Jennifer Fulwiler at Conversion Diary provides many an interesting read. I recommend her post on the ignorable God, which begins:
One of the things that bothered me most when I was first exploring religion was the fact that God is invisible. As I was reading up on Christianity, struggling with concepts I didn’t understand, I would occasionally think in exasperation, “You know, God could make this really easy and just appear to each one of us individually and settle all of this once and for all!” It seemed so much more efficient for God to do that rather than mess around with all this messy organized religion stuff.
I really don’t want to excerpt much more than that. It would spoil her nice narrative flow to give you parts, without the whole. I’d love for you just to go over there and read it for yourself. But here’s the last bit:
And why? Why not take my suggestion and slap me upside the head with a laser-light show at every Mass to command my attention when my mind has wandered to think about everything but him? I’m no theologian and don’t claim to have all the answers on that one, but I think that one part of it is this: as usual, it’s about love. One thing about love is that it must be a choice; if there’s coercion involved, it’s not real love. And in order to love someone — really, truly love them — you must first have the choice to ignore them.
I found that post, and it took me back to an earlier one – Asking God for a sign. In this post, Jennifer recalls the days leading up to her conversion; days in which she was trying to be open to the idea that God existed, but was unsure what to do next. She says she was becoming increasingly dejected about her inability to get anywhere, and she begged God for a sign. She walked out onto the balconey, and saw – a hundred miles away – a storm raging between two mountains, where lightning flashed to illuminate a cloud 60,000 feet tall. The rest of the sky was clear, and around her all was still. As she looked up eight meteors flashed across the sky, one after another, many of them with long tails.
“Well,” I smirked to myself, “be careful what you wish for.” I had asked for a sign, and this was about as “sign-ish” as it gets. What more did I want? Yet I wasn’t convinced. Even as my heart raced upon witnessing the grandeur before me I wrote it off as just a storm and an unexpected meteor shower. I refused to believe that there was anything more to this than a random cumulonimbus and some dust entering the earth’s atmosphere.I realized then that there was no sign that God could give me.
If this wouldn’t suffice, nothing would. I wasn’t open to it. Had I walked out on the balcony to see “HI JENNIFER, IT’S ME, GOD!” written across the sky I would have been impressed but ultimately written it off as a practical joke. If Jesus himself materialized to shake my hand and greet me I’d write it off as a hallucination. Because, in my mind, there was a natural explanation for everything, so therefore anything supernatural was impossible.
I arrogantly assumed that because I knew how something worked that God couldn’t be involved. I watched the storm and thought, “That’s not God, that’s just condensation!” And the tightness in my chest and tears welling up in my eyes? “That’s not my ‘soul’ yearning for anything, that’s just chemical reactions in my brain!”
This was another major turning point for me. I realized that night that I wasn’t going to see God if I was determined not to.
This fits in with the notion of the ‘the free-est of all possible worlds’.
Both Toad and KA have in the past suggested that God could have created a less dangerous world – free, say of earthquakes – and I’m sure he could, but given the incredible fine tuning of the universe we currently have, such safety could only be engineered at the cost of making God’s presence explicit – holding the bits together. So we are not forced to acknowledge God in the physical world, though the evidence is strong enough to make us wonder.
On the other hand, out of this extraordinarily ordered world, creatures emerge who can say “I”, and consider themselves to be free. If you cut through the bluster, this remains perhaps the greatest challenge to science. Religious questions need not concern automatons, but the question of God arises naturally to any creature that can say “I”.
So we yearn with longing but find no easy answers.
Interesting post but this argument that its about love vs coercion bothers me.
One thing about love is that it must be a choice; if there’s coercion involved, it’s not real love. And in order to love someone — really, truly love them — you must first have the choice to ignore them.
God could make things easier and his apparent decision to not make things clearer is seen as his respect for our human freedom and ability to choose to love.
But if the Christian belief in God is true, and that he has created us to love him and be loved by him then it follows that we have within ourselves a natural orientation to seek him (or a meme like him) out and love him. Follow me so far?
A parallel argument would be that as human beings we have (on the whole) a predisposition to seek out a member of (usually) the opposite gender and to love them in a mutual and meaningful.
It would be extraordinarily stupid to argue that we have to love Person A just because they have the cubicle next to us at the office, or the usually sit opposite us on the bus/train to work. Their very real presence is not what impels us to love but instead a reciprocal meeting of minds and hearts. Just because they exist doesn’t mean that I am coerced to love them and I would argue that the same goes for the Judeo-Christian god. Whilst in order to love someone — really, truly love them — you must first have the choice to ignore them, I would also argue that in order to ignore them they must actually be truly and indisputably present!
I think that on the whole we tend to attribute a lot to God that is simply coincidence (Thank you God for getting me a park right outside the shop!) and explain away his ‘invisibility’ as being part of his grand design. But I am reminded of something I once read: invisibility and non-existence tend to look very similar.
@Seeker:
“But I am reminded of something I once read: invisibility and non-existence tend to look very similar.”
Too true. The trouble with arguments that get God off the hook for not doing what it says on the tin, is that the God they defend does so little in the world that He might as well not exist. He is the God who lives each one of us so much, that He leaves many of his servants in the lurch – just as though He did not exist. That’s the problem with arguing that the troubles of the individual are too trivial for God to bother with – the human race is 6 thousand million individuals, all of whom are too trivial for God to bother with. (A similar argument appears in Book 3 of Cicero, “On the Nature of the Gods” – it’s as convincing now as it was over 2000 years ago.) Surely, love is shown to be genuine be revealing itself in action – if God does does not do that, how does it make sense to speak of God’s love ? It would be far more straightforward to say that God is not interested in the human race, so He lets them do as they like to one another.
If it’s conceit or egotism (or the like) for one person to wonder why God is not helping them, why can’t it be conceit for the same idea to be held, not about one person, but about all mankind ? If God does not care for one, He does not care for any AFAICS. The thesis “The individual is not important enough for God to bother with” differs only in degree from the thesis that Christians are egotists for thinking their God will bother Himself with the tiny planet they live on.
IMO, God, or gods, is or are as real as people believe Him or them to be. Just my theory.
Whoops! Paragraph 5, last line should have read: “…and to love them in a mutual and meaningful relationship.“
Nice aphorism, Seeker. But very eyesight focused.
We have five senses do we not? I can see, hear, smell, touch and even taste the person I love, as I can (though I would generally draw the line at tasting) any of the billion human inhabitants of this planet. I can not experience god with any of these five senses – which presumably came from him.
Anyway, whether it is eyesight focussed or not is not actually the point. The point is that merely to show ones existence is not the same as coercing love. One might argue that God, being love, would overwhelm his creation should he choose to appear. However the Bible claims that he most certainly did appear – in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who was fully human and fully divine. To know him was not to love him. Certainly the Sanhedrin looked on him prior to that final Passover and did not feel particularly coerced to love him. And before you say that his divine presence was cloaked because it was part of his ineffable plan to suffer and die on the cross, there are many other instances where he exercised his divine power in doing miracles and teaching authoritatively in the temple and so on but those same people who hailed him as he entered Jerusalem on a colt (and a donkey) then cried out for him to be crucified not long after. Hardly coerced to love!
Five senses, yes. And people with claims to have experienced the presence of God with at least three of them.
And I guess the rest of your post just makes the point that Jennifer made in the second post I linked to. To those who choose not to believe, nothing is a sign. Had Jesus walked around all the time as he was at the transfiguration, there would have been people who came up with an explanation to prove that he wasn’t God.
I still think that this argument is still a cop-out. These so-called signs are easily doubted because they have natural causes/explanations. God, if he existed, could very easily be present in our world in a very definitive way that is easily recognized without being coercive. This is the point I am trying to make with my examples from scripture.
The fact of the matter is that people have to use dynamite and dozers to move mountains, and if you drink poison you get really sick and maybe die, and if you handle snakes without knowing what you are doing you may well get bitten and that will freaking hurt! It doesn’t matter how much faith you have, you are reduced to being impressed by a lightening show in the distance in order to see your God. It doesn’t sound like a huge amount of progress from the ancient Greek citizen waiting for a sign from Zeus.
@Seeker:
“These so-called signs are easily doubted because they have natural causes/explanations.”
And by *modern* standards, they may not have been “miraculous” (the concept badly needs clarifying): Mark 9.14-29 looks remarkably like a description of a *grand mal* epileptic convulsion; they aren’t caused by demons, & curiously enough there is no dialogue with one (cf. the case of Legion).
Some of them may have been miracles – e.g. the multiplication of food. The Ascension is not a miracle, but perfectly normal, if Jesus is as extraordinary as the Evangelists allege. Someone who can be raised from the dead may well have no trouble with the Ascension. It may be, not an ascension, so much as an ignoring of space & its limitations
But a lot of the miracles of Jesus seem to be within the scope of nature. To the early readers of the gospels, they may well have seemed beyond the capacities of the natural order – even if they are not.
OTOH:
The only reason to believe that particular Mediterranean cult – which is *historically* what the group that formed around Jesus is – to be of any special Divine significance, when there were others around as well, is that one believes it to be significant. Which is not a good position 🙂 Take away all the layers of interpretation & devotion since the Apostles, & including them: & all you have is a claim that someone recently put to death has been raised from death. And it’s the Church that says the Church is reliable in its understanding of the alleged facts – to trust a source which as its voucher only itself is not convincing.
An awful lot in theology goes against how one acts otherwise – & this causes tension between “the believer” & “the everyday person” within the Christian. We must believe God, even when He seems to be a Supreme Con-artist; something that would not be allowed to earthly con-men. Where faith ends, & abuse begins, it’s very hard to say.
One does not need to be a militant anti-Christian to find the foundations of Christianity disappointingly wobbly 😦 The Apostles need not have been in bad faith, merely mistaken. Which would mean they died for a mistake. Plenty of people have died for beliefs that others think mistaken – the Apostles may have done so.
You make some fascinating points Kerberos
I am also reminded of poor old Judas, who most surely knew God since he was one of the twelve apostles. According to the Bible, he had knowledge of Jesus and proximity to him. He received special insights given only to the apostles and he witnessed and then performed miracles through the divine power of Jesus. Did any of this make him coerced to love? No, in fact if anything, it seems the poor blighter was in fact the first sacrificial victim of God’s ineffable salvific plan of redemption. Jesus allowed Satan to enter Judas’ heart so that Judas would betray him. Perhaps Judas really was coerced but methinks it was not to love.
… and then something like Fatima comes along to keep us all on our toes.
Seeker, I can see what you are getting at, but I’m not sure you can successfully argue from both ends. You can assert materialism, which is fine, but then you have to explain something like Fatima which, if you choose to address the full set of established facts, you may find difficult. Nor can you readily relegate it to the distant, foggy, ignorant past – the newspaper archives speak for themseves. But then materialism implies the apostles were mythical or misled, and their views and reported behaviour really don’t matter very much.
Sure, it would be nice if we had a Fatima-style event on a regular basis. Perhaps we don’t have faith enough to ask for more. But to suggest that if God exists, he has misjudged how hidden he has chosen to be (and therefore he doesn’t exist) – well, this doesn’t strike me as an argument that will resonate much with believers. ‘Love is patient, love is kind …’, we have drilled into us, remember.
Fatima would have been a lot more impressive had the reports (both newspaper and othewise) coming from it been more consistent and if the phenomena had been seen and recorded by external observatories.
In addition, not all witnesses reported seeing the sun “dance”. Some people only saw the radiant colors. Others, including some believers, saw nothing at all. No scientific accounts exist of any unusual solar or astronomic activity during the time the sun was reported to have “danced”, and there are no witness reports of any unusual solar phenomenon further than 64 kilometres (40 mi) out from Cova da Iria.
The twelve hour time difference between UK and NZ is an infernal nuisance – the discussion has moved on just after getting very interesting. I fully accept your point about not feeling the presence of God, and what can I offer in response other than acknowledging the difficulties and pain that must have caused you?
But I’d like to return to Fatima. Forgive me if I characterise your comments as a pastiche of precisely the sort of non-believer’s response to a miracle you previously talked about.
Firstly, let’s understand the limited scope of what I would hope to demonstrate through Fatima, which is that materialism is an inadequate explanation of the phenomena observed in the world. In the first instance (and without many additional assumptions) I would not make any claim about the ‘truth’ of any metaphysical interpretation of the events.
However, I would hope we could agree that if God exists, he is not constrained to act according to the whims of his most literally minded adherents, however entertaining the construction and demolition of straw man arguments may be for us all. Thus, if a lot of people thought that they saw the sun moving, it does not follow that the only two possible options are that either the sun itself did physically move, or that nothing extraordinary happened. Rather the opposite, in fact – it’s quite reassuring to see that God is apparently capable of pulling off a biblical scale wonder in an aspiring athesist state while seamlessly maintaining the universe in good order.
So what did happen? Well, the simplest statement of the uncontested facts is that an illiterate young child (with two companions) claimed to be in dialogue with an invisible person, and made a set of claims on behalf of that invisible person.
According to materialism, persons only exist inside human animals (if indeed there), and therefore invisible persons are imaginary (at best) and are incapable of providing novel information unavailable to their human ‘sponsor’, never mind information unavailable to the entire human race.
A prediction was made by the invisible person, months in advance, that a large scale ‘miracle’ would be manifest, at a particular place and time – indeed the very place of the meetings. If this event had any physical manifestation whatsoever – for example meteorological, as Jaki implies in his masterly study – then this prediction constitutes knowledge beyond the whole of humanity. Indeed, as the century has rolled passed, our understanding of chaos theory renders such a prediction (certainly for a meteorological event) inconceivable. Yet it did occur in the right place, and to within a few minutes of the promise – as soon as the visionaries had assembled.
It is true that the exact nature of the event was not predicted, but had it been, this would only lead to claims of auto-suggestion by the crowd of 50,000 or so who witnessed it, and would have rendered far less effective the independent witnesses remote from the site, which you have noted, who also saw the sun effect and could not possibly have been influenced by the crowd.
The fact that not all witnesses agreed what they saw causes no difficulty. Real uncoerced witnesses rarely agree, but in any event there is no doubt that what occurred was at least in part ‘visionary’, whatever physical manifestation took place. But according to materialism, neurons are also matter, and the simultaneous aberation of billions of neurons over such a widespread area is surely no less worthy of wonder, particularly when predicted months in advance, with the right time, and the right place.
So, I’d appreciate the following clarification. Do you suggest there was any (non-neurological) physical manifestation, and if so, how do you explain its precise prediction (location and time) months in advance? And even if you would assert that the event was purely neurological (and what else is there under materialism?) how was this manifested over such a wide area, again, right on cue?
And if, O Toad, you have read this to the end, and you feel the urge to cite a certain Conjuror’s Hat, I might suggest that poor old God has enough contraints to deal with, without also having to match the aesthetic preferences of a wide range of discerning (and not so discerning) customers.
Best wishes to all.
Hello all!! Where has Mr Badger gone?? Is he hibernating? No, Badger is moving house and is currently without an internet connection 😦 But he shall return within the week and get right back inflicting his thoughts on you all 🙂
Poor Mr Badger!
As far as God’s invisibility goes, leaving aside the question of those stubborn and willful atheists, I wonder why God remains hidden from those who have already chosen to love and follow him?
I was consciously a Catholic for well over 30 years – and a pretty darn committed and devout one at that! But even with daily Mass, fortnightly confession, regular spiritual direction, I still never had a sense of God’s presence or love, let alone actual communication. Surely if someone loves you devotedly its rather niggardly to refuse to reciprocate that love in a real and tangible way? Its certainly not the way to conduct a successful human relationship.
You know, I’m sure there are many others just like you and me Seeker. I was as devout as they come, but I kept expecting god to come into my heart and I fully expected to feel different. I never did.
I wonder how many people are out there who are as devout as you or I were and who are just not feeling anything. I rather suspect that there are more than the theists would care to admit.
KA
Have you lapsees never heard of the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ (and I am referring to the phenomenon more than the mystical book)?
God does not make union with him easy. He may deprive a soul of His consolation for years or decades. He did this to many Saints, and it is in their autobiographies.
Why would he be so cruel? I don’t think God is being cruel in this (or any matter). He is sharing His pain and suffering with us. Finding God is an adventure ‘story’, and like all good adventures, it has its dark and difficult times. Unlike atheist stories, though, God’s heroes always come out marvellous!
The fact that KA and seeker have found their way here and post so politely, shows that they are still amongst the protagonists, rather than the antagonists in this story.
(Of course, what helps greatly is that this ‘hale’ house is hostessed by such a fine lady as our good JP.
JP knows me well enough to know that last was me just being perfectly honest and sincere!)
PS: As a Brit making his occasional retreat from the UK hell-hole, might I just compliment you all on the altogether more civilised tone here down under?
Hence the widespread overuse of the idea of the dark night of the soul, I guess.
I suppose it would be very easy for theists to dismiss my Christian life as obviously lacking in some way – perhaps I had doubts that blocked me from God, perhaps I wasn’t generous, open, prayerful, etc etc. But anyone who knew me then would be shocked that I have deconverted – I would be one of the last people you would ever suspect would do such a thing. It makes me so sad to think of all the time I spent agonising over key decisions in my life to try and discern what god wanted me to do; reading into every little thing (ie sign) an indication of yea or nay and then cross-examining myself that I wasn’t reading what I wanted into it. Such a waste!
“I suppose it would be very easy for theists to dismiss my Christian life as obviously lacking in some way…”
## St. Teresa of Avila – unlike a lot of Catholics on the Net – knew that Christians with a genuine commitment to God could lose it. It’s odd that Catholics, of all people, should be so taken aback, because Catholicism has spent rather a lot of time denying & objecting to, & arguing against, the idea that the elect cannot lose their election.
“…It makes me so sad to think of all the time I spent agonising over key decisions in my life to try and discern what god wanted me to do; reading into every little thing (ie sign) an indication of yea or nay and then cross-examining myself that I wasn’t reading what I wanted into it. Such a waste!..”
Well I can’t believe how frustrating it is to be without internet. But my dear wife and I are at a friends for dinner, and missing a long conversation about the prospect of a second term for National is a positive pleasure.
Seeker, I understand your concern. I think it is misguided to look for signs from God. If the laws of nature will be disrupted to give you a sign, why not remove the need for a sign by direct communication? The very idea of “signs from God” was invented by people who announced that THEY had recieved signs and the less priviliged should LISTEN (and obey, and maybe tithe). Smell a rat?
When it comes to the hidden nature of God, the theist and the atheist are in the same boat. Even if we grant the truth of atheism — we are still left with a blind-spot in our vision, how come anything exists at all? No rational explanation will suffice on principle. Existence itself is not irrational, but it is inherently non-rational. (of course, this doesn’t prove the existence of God, don’t misread me).
Religion is born from the human encounter with finding ourselves in a world that we can come to explain internally, but never explain in its totality. (JP, please link to Scruton article if you know where it is?)
Whether God (the unconditioned principle underpinning our conditional world) is personal can be a subject of debate. But the fact that God is no more visible than a fourth spatial dimension is a necessary fact about humanity.
That was too brief, sorry, I don’t have time to flesh it out and make it more coherent
Mr Badger, do you mean Effing the ineffible?
Yep, I agree. I find it really disappointing that so many otherwise intelligent people will look at everything that happens to them for a sign of god. They may as well look into the tea leaves for all the good it will do.
And, of course, there’s a huge amount of cognitive dissonance going on – they count the ‘positives’ like crazy, and tell us atheists that we simply don’t believe these ‘miracles’ or other godly-type manifestations, but they NEVER count the negatives. God is always “trying to tell them something”, or “it’s not time for me to have/do/be X or Y”. It has been scientifically proven, in triple-blind tests that prayer doesn’t work any more than wishful thinking (read happenstance), but still they come out with such trite remarks as ‘Ah, but don’t you know, you should not test the lord your god” or other such unbelievable claptrap.
I know, I used to do it and I rather suspect you did too. I’m sure that if the theists out there really, truly examined their consciences they would know it too!
KA
LOL! I certainly know I did!
Mr B,
It seems like a very weak argument from ignorance to me. “We don’t know, therefore god did it”. I know you’re rushed, but I know you can do better than that.
KA
Oh dear, I really didn’t mean an argument from ignorance!! That would be this: 1. We have no idea where the world came from, 2. therefore some dude made it. — hmm question begging?? I didn’t mean that at all, but I can’t seem to think of a way to be more concise. 🙂
KA,
It would be interesting to know if there is any statistical evidence that prayer changed the one who prayed. Which is really the whole point of prayer. To build and sustain a relationship, not just to demand a list of “I want’s”.
Fr John Dear recounts kneeling in prayer at the Church of the Beatitudes in Israel (supposed to be on the site where Jesus taught the beatitudes) and asking if he really ought to commit his life to working for peace and immediately a group of Israeli jet fighters appeared out of the sky heading straight for him across the lake of Galilee. He sure took that as a sign and his life since then are born tremendous fruit in the movement for peace.
God Bless
There was a fascinating study done into the effects of intercessory prayer by a Christian group – Templeton Foundation I think. It was a properly conducted triple blind test – http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567
You’re right – fascinating. But more for what it misses than for what it proves.
First, it is a common idea that prayer is about asking for things, and is successful if what is asked for is received. But just because it is common doesn’t make it true. “Yes” is an answer to prayer. But so is “No”, “Not yet”, and “I have something better in mind; trust me”.
Second, who was praying? The paper in question http://www.mowatresearch.co.uk/uploaded_documents/Benson.pdf makes it clear that patients in all three groups may have been – and usually were – receiving intercessory prayer unrelated to the study. I would have thought this totally invalidates any results.
Only if that unrelated prayer was for the surgery to be a failure and god chose to answer that prayer instead.
And I do believe that it was Jesus himself who told people to pray for what they need and God would provide. Surely that is an acceptable precedent for that common idea?
More info on it here – http://web.med.harvard.edu/sites/RELEASES/html/3_31STEP.html
Maybe it would be better to test – if one really must; it’s very naive, if the Christian notion of God is accurate (as Dorothy Sayers noted, on this very topic) – by:
1. praying to something one knows is not the Christian God – such as a teddy bear
and
2. praying to a different god – such as Isis (she has quite a few adorers, apparently) or Hermes (who was a god of healing, IIRC).
I think the whole idea of testing Godas attempted is barmy – totally misconceived.
Heehee! It did occur to me that they may be praying to the wrong god.
…immediately a group of Israeli jet fighters appeared out of the sky heading straight for him across the lake of Galilee. He sure took that as a sign and his life since then are born tremendous fruit in the movement for peace.
Of course it could just be that the jets flew over, like they always do, at regular intervals. If he’d have waited a little longer, there’d probably have been another couple of jets, a few airliners and a hundred or so birds. So what?
KA
Seeker, a misinterpretation of those passages is one of the sources of the common misunderstanding, yes.
So you are saying that intercessory prayer doesn’t work? Or that it is scripturally invalid in some way?
Some Gospel verses on prayer:
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. – Mat 7:7-8
“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” Mat 18:19-20
And whatever you ask for in prayer, having faith and [really] believing, you will receive. – Matthew 21: 22
“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” – Mark 11: 22-25
———————————————————–
And some other New Testament scriptures on intercessory prayer:
Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. – James 5: 13-16
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God – Phil 4:6
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. – Eph 6:18
Those verses really bother me. OTOH, they may have been suitable for people whose understanding of the world was vastly inferior to that now available.
The alternatives seem to be:
Christianity is built on a mistake
Christ is deliberately deceitful – the “Bad God” theory
Christ was mistaken
He never said those words – they were attributed to Him
The Evangelists misreported Him
They were liars
Or: to treat those passages as valid for that culture, but not valid for (say) ours. That is my solution – that they meant something then, but are of antiquarian interest now (like most of the Bible – it’s 2000+ years out of date). The “Bible” for 2010 is the teaching of the Church – it is after all the “Word of God”, & has fully equal status with the Bible (which is long past its “sell by” date).
People are encouraged to expect a certain sort of result from a certain type of relation to God. If it’s likely not to happen, to encourage people to hope for it seems outrageous – and very often, cruel. In fact, a form of abuse; not all abuse is bodily, by a long shot.
Passages such as:
“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” Mat 18:19-20
&
And whatever you ask for in prayer, having faith and [really] believing, you will receive. – Matthew 21: 22
do not leave much room for manoeuvre. If it’s not meant – why is it said ? Men lie all the time, they are not reliable – is it wrong to expect God to be a bit more trustworthy than men ? If Jesus tells His followers to to say Yes when they mean Yes & No when they mean No – why, apparently, do His words mean something other than they seem to ?
Who knows, maybe intercessory prayer is outdated too: like St. Paul’s letter to Philemon, or his directions to women to cover their hair. The rift between the Bible & life today is so wide that the Bible is a source of more difficulties than of help 😦
“People are encouraged to expect a certain sort of result…”
should read:
“People are encouraged [b]by those passages[/b] to expect a certain sort of result…”
Nicely put Kerberos
No, I’m not saying that intercessory prayer doesn’t work. I’m saying that intercessory prayer isn’t magic. It isn’t a way of nagging God into doing something that wouldn’t be right for us. I’m saying that we – when we are children (in whatever sense) – think for prayer to ‘work’ we have to get what we ask for in the way we ask for it.
But prayer works by changing us, and slowly over time conforming us to the will of God.
The Matthew 7 passage is in the context of storing up treasures in heaven, and seeking what is necessary to our lives.
It is clear from the context, Matthew 18 and Matthew 21 are talking about the answer to prayer we can expect if we are saints. Do saints pray for things that are against the will of the Father? One wouldn’t think so.
The Mark passage context is the same as the Matthew 21 context.
People often quote the next bit of one of those Matthew quotes – the bit about the father and the bread.
Of course, you could also say, “What father, on being asked by his son for lots of gooey cake right on dinner time, would give him what he asked for.”
So for what ever reason, it’s clear that it wasnt in the ‘best interests’ of these patients to have trouble free cardiac surgery and a smooth recovery? Or possibly none of those praying for them were ‘saintly’ enough to actually have their prayers answered?
That just sounds like more justifications for why prayer doesn’t work.
Do saints pray for things that are against the will of the Father?
How does one even know what the ‘will of the Father’ is when he is notoriously silent? I would have thought that a good result from cardiac surgery for the many hundreds of patients, many of the Christian, who were prayed for would be something right up god’s alley.
To be honest, I have really moved away from the whole ‘suffering is a beautiful gift that unites us with Christ’ party line. I really do think that it is simply an a posterori justification for why good prayers aren’t answered and why horrible things happen to good or innocent people. We can’t understand it so we say, ‘Drat! Something horrible has happened and I can’t understand why God doesn’t fix it when I have prayed and prayed. Oh well, God must have a purpose and because he’s a loving god it must be for our own ultimate benefit.’
“But prayer works by changing us…” – that would be a good answer, if it were what the passage is about. The problem is, that it’s not. If Jesus had meant that – why did He not say that ? Or, why did the Evangelist not say that ?
No one is asking for magic – only for a convincing explanation of why the teaching in those passages:
if sincere, is not made good
was given, if not sincerely intended.
If what He said is not what He meant – why could He not say what He meant ? Other men do. If they do not, they are despised for their insincerity, & rightly. It is impossible to have dealings with a Saruman-like God, Who “turns words on their heads” – if God reneges on His promises, adds small print after His words have been accepted, or says one thing while meaning something quite unrelated, it is impossible to trust Him: because what He seems to mean, may or may not be what He means. No human could be relied on who behaved like that.
So your argument is in practice an argument for non-Christianity: God is impossible to trust, so why bother trying ? 😦
What is so depressing, is that in the Bible there is a great deal about how trustworthy God is, & how hopelessly untrustworthy man is. Now however, the boot is on the other foot.
“It is clear from the context, Matthew 18 and Matthew 21 are talking about the answer to prayer we can expect if we are saints.”
That if true would makes the passage absolutely useless. God won’t answer prayers unless people are Saints ? So, why should those of us who know fine well we are not Saints, & never will be (which is probably 99.999999999999991 per cent. of Christendom, if not higher) bother with intercessory prayer ? If you were right, it becomes a waste, both of time & of attention to a God Who does not hear anything pond-life like us pray.
For Jesus says nothing about these being prayers of Saints.
“Do saints pray for things that are against the will of the Father? One wouldn’t think so.”
Strawman/Aunt Sally – that’s not a solution; it leaves them comfortably off, and the proles who make up the rest of Christendom groping in the dark. The difficulty is, not that Saints pray in accord with the will of the Father, but that Jesus makes promises – they certainly *look* like promises – which are not fulfilled in reality.
What gets to me is the sheer heartlessness of saying such things, when they were not going to be fulfilled. How have we hurt Jesus, that He should toy with men like this, leading them to hope, only to dash those hopes ? That is what I meant by abuse.
I really mustn’t write more in this thread – I seem to be agreeing with Seeker 🙂
You say that like it’s a bad thing! Personally I approve when people agree with me!
But just because it is common doesn’t make it true. “Yes” is an answer to prayer. But so is “No”, “Not yet”, and “I have something better in mind; trust me”.
And this is exactly what I was talking about at lunchtime Judy. Accentuating the positives and apologizing (in a Christian apologetics way) for the negatives
KA
LOL
But just because it is accentuating the positives doesn’t mean it’s not true. 🙂
I see no contradiction, in a religion whose founder prayed that he could be spared the crucifixion, in believing in prayers of petition while concurrently believing that such prayers don’t necessarily change things the way we want.
Just because people – both inside and outside of Christianity – misunderstand this doesn’t make it wrong.
As far as the study goes, I’ve already made the point that even its own authors don’t think it proves anything.
As far as why specific intercessory prayers doesn’t get the response asked for, I have no special knowledge. Extrapolating from my own experience, I’d have to say I’ve learnt more through things goind wrong than through things going right.
I think the fact that the report doesn’t believe that it proves anything is quite telling – the Templeton Foundation is all about ‘proving’ Christianity!
KA
Exactly! Not quite the results they would have been hoping for. Plus Benson, who led the study, heads up the Mind/Body Institute which promotes the connection between spirit and body in health and well being. Credit to them that they didn’t let their personal preferences influence the data.
But perfectly predictable results, from where I sit as well as from where you sit.
Seeker:
Have you not heard the notion that, “God answers all prayers – generally with a ‘No’ ”
This thought is of great use when trying to fathom the Christian mentality.
Manus:
Interesting concept, that if there were no earthquakes, everyone would be aware God exists. Puts a lot of responsibility on earthquakes, though.
“Religion is born from the human encounter with finding ourselves in a world that we can come to explain internally, but never explain in its totality.”
Says Badger. Toad suspects it’s nothing so fancy as that. Religion exists because man found himself conscious of being flung unasked in a vicious, dangerous, ultimately fatal, world obviously the product of a ‘god’ who seemed angry with them.
That’s why some of us wear burkas and others don’t eat bacon sandwiches on Friday. Easy, innit?
*visualizes Toad in a burqua and then has to take two aspirin and lie down*
Remember JP, that I could get the same results praying to my dog, so bear that in mind when you talk about the efficacy of prayer.
KA
Maybe we should cut poor old God some slack. After all he has the words, actions and inner most thoughts of six billion people to keep track of silmultaneously, 24/7, for as long as humanity exists – not to mention any other sentient species either on earth or on other planets. And its not like he can delegate – it’s no wonder things drop through the cracks occasionally. 😉
Toad,
If we’re now in the mood for arguments in a nutshell: you’d previously suggested that earthquakes were incompatible with a loving God, who could have made things otherwise; are you really now complaining when I suggest the absence of earthquakes in an otherwise physically coherent universe might be taken as a proof of God’s existence?
Seeker,
Toad in a burqua – quite!
But as for God’s problems, well it’s his critics that really give him no rest. Show us a miracle, they say (and fair enough really, given the claims of a transcendent God intervening in human affairs: less important as you get into the God thing, as you know, but a perfectly reasonable starting requirement).
But then, given a perfectly serviceable miracle like Fatima, they say (and I quote) “Fatima would have been a lot more impressive had …” You see? No credit where it’s due, no acknowledgement that, as miracles go, it was pretty good, and that maybe there’s life in the old God yet. Not a sausage. There’s no pleasing some people.
“Had I walked out on the balcony to see “HI JENNIFER, IT’S ME, GOD!” written across the sky I would have been impressed but ultimately written it off as a practical joke. If Jesus himself materialized to shake my hand and greet me I’d write it off as a hallucination. Because, in my mind, there was a natural explanation for everything, so therefore anything supernatural was impossible.”
And my earlier point, not about atheists/conversion? Why does God remain ‘invisible’ to his faithful devotees?
I don’t know Seeker.
He has only occasionally touched me – but it has been enough that I couldn’t mistake it and couldn’t forget it.
I know someone who heard him once. And says that was enough for a lifetime.
I don’t know why others haven’t had that experience.
It’s a big ask – to go on having faith in something you can’t see, feel, or hear – just on the say so of others.
Because, in my mind, there was a natural explanation for everything, so therefore anything supernatural was impossible.”
This is pretty close to the truth, although she probably didn’t realize it. What she probably should have said was something along the lines of, “there is a natural explanation for most things and for those things for which there currently isn’t a natural explanation, the likelihood of there being a supernatural explanation is so remote as to not consider it as a credible alternative”
KA
.
..are you really now complaining when I suggest the absence of earthquakes in an otherwise physically coherent universe might be taken as a proof of God’s existence?
Certainly not complaining, Manus, but I do question the ‘proof’ notion. Assuming there had been no earthquakes on Earth so, far, all we could deduce from that would be that the prospect of earthquakes in the future was unlikely. But not impossible.
Although, of course, if there had never been any earthquakes so far, I doubt if we’d be bothering our pretty heads about them.
Same with God.
Toad – pretty heads? Maybe that burqua isn’t such a bad idea.
We’re using the earthquake as a token for unpleasant consequences of the conherent physical laws. You know this – let’s not flog a dead horse.
The question of personal experience of God as a requirement for belief is interesting. I think that to expect a personal experience is not reasonable, whereas to look for strong evidence of the transcendent within communal experience is more or less a duty. As communications improve, and evidence is better retained over time, such events may become less frequent, because fewer are needed.
Yes, miracles are vulgar. But God does appear to think they are still necessary. Just a sprinkling to satisfy genuine enquiry, but not enough to be overwhelming.
KA,
On what basis do you pre-judge the likelihood of the supernatural?
On the preponderance of evidence.
But KA, you only acknowledge certain types of evidence.
“One thing about love is that it must be a choice; if there’s coercion involved, it’s not real love. And in order to love someone — really, truly love them — you must first have the choice to ignore them.”
It’s my first time to be in this site. When I read the above paragraph, I can’t help but feel something. I can understand what the first sentence mean. But can someone please explin to me what “And in order to love someone — really, truly love them — you must first have the choice to ignore them.”????
What does that mean? “You must have the first choice to ignore them?”—I can not get what that means… please explain.
“It’s my first time to be in this site” – Greetings 🙂
“What does that mean? “You must have the first choice to ignore them?”—I can not get what that means… please explain.”
AFAICS, it means that one has to have freedom to choose between loving, and ignoring, a person: otherwise, love for the beloved is not as free as it could be, but is, to some degree, forced from the lover.
Without freedom to choose between alternatives, our actions are in some degree compelled – they are not truly, fully, free. And love has to be given freely, otherwise it is not love; for love cannot be conditioned, or compelled.
God’s Love is like that – He is totally free, & not under kind of compulsion, so He can love totally, unconditionally.
Does that help ?
“But KA, you only acknowledge certain types of evidence.”
Opines Joyful. Is she asserting Catholics are open to all kinds of evidence?
Evidently.
.
Evidence is evidence. It doesn’t really come in ‘kinds,’ whatever people say.
Toad supposes that Catholics divide evidence (as, indeed, do Muslims, 9-11 conspiracy theorists, Darwin deniers, flat-earthers, Atheists and everyone else who have no doubts) into two kinds: True evidence and false evidence.
That is to say – if it agrees with my prejudices it’s true. If not, it’s false.
Evidence must surely be testable and in the case of scientific evidence either visual or verifiable through repeatable experimentation. Theistic ‘evidence’ is based on ‘feelings’, neither testable, verifiable nor repeatable. Not really very good evidence then, is it?
KA
I disagree that theistic evidence is based solely on feelings, KA.
And your test of evidence would remove almost all evidence from a court of law, since by its nature much testimony is to do with events in the past, and is therefore not repeatable.
Types of evidence:
Anecdotal evidence
Testimonial evidence
Experimental (or scientific) evidence
Physical evidence
Evidence from personal experience
Analogical evidence
Deductions from observation
Deductions from reason
Did I miss any?
“..Evidence is evidence. It doesn’t really come in ‘kinds,’ whatever people say…”
Cheese is cheese. It doesn’t really come in ‘kinds,’ whatever people say.
Stilton = Gouda = Cheddar = Emmenthal = Goat’s Cheese ?
Surely not.
And that doesn’t include that soft runny one with a thick white rind.
http://www.ilovecheese.co.uk/Scottish.html
Anecdotal evidence – horribly unreliable and not admitted in a court of law
Testimonial evidence – tested through interrogation of suspects and witnesses to determine its validity
Experimental (or scientific) evidence – Testable, verifiable and repeatable
Physical evidence – Verifiable and ultimately testable
Evidence from personal experience – Unverifiable, untestable and unacceptable
Analogical evidence – Analogies are useful when dealing with a topic that is under-researched, therefore they fall into the category of unreliable.
Deductions from observation – See scientific evidence
Deductions from reason – evidence from logic, verifiable, testable and repeatable if the logic is correct
Unfortunately for you theistic types, your main source of evidence falls only into those categories that are not testable, verifiable or repeatable
KA
“Testimonial evidence – tested through interrogation of suspects and witnesses to determine its validity” says KA.
A slightly uncomfortable practice at the lunch table, I would have thought. 🙂
😀
.
Nobody mentioned ‘circumstantial’ evidence. Toad has been brooding on evidence and is of the opinion that circumstantial evidence is total tautology. How could any ‘type’ of evidence not relate to circumstances?
May not get much argument on that.
Re: Cheese…
Voltaire said that England was superior to France because it had lots of religions and only one kind of cheese, whereas in France the reverse was true.
Toad agrees.
THANK you KERBEROS!! 😀 It helps… 🙂