Consciencebound

Posts Tagged ‘God’

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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I saw this in Skeptic.com today. Good video by Michael Shermer on some basic principles for discerning between true and false claims.

I have been going through old archives of one of my favorite podcasts, Reasonable Doubts and came aross Episode 21, Miracles with Guest Joe Nickell. The guest Joe Nickell is a paranormal investigator and the hosts discuss with Joe his approach to dealing with claims of the miraculous. They talk about visions, weeking statues, Speaking in tongues and other phenomenon which are said to be the miraculous work of the supernatural.

Miraculous claims abound today just like they did in the ancient world. We want to believe in the supernatural and in miraculous claims. It’s mysterious and exciting and it gives us hope that this natural world is not all that there is. For many, miracles are a proof for their faith, be it in God, Jesus, Astrology, UFO’s, Ghosts or whatever else. The interesting thing is that each group who believes that a miracle is a testament to the truth of their faith or beliefs looks with skepticism on other groups claims of the same thing. And if miracles are to be a proof of anything, it would seem that they are a proof of nothing since so many conflicting belief systems seem to be derived from them.

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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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Below is a conversation that I had via email with a friend of mine from the past that i have not talked to in a long time. He had just heard that I had left the faith and I believe him to be a very sincere man. I wanted to try and point out how easy it is to be blinded by our own beliefs that we do not listen to people who are opposing us. I know that I have done this myself and am probably guilty of still doing it but I want to try and be as open as possible to what the truth is and that means truly listening to people’s questions and thinking them through. This can be a hard thing to do especially when you have Read the rest of this entry »