Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, raised eyebrows several days ago by admitting that the Paris attacks had caused him to doubt God’s presence:
Interviewer:
Do you ever doubt?
Welby:
Oh, gosh, yes. Yes!
Interviewer:
Does something like this happening ever put a chink in your armour?
Welby:
Saturday morning I was out, and as I was walking I was praying and saying “God, why is this happening? Where are you in all this?” and then engaging and talking to God. Yes, I doubt.
This isn’t Welby’s first spasm of public doubt. In 2014, he said:
The other day I was praying over something as I was running and I ended up saying to God: ‘Look, this is all very well but isn’t it about time you did something – if you’re there’ – which is probably not what the Archbishop of Canterbury should say.
In both cases he went on to quote the Psalms to paper over his doubts, and this time around he issued the following disclaimer a couple of days after his interview:
But that is not the same as a settled belief that God does not exist, or even any serious questioning about his reality. It’s a moment of protest and arguing…
So, for the record, I do believe in God, and that Jesus Christ is God himself, and I can say every word of the Creed without ever crossing my fingers once.
But to merely quote the Psalms and recite the Creed is no argument against the problem of evil, and surely Welby must recognize that. I think his continual doubts are a hopeful sign. If it were customary for the Archbishop of Canterbury to take on a name as the Pope, the Archbishop of Rome, does, then Welby’s chosen name might very well be “Thomas”.
Will he be the first atheist Archbishop of Canterbury?
Or the “character-building defense”. I’m still waiting for Sal to explain why he accepts that suffering in this life could be a character-building exercise when suffering is distributed so arbitrarily and inconsistently. Don’t all humans need some character-building?
Of course and omni-god would not actually require or care about character-building anyway, so it’s rather moot.
I would think that after the first trillion years or so in the afterlife, the percentage spent in the mortal coil would dwindle to near zero. Particularly if one never made it out of pre-school.
There is simply nothing that exists in our world that God does not have a good moral reason to allow.
problem solved.
X might be immoral in isolation but it is not immoral when viewed from the big picture perspective. You simply have no way of knowing what the context of X is in any meaningful way.
The “problem” arises when you who have lived a limited existence for a few decades on a remote corner of a small planet in an out of the way solar system presume to have all the facts necessary to pass judgement on God.
you are like bacteria who think the doctor evil for his use of life saving antibiotics with no knowledge of what is going on outside the limits of it’s puny bacteria perspective.
peace
Robin,
And how do you know this?
To assume that there is an epistemic possibility that God does not exist is to assume he does not exist.
God’s existence is necessary for any knowledge whatsoever. The Christian God is epistemically necessarily.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Can you envision anything that will change your mind on this topic?
Sure
all that would need to happen is that you would provide a solid basis for knowledge that did not include the Christian God.
IOW tell me how you know
Can you envision anything that will change your mind about your supposed lack of knowledge of God’s existence ?
peace
We’ve done that again and again. If we repeat it another thousand times will it finally penetrate your God-bot defenses?
fifth,
You don’t understand what ‘epistemic possibility’ means. Will you lower the God-bot defenses so that I can explain it to you?
fifthmonarchyman,
Okay. Provide an operational definition for “the Christian God” and some objective, empirical evidence that such an entity actually exists and I’ll take a shot at it.
I’m not interested in discussing fictional beings.
Sorry for the delay in responding. Please accept my apologies. I didn’t see your question until just now.
Simple answer, I feel deep down God loves me more than the people He is sending to hell. There is a certain love that is proceeds from gratitude….
I can’t comprehend His rage against humanity. Neither could Moses:
I suppose this is akin to the girl the Bad Boy loves. His love means something to her because he’s nasty to lots of other people but finds her special. The church feels special because God will mete out wrath to those outside Jesus in the final judgement.
The pain we see today is a picture of what God is capable of inflicting (like the Wasp “worms” feasting on a Caterpiallr which Darwin could not comprehend).
If there is an Intelligent Designer of life, seems reasonable to me, the suffering of humanity is also a product of design, especially the intelligently designed parasites and plagues. Infectious diseases (and some with bacterial flagellum like certain killer E. Coli strains) are intelligently designed.
God loves those who are in Jesus, not because of who they are but because of Jesus. God’ will be pretty horrible and nasty to those outside Jesus on Judgement day.
The horrible things that happened to the Jews and to humanity were meant to be lessons and warnings. I don’t like seeing children suffering juvenile cancers and birth defects. Heart wrenching. That is a picture of God’s wrath. Jeremiah’s Lamentations echo my grief for the human condition.
Sometimes I get discouraged and occasionally resentful of how God treats us here on Earth, but the hope of the next life and being free of sorrows one day is enough to make me love God.
Does it instill lasting resentment that God has prepared a place like hell? I am more deserving than most to go to hell, so in many ways I’m just grateful Jesus helped me believe in Him and thus have the gift of God’s grace. So if I were to be resentful of God’s justice, I should also be angry He spared me ahead of those more deserving of His grace. As Bill Dembski said, the greater mystery is not God’s wrath but rather His grace to the undeserving.
So I don’t have lasting resentment for what is happening on Earth and what will happen, just occasional resentment.
If God is the intelligent designer of infectious diseases, He is to be feared. How can we love someone so cruel to humanity? Well, He won’t be ultimately cruel to the remnant of humanity that are in Jesus.
I do feel sadness for many who are outside Jesus. Maybe at some level why I love God I cannot explain. It would be like me trying to explain why I love certain kinds of music which other people loathe.
As far as understanding God’s wrath, when I saw a cockroach, I exterminated it. Didn’t think much of the suffering I was inflicting on it or its family. I suppose in the cockroaches scheme of things, what I did was unjust. I suppose our view of God punishing humanity is like cockroaches resenting humans attempting to exterminate them. In the cockroach economy it seems pretty evil, but it’s not the cockroaches feelings that count, it’s ours. The way we exterminate bugs for our own desire to make our world look more beautiful is probably like God exterminating humanity that had gotten tied to Satan after the fall from Eden.
It’s almost nothing to him to squish us:
“The people below seem like grasshoppers to him! ” Isa 40:22
But if an undesirable person is absorbed into Jesus, God loves him because of Jesus and despite himself.
Btw, I did respond to your atonement question here. I even incorporated your view of consciousness a little bit:
Only if you actually tell me how you can know stuff with out truth. To claim that Knowledge is possible in the absence of truth is simply absurd.
God is truth
peace
What criteria did you use to determine that objective empirical evidence is the way to determine truth?
Do you have objective empirical evidence for that contention? If so please present it
peace
how do you know this?
peace
stcordova,
Dude, I say this with all sincerity and compassion, you have ISSUES.
If I believed that the entity you believe exists existed, I’d spend a lot more time trying to figure out how to kill it than I would worshipping it.
fifthmonarchyman,
Please stop trying to avoid supporting your claim. Provide a definition for this entity you claim exists and some evidence for it or stop using it in your arguments.
Unlike others in the ID community, my belief in ID has induced a great deal of sorrow. It looks to me God is the creator of the many parasites that afflict us and genetic deterioration and death and birth defects.
That conclusion is hard to run away from if one accepts ID.
Thank you for your sympathies.
LoL!
According to Patrick, atheism has no entailments. His demands for an operational definition of God have nothing to do with his atheism. His demands amount to mental masturbation.
We’re still waiting for your argument. Perhaps you should create an OP. That way we won’t miss it. Can we at least hope that it will consist of something more intellectually stimulating than the claim that God cannot possibly know that He is God?
Indeed.
It’s comforting, in some small way, to know that you don’t think Noah is a fictional being.
You believe this entity exists. Your attempts to murder him testify.
Mung,
My claim was that God can’t be absolutely certain that he is God.
Speaking of which, you claim to have found “major holes” in my argument. I’m interested in hearing what they are, and I’ll bet others would enjoy that too.
keiths:
Sal:
It’s like loving a mob boss who’s whacking and torturing people right and left, and feeling special because he’s not whacking you. Yet.
keiths:
fifth:
You revealed it to me:
Mung,
I’m just trying to figure out what theists are on about when they talk about gods. So far it appears that none of them know either.
Mung,
You might want to reread what I wrote, particularly the first word: *IF*
How do you know that your interpretation of what I wrote is the correct one?
peace
fifth,
Do you want to know what “epistemic possibility” means, or are you content to continue misusing the term?
Mung,
How about pointing out those “major holes” in my argument?
Your argument is that God can know that He is God but not with absolute certainty?
You may as well claim that God can’t know He is God.
You’re the one who said you found “major holes” in the argument.
Let’s hear ’em.
keiths, if you failed to address the arguments when they were first presented to you I have no reason to think you will address them when presented with them a second time. You are as capable as walto or I of going back to the original thread and deal with the objections.
Mung,
Be brave and tell us what these alleged “major holes” are.
Feel free to cut and paste from your earlier comments if you’d like.
Even when the message is clearly given, keiths still manages to pretend like it’s just so much noise.
Both walto and I raised objections which you never dealt with. You don’t now get to pretend like you didn’t see them. I certainly have no obligation to repeat the futility of the past. You didn’t deal with them then, I have no reason to think you will deal with them now.
Fortunately for you, posts are not deleted here at TSZ. You can go back to the relevant thread and take up the argument that you abandoned there.
Mung,
You’re afraid even to copy-and-paste these brilliant objections of yours? Or link to a specific comment or two?
Be brave, Mung.
I want us to have this debate. You’re running away from it.
Still waiting, Mung.
Suck it, keiths.
Not exactly. A mob boss is human, and usually not better than the people he whacks. God is a superior being. Also mob bosses whack the innocent relative to the mob boss.
Now, who in the universe is the best judge of good, humans or God? I accept in his eyes, without Jesus, humanity is the offspring of the devil after Adam’s sin. Sure, we love and admire other humans. I suppose even rats admire other rats.
If we are the devil’s children, then like rats, in the scheme of things we were headed for extermination. Its understandable most humans think they have a better moral compass for what is right and wrong because we all don’t look that bad in the way we treat each other compared to how much evil God pours out on humanity.
But in sum, it’s not quite the scenario you laid out. You obviously feel we’re not worthy of as much damnation as God is ordaining. I feel the same way most days at a certain level. I don’t beat puppies simply for enjoying the sense of power, so I can be that bad right? But I’m not the ultimate judge am I?
God is the source of all good things in life. I accept he can make my life better in the next life, therefore easy to look to him for refuge and hope. The bad in my life I accept as something that is part of making me appreciate the good world to come.
True I feel special, very special in God’s eyes. Not because I deserve it, but because I believe I found grace through Jesus Christ.
I can’t prove that I won’t get destroyed by God, but really, I have no where else to turn anyway for hope, so I accept it on faith.
There is surely no salvation in evolutionary theory, so as much as you criticize my viewpoint, it doesn’t seem you have a better deal for me than what I think the Christian God offers. I take my chances on the Christian God being true.
If I’m wrong, a trillion years from now you won’t even be around a to gloat you were right.
stcordova,
Isn’t it possible that you’re backing the wrong horse?
Better to reign, etc.
petrushka,
I’m just saying that the book Sal is reading only tells one side of the story. Google “Good Guy Lucifer” and some interesting alternative points of view come up.