I really cringe when I read stories like this for a couple of reasons. The first is the perfectly reasonable embarrassment of having representatives of my faith behaving so badly. The second is the knowledge that the author has made his decision purely on existential grounds. He has no logical proposition to state. He has no case other than the age-old one of: 1. There is suffering. 2. God should prevent suffering. 3. There is no God (the old Epicurean chestnut). The more painful thing is that the end effect of this story, whether the author intended it this way or not, is to discourage people from the Christian faith.
As a Lutheran, there are no surprises to me reading the tragedies in this article. I have always known that the Catholic church is corrupt, dogmatic, and mafia-like in its "control" of the sacred; and that Baptists in general are obnoxious, overly ambitious evangels. I have personal experience in the second statement, which is a well-known story to sigma7.
But he does bring up a good point, about faith being a leap in the dark, and I know of a nice counterpoint to that, and rather than take up more space here I'll just link to it. The Anatomy of Faith and the Quest for Reason, Part 1 and Part 2
These are mp3s of lectures given by Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, who isn't your usual evangelist. He spends most of his time doing Q&A sessions on college campuses, where students challenge him and he defends the faith on intellectual terms night after night. Just right-click and "Save File As." Each file is about 10 MB and runs just under 30 minutes, and you can safely skip the bumpers of the first and last two minutes or so. If anyone's an honest skeptic, they should at least be open to counter-perspectives, so give them a listen.
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Date: 2007-08-07 09:30 pm (UTC)I really cringe when I read stories like this for a couple of reasons. The first is the perfectly reasonable embarrassment of having representatives of my faith behaving so badly. The second is the knowledge that the author has made his decision purely on existential grounds. He has no logical proposition to state. He has no case other than the age-old one of: 1. There is suffering. 2. God should prevent suffering. 3. There is no God (the old Epicurean chestnut). The more painful thing is that the end effect of this story, whether the author intended it this way or not, is to discourage people from the Christian faith.
As a Lutheran, there are no surprises to me reading the tragedies in this article. I have always known that the Catholic church is corrupt, dogmatic, and mafia-like in its "control" of the sacred; and that Baptists in general are obnoxious, overly ambitious evangels. I have personal experience in the second statement, which is a well-known story to
But he does bring up a good point, about faith being a leap in the dark, and I know of a nice counterpoint to that, and rather than take up more space here I'll just link to it.
The Anatomy of Faith and the Quest for Reason, Part 1 and Part 2
These are mp3s of lectures given by Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, who isn't your usual evangelist. He spends most of his time doing Q&A sessions on college campuses, where students challenge him and he defends the faith on intellectual terms night after night. Just right-click and "Save File As." Each file is about 10 MB and runs just under 30 minutes, and you can safely skip the bumpers of the first and last two minutes or so. If anyone's an honest skeptic, they should at least be open to counter-perspectives, so give them a listen.