Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Faith, hope and love

In the ongoing discussion between "new atheists" and "intelligent design theory" I come to the position of reflecting on my own position.

It has always appeared to me that the attempt by anyone who "believes" to try to support their belief by "fact", be that discovering the historic Christ or intelligen desgn, belittles their faith. The historic "fact" doesn't help the need to find bits to ignore - the hstoric Christ, for example, never spoke against slavery. And intelligent design fails both because of Bertrand Russells response to Parry (??) on the "watchmaker" argument of who made the watch? If the desin needs a maker, then the maker needs a maker. The "odds" of the universe turnng out just like it is are not all these astronomcal numbrs that some design theorists quote, but 1. The odds of getting six heads in a row at a coin toss before hand are 1 in two to the power of six. But after I've tossed six heads they are 1.

The question on the existence of the spiritual is one of faith, and it is one of faith because it IS unknowable.

Given the choice between a rational world and a world with a "spiritual intelligence" the difference is that in the latter there is hope.

And finally there is love. The reason to adopt the Christian faith is that, compaed to all others, it works. And it works by preaching a message of lve.

Faith, hope and love - that is it!

1 comment:

Vic N said...

I am currently studying the 30 years war.

The history of Christianity, which reaches such depths of depravity and hate that even I am shocked, doesn't have much to say or teach us about love.

I took secular humanism to begin the arduous process of civilising religion, of teaching it to respect human values. The 3 monotheisms have a huge moral problem right in their core. The story of Abraham and Isaac, the founding moral myth, is rotten to the core; memorably commented on by Alan Dershowitz, amongst others.

People love, because love is simply the best thing. I don't see what religion has to do with it. There have been good - great - Christians....but were they good BECAUSE they were Christians? I doubt it. I suspect they were good...because some - most- people are actually just good.

Was Luther a "christian"? Was St Ignatius de Loyola? Gustavus Adolphus? Charles V? Philip 2?