ The Way The Truth and The Life
And I believe if Richard Dawkins continues to seek the truth as he is
The same result will occur in his life, Jesus will reveal Himself to all that seek him
Is it okay to eat shrimp, wear a linen shirt over my woolen underwear, and touch a football ? — I’m not Jewish.
I posted my coment on ‘The Hours’ web site as well (in case it looked familiar)
i also aggree with the statement “just because it is consoling it doesn’t mean it’s true!”
but wouldn’t that also apply to an atheists point of view ? Would it not be consoling to beleive that there is no God? particularly when you call him names such as a bully?
hi eve… i know what the bible says, but i’m blowed if i understand it!
… anyhow, that desription comes from a jewish 3000 year old worldview which could never be mine. i still have to grapple with what it all means. saying that satan is an angel fallen from heaven is as helpful as saying chocolate is made in a factory… it kind of says nothing… excuse my being devils advocate!
terrence… i presume you mean the oval thing we call a rugby ball… aren’t they plastic these days? and… a linen shirt… woolen sweater… everyone knows you should never wear them together… sooo last year!
“Is it okay to eat shrimp, wear a linen shirt over my woolen underwear, and touch a football ? — I’m not Jewish.”
You’re not Jewish? Then yes. You seem to get it.
“We all find what brings us comfort and pleasure. Then, no matter how twisted our method of getting that, we thank God for it in the end.”
There is a two-sided coin here. I would say that at times it can be true.
But, there are people who go through hard times and attribute that to God’s working in their life, when the whole time it can be self-infflicted pain from really stupid choices.
There are some people who live under a self-inflicted cloud of “poor me”. “I can never get ahead”. “This is God’s lot for me in life”. It all comes out as a spiritual badge of honor – a little bit of a martyrs complex. Yet, deep down it comes out of a messed up concept of God and self!
Im sick and tired of spiritual aces in the back pocket to cover for peoples “Misfortunes” in life!
John, aren’t you saying the same thing? That when people are “comfortable with misfortune” they have attributed their misfortune to God?
Eve said,
“I’m not advocating leaving out logical reasoning- God gave us a brain to use. There is no way, though, that a creature of finite mind (us) can totally understand the ways of an infinite mind (God). Many things we learn along the way and many things we go by faith.”
My point is that the Bible is not, nor could it ever contain the mind of God. It is formed by human language. There is nothing about it that would indicate that we accept what it says about God, New or Old Testament, as being accurate in a literal sense. If we do, we then have limited God to a book.
It makes no sense, to me, to worship a god who can’t even keep his own moral code. That’s the power of reason. Reason is limited, but a god who rages and has fits of jelousy seems rather a reflection of the immaturity of the writer, not God.
jon birch said
“i once suggested to a friend that satan was a human construct… not that that makes satan any less real, just different, any how it was just a thought… he only gets named as a character in the NT except in job. i thought it would make interesting conversation. anyhow, my friend completely did his nut, got very angry and started to panic and then to cry… turns out that the reality of satan for him was his only means of understanding whay he was always beaten up and locked in cupboards by his father when he was a lad! the only way he could understand his fathers actions was in the light of a molevolent devil. i certainly wouldn’t have so cruelly taken away that comfort had i realised what his reaction may be… and it certainly stands as a good illustration of ideas we hold bringing comfort… it is strong stuff and when we play with constucts we are possibly in danger of mentally unhinging half the planet!”
What happened to the idea that truth can set us free? Crying and getting angry is not unhinging. Its often a part of transformation. Birth and re-Birth often have crying as a part of the process. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be sensitive to this, but there is a suffering that can come from blaming Satan all your life as well.
Facing the mystery honestly is a maturation process. I’m sure we all make up all kinds of stories to “make” sense of life, but the truth is, a very large portion of life does not make sense. The problem of suffering is a big one and I have not found a satisfactory answer to that one. I may find emotional places to rest, but ultimately there are some very disturbing aspects to the scale of suffering we see on this planet.
Steve stated
“Richard reminds me of the Apostle Paul, Paul was vehemently seeking out Christians to stone them in effort to do what he believed to be the truth until God got a hold of him and revealed to him the real truth that being Jesus Christ The Way The Truth and The Life”
I am assuming you are implying that I am a model of the pre-converted Saul. I would point out that Saul was using a method of the OT god to wipe out what he considered to be a threat to God’s chosen people.
Discussing what one believes and stoning people is quite a different process. I may be wrong, but I see no indication what-so-ever that I am stoning Christians metaphorically or otherwise.
Sorry for the confusion Richard Harty .
I was referring to Richard Dawkins in my analogy to the Apostle Paul and you are right to say that” Discussing what one believes and stoning people is quite a different process.” I guess the analogy does break down at that point. My point was in fact a comparison with the fervor that Saul persecuted the Christians believing that he was preserving what he believed to be the truth. Then God got in the equation and messed everything up! It is my hope and belief that God not being a respecter of persons will preform the same miracle to all that seek the truth for He is that truth!
i agree with you richard… i was questioning my own lack of sensitivity and suggesting that we need to be sensitive on a global scale also… i said it badly.
To steve and jon birch,
Thank you for clarifying your statements!