Re: God and Religion
Gigs_98 said:
1.) I think the main question you have to ask yourself is why you believe in god (if you believe). Do you believe because your parents taught you there is a god or do you believe in god because you figured out on your own that you think there is a god. I think it doesn't make any sense to say I am a Christian simply because someone else told me to do so.
For me I believe that I can honestly say it is something of my own. Of course it would be naive to deny the influence of ones upbringing and social environment, but I've exposed my faith to rational criticism as objectively as I could, and rational arguments have never posed a threat to my faith to be honest. I've had a lot of doubts in my early teens and throughout the years sometimes some lingering doubt would rear its head, but such doubt was more existential in nature than rational. I can't remember I've ever heard some rational argument against Christianity that really made me doubt my faith and I've heard many that have strengthened it. Now, of course I don't mean to say that I've always been able to answer all criticism easily, but whenever I came across a problem I just sat down, thought about it, listened to people from opposing sides of the argument and eventually I found a more or less satisfactory answer.
Actually, through the years I've only become more orthodox in my faith. I've been raised in a pretty liberal Protestant household and throughout my youth most of my friends were irreligious, so for me it actually feels like making my own choice, thinking for myself and not going with the flow, when I committed myself to a more orthodox form of Christianity.
Gigs_98 said:
2.) Seriously, how likely is it that you choose the right religion. There have been hundreds of religions in the history of humanity and all of them have any prophets who say they talked with an angel or anything like that which should prove their religion is the right one.
This one has never bothered me in the least to be honest. There have been hundreds of different views about just about anything in the history of humanity and all of these views have their arguments to support them, doesn't mean you shouldn't think your views are correct.
Also, sometimes I wonder what the term religion even means. Why is Christianity put in the same group as ancient Greek paganism and Hinduism in the religion group, whereas (neo-)Platonism is considered a philosophy, despite having clear beliefs about the metaphysical and having some religious tendencies? Ancient Christian thinkers when they tried to reach the classical world appealed to philosophy not to the religions of that day, feeling much more affinity with Plato, Aristotle and especially Stoic philosophers, than with paganism. They called their beliefs the 'true philosophy' not so much the 'true religion'. Throughout its history Christianity has always sought to engage itself with contemporary philosophies, not so much with other religions. I'm not saying Christianity is not a religion or that Platonism is not a philosophy, I'm just wondering why Christianity is considered just another one of the hundreds of religions, while its beliefs are really completely different in nature from all those hundreds of pagan beliefs out there? And you know, I'm not just trying to arbitrarily create a distance between Christianity and all those pagan religions out there, you can ask the same for other 'religions'. Why, for instance, is Buddhism generally considered a religion despite not having any gods?
Gigs_98 said:
3.) Many religions had been invented because the humans tried to explain something to themselves thy didn't understand. Now we live in a modern time when many things of different religions are proved to be false. Its impossible that mary was a virgin and we know that the earth wasn't made in seven days, thats a fact. So when we all know that most things written in the bible which are also already explored by scientists are false why should we believe everything else which hasn't been explored yet.
How do we even know that religion came about in that way? I mean, in some myths it's pretty obvious they're trying to explain something, but it's not like we ever found some ancient document saying 'hey today I invented religion such and so in order that this and that might be explained'.
Furthermore, it seems to me that the virgin birth isn't so much your problem, but miracles in general. Unless there is something that puts the virgin birth apart from other miracles as being extra problematic rationally, but I don't see that there is any. And I don't see a rational problem with miracles. If God exists and if He has created the world, it doesn't seem improbable to me that He might intervene somehow in this world if He wants to. Science describes the world as if it were a closed system. That's absolutely fine and it should, for methodological reasons. But science, as far as I know, doesn't claim and certainly doesn't prove somehow that the universe that we know is in fact a closed system. Thus for me there is plenty of room rationally to accept science and to accept at least the possibility that an entity from outside of this universe (such as God) can influence something in this universe and thus cause something that would appear miraculous to us.
Gigs_98 said:
4.) If there is a god why should everything in the world be so unpredictable. It doesn't make any sense why there was an earthquake in nepal this year and why there was the big tsunami in 2004. If there would be someone above us who handles the whole universe such things could be explained logical and moreover (and thats something I just read in this thread and I absolutely have to agree) why on earth should a warm hearted god let people all over the world suffer?
I agree that the occurrence of such things will probably have a logical explanation if God exists. I don't see why it should necessarily be the case that we would know this logical reason however. To be honest, that's about all I have to say about this. The Bible provides a lot of instances where some kind of suffering and evil is explained somehow, but it doesn't give any great absolute general answer to 'the problem of evil', in fact, it doesn't even ask the question. There are instances where suffering is indeed explained as a punishment for sin or the result of sin, there are instances where it is some kind of test, or the work of the devil, or it's the suffering that humans inflict upon each other in their free will, or something else still. Often more than one of those elements play a role. But all of these are clearly particular and not meant to be some sort of grand universal explanation for suffering in general. Really, as far as I'm concerned, the world is far too complex and diverse for those types of easy answers.
It's clear that the problem of evil isn't a kind of logical proof that God doesn't exist in my opinion. I repeat myself; it's clear that there is a logical possibility that a omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God has a good reason for creating the world the way He created it. But it isn't very clear that we should somehow know that good reason. When we are confronted with suffering however, we do want an answer. And such answers as are available to us are usually particular, not universal. I don't see that there should necessarily even be one big sweeping universal answer to all the suffering under the sun. Different instances of suffering have different explanations as far as I can see and I don't think it's awfully realistic to expect anybody except God to know the explanations for each particular case of suffering.