(Untitled)

[corpusdei]

Now I know that many of you, dear readers, maintain faith in a god of some sort. For those of you who do, who put your faith in him (or her), I have a question. I promise that I won't challenge, scorn or otherwise do the things I normally do, but I was hoping you could tell me this: How do you balance your belief in this god and still accept

Comments

[retlawyen]

Knee-Jerk reaction:
1. Free will. God gave us choices, right? Those choices wouldn't mean squat if he altered the circumstances all the time to get the results he wanted. If God prevented the tsunami, then why wouldn't he prevent 9/11? If he prevented 9/11, why wouldn't he prevent the Iraqui invasion of Kuwait? If he prevented that, then why wouldn't he prevent the Holocaust? If he prevented that, then why wouldn't he prevent the sniper serial murders we had recently. If he prevented that then why wouldn't he prevent every attempt by anyone to kill anyone else, ever. If he prevented that then why wouldn't he prevent every attempt to lie to anyone, ever. If he prevented that, then why would he write the commandments, since he would be controlling our behavior anyway.

Case-Specific fault finding:
2. The converse is ridiculous. That is, if you refuse to believe in God because he had smote people with a tsunami it would be a self defeating statement. Not believing in someone because of something that they have done is an absurdity, since by assigning them the responsibility of allowing people to be killed you are admitting their existence. The proper reason for believing or not believing in anything not provable is an evaluation of the probabilities of it's existence, derived from your experience and the evidence you collect.

Big Picture:
3. Heaven man, Heaven. Those who ask earnestly repent of their sins in the name of God's son receive the life eternal. Those people got their choice sooner than others. When measured against eternity this life's exact length isn't terribly significant.

4. Presumption. If you are in the preexisting condition of believing in a supreme being then circumstances do not shake your belief, since they are accounted for in your paradigm. God has the right to do anything he wishes to his creations, we have the right to worship him. It's a social contract that he has not violated with this tsunami.

If you are sincerely interested in understand the perspective of the believer I recommend the works of C.S. Lewis, specifically "Mere Christianity" and "The Great Divorce". His work is my favorite example the educated man's take on the Christian belief system.