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?
Last year, I wrote:
In that same thread, Paul Amrhein wrote:
I wish Welby and other omnitheists would adopt the same honest attitude and admit the severity of the problem of evil.
Of course Welby admits the severity of “the problem of evil”. The reason there even IS a “problem of evil” is because of omnitheism. It’s not a problem for anyone else.
Lizzie,
He doesn’t.
He brushes it off with pablum like the following:
And regarding the question he posed to God: “Where are you in all of this?”
None of that even comes close to addressing the problem of evil.
keiths,
Doubt presupposes truth and truth presupposes God. This is because in order to doubt anything requires that truth does actually exist, and for truth to exist requires God. How do you get truth without God? You don’t get truth without God – you just get absurdity.
peace
The only “problem of evil” is how we deal with it. This is all a test to see if we are worthy. If God was always preventing bad things and always helping people that would ruin the test.
Not that any of you will understand that…
The only way to say to construct the dilemma in the problem of evil is to assume that there is not an all-powerful and all-good God to begin with. For, if an omnibenevolent, omnipotent being exists, then to say that God does not want to prevent evil seems false; while to say that God is incapable of preventing evil is also false.
Thus, there would have to be a third option: perhaps God’s reasons for allowing evil are inscrutable.
Only if one assumes that there is no God can one make sense of the problem of evil to begin with.
peace
So if I doubt unicorns that means unicorn really exist? Wow.
No it means that you presuppose that truth exists,
God is Truth therefore if you doubt (anything) it necessarily follows that God exists,
simple huh
peace
Odd. I’m a nonbeliever but see no paricular problem with the concept of a god that allows pain.
I do get annoyed with people who think god twiddles with things for the benefit of some and not others. But that’s a problem with people.
I guess that explains the problem keiths has with the problem of evil. But I’ll be sure to remember this next time someone here brings it up.
From the OP:
And somehow you manage to turn this into the claim that he doubts God’s existence?
What are the entailnents of God, Mung? Omni…..?
keiths can answer for himself, but I’m pretty sure you’re mis-reading keiths here.
I don’t see keiths claiming here that Archbishop does doubt god’s existence – although keiths says that Archbishop should doubt and should tell his flock so.
Maybe I’m the one mis-reading.
But then, I’m biased towards doubting the utility of any god who, like the christian god, is never present in our world in any positive way. If it’s still “existent” in some ineffable sense, whoopdeedoo. Mere existence is worthless characteristic for a god.
Hooray for all christians who still choose to believe in their insensible inactive could-prevent-all-sorrow-as-it-does-in-heaven but still-allows-evil-on-earth god. Hooray for you all spitting on the suffering of your fellow humans while smugly satisfied that you’ve got your reward stored up in heaven because you … well … whatever it is you tell yourself to excuse both your credulous faith and your anti-human feelings.
At least the Archbishop is approaching something like human feeling in his recent statements. Now, if only he could turn his doubts into something positive …
Absentee landlord?
How would you distinguish the absence of presence from the absence of existence? Within Christian theology?
Regarding eyebrow-raising, this is hardly a momentous event in the life of the Anglican Church in UK. Agnosticism has always been a strong undercurrent. It’s where I learnt mine.
I don’t really care whether I can distinguish them to your satisfaction. But I know there’s a place for it both within Judaism and within Christianity.
For example:
About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
Now if I were keiths I could argue this means that even Jesus had doubts about whether God existed and therefore Christians should also doubt God’s existence.
Many if not most Christians, including me, would disagree with you over the question of whether the presence of God in their life is not a presence in our world in a positive way.
Can’t argue with that.
Live and let live, says I!
I agree.
I’m not actually sure that there’s a point to the thread. Doubt is common and normal for people of faith. If there were never any doubt, there would not be any need for faith.
Exactly.
Patrick,
I love ‘Jesus and Mo’.
fifth:
That’s the Kool-Aid talking.
Joe/Virgil/Frankie:
An omniGod wouldn’t need to test us. He would already know whether or not we were worthy.
petrushka:
The problem arises for omniGods. Relax the omnis and the problem goes away. Your God might be evil, or in a bad mood, or unable to prevent evil.
Mung:
It’s ‘lama’, not ‘lema’.
fifth:
Not at all. We needn’t prematurely assume that God does or doesn’t exist.
The question is how well the omniGod hypothesis fits the evidence. The answer is “poorly”. Alternative hypotheses fit the evidence much better, so the omniGod hypothesis should be rejected.
peas
Mung:
No. Think, Mung.
The second quote from 2014 is the one that expresses doubt about God’s existence:
Also, remember that there’s more than one way for the Christian God to fail to exist. One is if God doesn’t exist; the other is if God exists, but isn’t the Christian God.
The problem of evil is a huge problem for anyone believing in the Christian God or any other omniGod.
It’s why you’re afraid of this question.
I have no doubt that Jesus, being God, would have been banned from UD for violation of non-contradiction. It’s at least a fender-bender, if not a head on high speed collision.
Neil,
Many if not most Christians claim that their beliefs are rational and based on evidence.
It isn’t so. If they were following the evidence they would conclude that God doesn’t exist, or isn’t omnipotent, or isn’t perfectly good.
“God’s ways are mysterious” isn’t a reason to believe. It’s a (lame) excuse for continuing to believe despite the evidence.
🙂 🙂
You’re certain of that are you? Did you watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ?
http://biblehub.com/multi/matthew/27-46.htm
http://biblehub.com/lexicon/matthew/27-46.htm
btw, I don’t see an argument in the OP.
And we’re all people of faith. So we all have doubt. Especially keiths, who can’t be certain of anything.
The Christian God is by definition a necessary being
Presuming that it’s possible that the Christian God does not exist is the same thing as presuming that he does not exist.
What evidence? The presence of evil is not evidence at all unless you presume objective morality and therefore existence of the Christian God.
long story short.
The problem of evil is predicated on presuming that the Christian God exists and does not exists at the same time and in the same respect.
As such it is a clear violation of the law of noncontridiction and leads to absurdity.
mockery is not argument.
peace
That’s the party line that they get from their apologists.
It’s been the party line from the beginning of Christianity. But you’re free to ignore the history.
Only the distorted Santa Claus version of God. The God of the Bible is incredibly cruel. Consider the intelligently designed cruelty:
However, one can imagine it if God is cruel!
Cruelty isn’t evidence against intelligent design, it can actually be evidence for it.
Example: torture chambers.
Jesus said, “the worm will never die” in hell. He’s left pictures in nature of (such as the wasp larvae) of the intelligently designed cruelty that has been prepared.
Merry Christmas.
And someone wants to make Sal an admin? Let it be so. I can’t think of a more fitting judgment.
Sal can be right twice in one day.
If only the muslim world would become secularized, the world would be a better place. Atheism and Agnosticism are the next best thing to Christianity in view of the Muslim sharia terror culture.
Secularism is not the same thing as atheism or agnosticism.
keiths:
Sal:
Yes, but most Christians find (dubious) ways to rationalize the atrocities of the Bible and to reconcile them with God’s supposed omnibenevolence.
I’m glad that you don’t buy into the omnibenevolence nonsense, but it does raise a question: why love and worship an “incredibly cruel” God? Is it simply that you feel that sucking up to the most powerful guy on the block, no matter how repugnant he is, is your route to the best payoff?
You mean like Jesus Christ, crucified?
The Crucified God
Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity
You mean like this:
“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”
keiths:
Mung:
No. That just makes the problem worse for Christians, who have to explain why their supposedly omnibenevolent God demanded that his own Son be tortured to death before he would forgive the creatures he was otherwise determined to punish forever.
Sal, I’m still interested in hearing your answer to this:
fifth,
Simply declaring him a “necessary being” doesn’t poof him into existence. You need to show that he’s a necessary being. If Anselm couldn’t pull it off, I doubt that you’ll be able to either.
No. We’re talking about epistemic possibility here.
No. The problem of evil is a problem for any theist who believes in an omniGod who is perfectly good with respect to some particular standard, whether objective or subjective, that clashes with the abundance of evil in the world, where evil is defined with respect to that same standard.
In other words:
1) If God considers X to be immoral, according to you; and
2) X exists in the world; and
3) God is omnipotent and perfectly capable of eliminating X if he wants to; then
4) you need to explain why the world still contains X.
Why does God stand by and do nothing when dogs are eating babies’ heads, for instance?
(This is one of the questions that has Mung spooked, by the way.)
5. Explain why heaven does not.
petrushka,
Good point. That’s one of the reasons the “free will defense” doesn’t work.
6. Assuming stillborn fetuses and children who die in infancy go to heaven, what is the value of life?
7. Assuming they do not go to heaven, WTF?