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11 Where am I nowWhen I started to write this document to clarify and order my thoughts I would not have been certain of where I stood. I would have viewed myself as a doubter. I began to write down my difficulties and my search for a way to retain my faith in God while having a rational relationship to science and the real world around me. I reasoned that there must be a way to do this as my Christian faith had to be relevant to real life and that meant the whole of life not just a reserved part of it. As this journey developed I found that my doubts increased and latterly I would have classed myself as tending to agnostic Having composed this and done the research and review to get here I cannot say I doubt I am convinced that there is no god. I am an atheist. Michael Shermer in a recent article describing why smart people believe weird things say that most of us do not review our beliefs. We are happy to go along with the views of our peer group, received wisdom, and worst of all for the smart they are adept at justifying the beliefs they have. In my case I was confronted to review my beliefs as I found myself confronted with the irrationalities of creationism. Creationism was the trigger that made me need to know on what rational basis my faith could stand. My search was for a way to reconcile an old universe with an Old Testament. The Old Universe is required to square with the physical evidence, not just in Astronomy but also geology. A young earth is required to fit the doctrine of the origin of sin with the origin of man in Adam. So having looked but found no way to reconcile the two positions rationalism started to win. This resulted in other questions – or maybe some of these were happening in parallel. Like: How do I know that God answers prayer when it can be “yes”, “no” or “maybe”? Carl Sagan had an illustration. He describes someone who says they have a dragon in their garage. You ask to see it. They say it is an invisible dragon. So you ask does he breath fire. Yes, but it is fire without light. OK you say we could detect the infrared from the heat of the fire. No they say there is no heat either. What if we sprinkle flour and we can see the footprints? No he doesn’t leave footprints. So as you exhaust the possible means of detection you start to realise there is no dragon. It may be real to your friend but only as a figment of his imagination. So it seems to be with the Christian arguments for why you cannot see evidence of God today in miracles or clear answers to prayer or prophecy. Depending on the denomination there is either a belief that these things only lasted to the end of the apostolic era, or there is a faith frenzy of willing oneself to believe and self-delusion. I have been in both types of church and participated in these views and eventually decided neither is true. As I looked further and saw the discrepancies and the injustices perpetrated in God’s name I wondered how do you know when a revelation is from God or not? The fact that the Biblical actors did not uphold biblical standards of consistency and the Bible has serious flaws imply that the rest is just a house of cards that no one has yet blown on. I know to some this all may be construed as cynical but I hope that this will be seen as the result of genuine scepticism. The difference as I see it is that cynicism is an unthinking rejection but scepticism results in a true consideration of the facts and may agree or disagree with the accepted belief. This should not be construed as meaning I think Christianity is the greatest evil on the planet. I believe that in a past age it has been a great influence for good and opened the way for the modern world. However its openness held the seeds of its own destruction, as it allowed critical thought. Given a time when one religion or another would have had dominance in Europe Christianity was by far the preferable choice. Nevertheless it is not perfect, and also not true. Each generation has had its own version of Christian living and has interpreted the Bible into its own image. This applies as much to the reformed church as the Catholic. If anything even more so for the reformed churches since the stifling effect of tradition was removed. (Though tradition has rapidly been reinvented in more local and less formalised ways.) Recently in a meeting with a missionary couple who my wife and I have supported for a number of years I was reminded of why I found Christianity so attractive and why I have put so much effort into retaining my faith. The idea of being involved with God in the lives of people, seeing them transformed, growing and changing is so compulsive that it almost kept me. It is a strong motivator. Steve Jobs recruited John Scully to be CEO of Apple, from Pepsico, by just such an argument. Jobs asked him if he wanted to sell fizzy drinks or make a difference in peoples lives. Scully rose to the challenge but unfortunately it did not make Apple any more successful. The vision is great it just has to overcome reality. Not that some aren’t changed and helped, most converts to a new religion/philosophy experience change but that does not make it true. In fact I am not sure that Christianity held any truths as such but was interpreted by others and myself to the culture we wanted. Norman Hansen October 2002 |