The Good Doctor was writing long before the latest archeological discoveries. When he wrote it there was no independent evidence confirming or refuting the Biblical version - now there is. He was also being very careful in that book to not offend anyone. I suspect that if he were alive today and revising it he would use, or at least mention, the latest evidence.
I think we do have access to it. JEsus said the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth.I find it comforting and encourageing that no scholar theologian or religous leader has any more access to it than any one else. The truth takes some effort and practice. In the day to day and moment to moment how are we treating each other? When the opportunuity comes for me to help someone with a kind word of ny going out of my way a little what do I choose? I’ve been told I’m too skeptical in my beliefs but I agree with the person who posted that God wants us to question and use our minds to reason things out. There’s a passage in the Bible that says. “Try the spirits to see if they are of God.” Another that says “Work out your salvation” We are individually responsible for our relationship with God and I think some skepticism is a good thing. If we hand over our faith to any denomination or religous leader then we let ourselves down.
How could it possibly not?
What sceptic would suspend disbelief in order to swallow whole, irrationalities such as the virgin birth, the trinity, the resurrection, etc.?
Pi is irrational, but I like swallowing it. 
(Maybe not whole, though.)
Skepticism has become a facet of my faith. When someone tells me what he knows of the nature of God, I am skeptical. It doesn’t make me doubt God, or my faith. It makes me doubt human ability to communicate information on the nature of God. The birth of my real faith was based on a miracle, an act of the Lord, which overcame my skepticism. It was not a miracle that gave me evidence to overcome your skepticism.
I got a message from God. I didn’t get a message for you. The message was that He loves me, and He wants and expects me to love Him, and you. There were no theological explanations involved. There were no scriptural references. I was not informed of any authority to speak on His behalf. I was not informed on the nature of your sins, or of sin in general. It was not about sin; it was entirely about Divine Love.
When I met the Lord, I did not ask for proof of identity. I didn’t even look at Him. I didn’t think of it at the time. Later, I realized that when you experience the presence of the Lord of Creation, you don’t card Him. In that realm of human experience, skepticism becomes irrelevant. That doesn’t make skepticism irrelevant in other areas, nor does it make faith relevant in engineering or biology. It certainly doesn’t prove my faith to anyone but me, and Him.
In fact, it seems to me that the only thing about my faith that is relevant even in social, political or interpersonal matters is love. If it serves to engender love in other people, or me then it is in accord with my faith in the Lord. If it engenders hate, or even denies love, then it is opposed to my faith in the Lord, even if it comes from religion, or from me. I am less and less associated with religion, as time goes on.
I have made intellectual progress, on the subject of God’s nature. But I hesitate to expound upon that, since cleverness with words is one of my greatest gifts. That is power, and it is my power. God is not within my power, and when it comes to speaking about Him, I try very hard to limit myself to the thing I am sure of. God loves you. If you cannot believe that He is, then believe that love is. Make love your heart’s desire. I will do that, as well, and pray that we overcome hatred. Even if I am wrong, and there is no God, there can still be love, and that will be good. The hardest boiled skeptic in the world cannot deny that to us. We shall love, because love is good. God will know our hearts.
Tris
" It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching." ~ Saint Francis Of Assisi ~
I was raised Christian, Episcopalian to be specific. I had questions about things that confused me, couldn’t get answers from others, so I started researching the questions for myself.
It took me more than twenty years, but what I found, in a nutshell, was that organized religions were all a scam. So what started out as a reinforcement of faith turned first into skepticism, and then into agnosticm. I guess one can say that my skepticism definitely affected my beliefs.
All organized religions? Every single one? A scam? As in a deliberate attempt to bilk or otherwise deceive the populace?
That strikes me as a rather extraordinary claim. Can you please describe the process by which you arrived at this remarkable conclusion?
I was raised with no faith whatsoever (mother: ex-Mormon; father: ex-Christian Scientist) outside of what I was exposed to when I visited the grandparents.
In high school, during a personal crisis, I became a born-again Christian. Or I thought I had, at first. I found many of the things Jesus espoused in the New Testament to be excellent advice. It also didn’t hurt that I felt more connected to mainstream society by embracing religion. I thought that the bits about miracles and resurrection were charming fantasy that I didn’t need to pay any heed to (my Zondervan bible even had a footnote saying that the earliest manuscripts of many gospels did not include the resurrection story.)
I was politely informed by my religious friends that what I regarded as fantasy was in fact the essential stuff. If I really wanted to embrace this, I HAD to accept the resurrection as fact, and believe that Jesus’ suffering was on my behalf. And I tried to, believe me. I really wanted to know what was at the root of this thing that had fascinated me from afar. But the questions never stopped surging in my brain. I eventually found that to accept the religion as those who lived it were accepting it, I had to turn off more and more portions of my mind to what I considered rational thought, which made me very unhappy. After two years, I realized I simply didn’t believe any of it, and walked away. I haven’t regretted the decision in twenty years. Skepticism annihilated my faith, for my greater good in the end.
New ways of thinking come into our lives and change us. If the revelation is huge, and we are not used to thinking on that level, we tend to ascribe them to some higher power. Elvis taught people they could be free in their enjoyment of music. People follow in his footsteps and swear they have seen him walking the earth. How is that so different from some bereaved fishermen thinking their teacher has come back to them? 500 years from now there will be a church of Elvis that believes it is the one true faith. They will be no more right or wrong than the Christians are now, or any other belief system was in its time.
One of the reasons Darwin’s ideas are still so controversial is that, in the end, we are creatures of evidence. Darwin showed that such mechanisms existed in nature where the complexity and variety and beauty of all creation could have, given enough time, arisen randomly. That complexity and variety and beauty were what many pointed to as evidence of God’s benevolence to the world. Why did they need evidence, if faith does not require it? Because we are humans, and humans just seem to need evidence.
In my own experience, the demand to believe without convincing evidence threatened my mental destruction. My experience with people has taught me that no one believes anything without something they regard as evidence, however weak. Faith, then, is simply the willingness to deny evidence contradictory of one’s beliefs.
No offense, but I wonder why when God talks to people he only says stuff about Love (which while lovely is not exactly convincing) and nothing about a cure for AIDS or if P =NP.
Carl Sagan noted that those who spoke to space aliens always got unverifiable weird stuff. He suggested a few easily checkable things. Now George Adamski’s aliens told him all about Venus. All wrong, of course, but at least he put something checkable out there.
I could have written that post myself. Well, except that I quit going to church some time ago. Skepticism and a lot of reading collapsed my faith completely in college.
I do still like the singing, though. And I agree that most fundamentalists are also fundamentally decent people. Just misguided.
(By the way, there are quite a few lapsed CoC’ers patrolling these boards.)
I don’t know. He didn’t explain that, or anything else, to me. It didn’t occur to me at the time to submit a list of questions to Him. However, He did give us brains. Perhaps we could try to figure it out on our own.
Oh, I see. You were expecting me to show evidence. Sorry. I am not the new prophet. I think His message to me was just for me. I probably should not have mentioned it, but this thread is about my faith, and my skepticism. The evidence I got was enough to end my skepticism about Him, but not anything that I can relate to you as evidence.
I think that trying to prove God’s existence is futile, and to be honest, blasphemous. I also think that it potentially does harm to the person you are trying to convince. Either they will believe you, or disbelieve in God. Neither strikes me as beneficial to their spirit. Or, they might decide I was a pretentious asshole, which would be alright.
Tris
“Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.” ~ Anonymous ~
Maybe I’m in the minority here, or I’m in the group who feel you should find your own way (which is why I hadn’t read your thread 'til I was dead drunk), but my skepticism blew the hell out of my faith. None left. All gone. I usually go to church on Sundays but it has begun to piss me off as much as inspire me.
I’m stuck with the Douglas Adams/Rodney King “Why can’t we all just get along?” version of Jesus’ message to get me through life. Yes, as a former Catholic I feel empty. A present “Lutheran” I don’t feel much more complete.
I’m getting a connection here, with regard to evidence.
In this thread, I raised the issue of homeopathy. (I guess I’m concerned about medicinal as well as spiritual placebo effect!) The question was: if someone presents me with a medical study that shows that homeopathy works (contrary to other studies, and to my current belief), what do I do? I don’t know how to replicate a study. Do I just believe it if it looks legitimate? Is this also a matter of faith?
Seems to me that in medicine debates, I have to decide what kind of evidence I’m willing to accept. Throw out the nutball journals, accept JAMA or Lancet. In religion too, I have to decide what kind of evidence I’m willing to accept. Spiritual feelings? Archeology? Logic? Maybe the evidence won’t be perfect, but I have to be able to live with it. And sometimes I may require more stringent criteria for my evidence, as would appear to be the case with me these days.
And I’m not trying for a homeopathy hijack. Just thought I’d tie it in.
I am in the midst of this very “crisis”. That’s right, I am losing my religion. Sometimes it is painful, sometimes it fills me with more joy than I ever found in my extremely narrow Southern Baptist upbringing.
As a child, my head was filled with the notion that things are certain way and we act a certain way because “the Bible says so”. Ok fine, a child’s mind can accept that. Some adults are perfectly willing to stay on this level, and believe me, where I grew up, there is a great abundance of spiritual infancy. Like others have said, perfectly wonderful people, to be sure…but I became so frustrated with the lack of willingness to look outside the box. Why is it that I am surrounded by people who can spout chapter and verse but haven’t the slightest notion where the Bible came from? For me, it was a question of, “How do I know what I believe if I don’t know anything about what others believe?” I never met a Jewish or a Catholic person growing up in the ass-crack of rural Georgia. An atheist? Forget it. I felt like I was peering through a key hole, trying to see what was in the room beyond.
For the last few years I have been on a trail of self-discovery that has truly opened the world up to me. I never knew about things like the Nag Hammadi library or the real facts about the Council of Nicea. I didn’t know the reason we think the devil is some red guy with horns and a pitch fork is because the church manufactured that image, and so on. I have discovered how beautiful Pagan philosophy can be. I read about the Pythagoreans and the murder of Hypatia and how the church ordered the killing of midwives and wept…
Right now I am pissed off with Christianity, but I know it will pass, but I have to feel this pain. I have to move through it. Faith is wonderful, but when it blinds you to the truth, it is a crippling thing. I have stopped going to church. The last time I tride to sit through a service I literally felt nauseous. If I come back to Christainity, it will be with a much more objective view.
I am not sure what will be left when I am done, but I know I have to do this…
I am driven and compelled to find out. I see my spiritual journey as something God wants me to do, others think I am bound for the fires of Hell.
Right now for me, faith is not about clinging to the old, safe way like a toddler at it’s mother’s side, it is about letting go and seeing what happens.
I have enough faith to know it is going to be all right in the end.
Well, God didn’t seem to have any problem providing proof during the Exodus. Not only that, Moses got into trouble doing something that could be interpreted as another explanation for a miracle. So I’ve always been confused by this argument.
But no matter. The new “evidence” of God from Religous dopers is just like yours. God should be able to figure out, without your help, that telling you or anyone with this experience something verifiable would be cool. Since you aren’t trying to tell anyone what they should do, it doesn’t matter - but since this thead is about skepticism, I just want to point out that though believers claim they are skeptical, I haven’t seen a lot of it.
Man with deed in his hand: Sure I’m skeptical. The man wanted to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, and I went over to see that it was really there. How much more skeptical can I be?
Interesting post. I’m haveing a discussion with my family about the things people have to believe to be “saved” My own thoughts are that your beliefs are intended to be completely personnel. It’s a relationship beween you and your own changeing understanding of God. It’s supposed to be that way and you should never surrender your personnel beliefs to any dogma or doctrine. Philospohies,science, and religions organized and otherwise, are only there to assist in the refinement of our personnel beliefs.
On the SDMBs evidence seems to be something that you can show and demonstrate to anyone else. For me faith is believeing in the evidence of my own experience. I accept my limited understanding of the infinate and continue on with faith that my own connection to that infinate presence will lead me to what I need to know. If there is evidence that contradicts my current beliefs then I consider it and have faith that it is part of the refineing process that leads to truth. I consider science a search for truth as well and see no contradiction between science and the honest spiritual quest.
Your definition of faith is interesting but narrow. I can’t agree. True faith would allow someone to consider evidence and use it to move forward in their understanding. What you are describeing is denial.
Thats it. You decide what is meaningful.Since it is such a personnel journey a committment to the truth also means honesty about ourselves. Sometimes thats not easy. Sometimes the evidence is an experience that speaks to you in a way it could never speak to anyone else because of the personnel nature of the journey. You can discuss it with whomever and they may or may not be helpful. Ultimately you must decide what it means to you and if it warrents any change in your heart and mind.
And again, Hooray!!
Maybe belivers are skeptical about the validity of the stories in Exodus, or Genisis. Perhaps they are skeptical about virgin birth. It’s skepticism in certain details of dogma and doctrine that helps to refine belief. I can be completely convinced in the existance of God and still be skeptical about certain details. There’s plenty of skepticism by believers to be seen in the posts of this thread.
I’m curious. I’ve seen on SDMBs the idea that an omnipotent being would know exactly what to do to make unbelievers convert to true believers, and somehow the fact that this omnipotent being doesn’t do that thing is evidence of the nonexistance of an omnipotent being. IS that the basic concept? PLease explain.
Well, my personnel beliefs are that managers need to hire appropriately talented people and compensate them for what they’re worth, lay out their goals in a very clear, general sense, and then stand back for the most part, allowing their employees to use their talents to work out the details of the solution, offering guidance, encouragement and admonition as needed without interfering greatly. But that’s another thread entirely, so I won’t hijack. 
As far as personal beliefs…
The spiritual journey that you describe would be what I would consider a very healthy definition of faith. Most of the people I encounter who describe themselves as faithful do not practice faith as you describe. Pity. What most people practice as faith is adherence to their own concept of orthodoxy, the idea that the answers are unchanging and have already been worked out and provided for you. Anyone who tells you the book they read has all the answers has not worked their brain hard enough to ask very many questions.
The reason science has developed such a strong track record in the search for truth in a short time compared to the length of existence of most religions is its ultimate open-mindedness. At one time the searches for spiritual and physical truth were synonymous. It seems to me that starting with Galileo, in the Western cultural continuum at least, the dichotomy between science and religion is that science, ultimately, is willing to abandon long-held beliefs in light of new evidence. Or at least, is more readily and quickly open to the notion.
Not that science is without its people who cling to outdated or false beliefs, but that the scientific world as a whole is more willing to admit, in the long run, that something they espoused enthusiastically was completely wrong in the end.