Consciencebound

Archive for the ‘Christianity’ Category

The doctrine of Hell in modern Christianity causes much consternation both with those who are not believers as well as with believers themselves. If you believe in a God that is loving and who cares for humans as if they are his children, it is difficult to fathom how he could send those people to an eternal torture chamber for simply not believing. It is also difficult to stomach the thought of loved ones who have died being tortured for all eternity. I remember as a believer that this caused me much anguish at various times when i was confronted with the death of someone that I knew who was not a “professing Christian”.

On the side of those who are not believers, the tension of a loving god and a fiery Hell is often given as a reason for unbelief. It makes the Christian God out to be a vindictive, unforgiving task master which is a huge turn off to many people. That is at least what the perception is.

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This is taken from James Mcgrath’s Blog and I thought it was interesting:

If we adopt a skeptical approach, we are less likely to believe things that are false, but will also probably not believe many things that are true but for which evidence is lacking. If we take a credulous approach, by believing everything, we may be certain that we have believed everything that is true, but we will inevitably believe many things that are false as well.

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Here is an 8 part youtube video series of a debate on evolution and intelligent design. I was pleasantly surprised by the exchange for the most part even though it is dated. The debate was in 1997 and so there has been a lot of development in this discussion since that time but it was still good and it makes you think. This is a 5 on 4 debate with 9 relevant and highly educated and very well prepared speakers. On the ID side you have William F. Buckley Jr, William Demski, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson and David Berlinksi and on the evolution side you have Ken Miller, Bary Lynn, Eugenie C. Scott and Michael Ruse. In my opinion, the star of the debate is clearly Ken Miller but there was still many good contributions to the discussion on both sides.

Does faith actually give us information that we cannot get with our senses? Can we gain knowledge by faith? Or is it an assumption that we make about what someone told us that God has said? Or is it something that we throw up like a white flag of surrender when we realize that we don’t have enough information but we still feel like we have to defend our belief?

In the Bible we are told:

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This is a story from back in 2004 which I did not see at the time. Someone just forwarded an article to me about it the other day. It is a story about a disgruntled Colorado man who seemed to experience some pretty unfair treatment in his small Colorado town of Granby. His frustration culminated in building a steel and concrete reinforced bull dozer and destroying 15 buildings and many cars and finally by taking his own life. A video montage of this even is below or you can read a story about it which includes a lot more details here and a discovery channel story on it here. What I would like to comment on is this man’s feeling that he was guided by God or some higher power.
I am not trying to single this man and his crazy actions out as a representative example of believers in any way. Although I can sympathize with his frustrations, his actions are hardly condoned especially because his clear intention was to also take a number of people’s lives. I also know that many believers will think that this man is crazy and that God was most certainly not guiding him to do this. What I do think that it illustrates however is the way that humans can be clearly deceived by their own circumstances and by their own beliefs to think that God is on their side and leading or speaking to them and feel that they have clear evidence for this. The man who did this, Marvin Heemeyer, made audio tapes of his plans and his thinking before the event so we have some insight into what he was thinking.

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LOSING MY RELIGION: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America — and Found Unexpected Peace.

I heard about this book while listening to the Hugh Hewitt radio program. The author is a long time friend of Hewitt’s and so Hugh had him on the show for an hour to discuss his book and to take calls about it. Although my viewpoints have changed quite a bit over the years, Hugh Hewitt is still one of the conservative talk radio guys I really like and his interview with Lobdell is one reasons why. He did a two part interview with Lobdell which can be found here and here. This interview will give you a little glimpse into Lobdell’s story and personality. Hugh is an Evangelical Christian and he has callers on his radio show call in and talk to Lobdell about his book. Although the interview drags on a bit at times, I think it is good because it shows Lobdell’s sincerity and that he was a meaningful and true Christian who truly struggles with his loss of faith.

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Interesting discussion on morality from a youtube vlogger. Most memorable quote is at the very end of the video,

The problem is not that people don’t believe in objective morality, the problem is… that they do.

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When pondering the subject of morality, the subject of God’s actions and the questionable morality of those actions often comes up. When I refer to God’s actions, I would be referring to any religion which seems to make a claim to actually knowing what God’s actions are. In my case, Christianity is the closest to home and so that is where my questions are directed.

We are told by Christians that we derive our morality from God himself. We are told that without God there would be no morality and that God gives us moral directives which come from his nature. So a certain thing is not moral just because God says it, but rather it is moral because that is part of who God is and he can do no wrong.

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I love debates. I hate debates. Long live debates!

I love debates because I love the intelligent discussion of ideas. I love finely crafted arguments and skillful rhetoric. I love to watch someone with a quick wit and a storehouse of knowledge in their head articulate their position well in the face of equally talented opposition.

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