PATTER'S GUEST COLUMNIST MICHAEL
April 15, 2006
A matter of faith ...
By MICHAEL COREN
This weekend I will fall to my knees and thank God for His son.
Why? The evidence of the early Church, the eyewitness accounts from neutral or even hostile sources, the ever-increasing tangible proof from archaeological digs and the abundantly meagre nature of the standard objections.
It was the greatest atheist of modern times, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who on his deathbed was asked what he would say to God if he found that He did in fact exist.
The grand old man replied that he would ask God why He had not given humanity more evidence of His existence. Which reveals just how little even the wisest of doubters understands about Christianity.
God does not give us absolute proof because this would work against our free will. He gives us just enough evidence so that we can find Him and just enough to reject His existence if that is our desire.
Don't blame the God in whom you do not believe because He asks you to work just a little before you have faith.
Bertrand Russell, by the way, eventually abandoned his atheism even though he had been its champion.
If I cannot believe in God because I have not seen Him, he wrote, I thus have to have seen everything to know that He is not there. I have not seen everything, therefore I cannot conclude that there is no God.
In other words, the materialistic opposition to God implodes when investigated with an open rather than an empty mind.
Russell became an agnostic. Those who claim to live by logic must, if they are honest, live by logic's immutable laws.
Russell was also a pacifist -- and one of the arguments against Christianity is that it causes war. Problem is, this is nonsense.
There is no doubt that wars have been and are fought in the name of religion, but this is hardly relevant.
As we surely know, it is not guns that kill people but people with guns who kill people.
Equally, it is not religion that kills people but people with religion who kill people.
Misguided individuals do all sorts of horrible things in the name of religion, just as they do in the name of freedom, love and any other motive that they can pervert.
A matter of faith ...
By MICHAEL COREN
This weekend I will fall to my knees and thank God for His son.
Why? The evidence of the early Church, the eyewitness accounts from neutral or even hostile sources, the ever-increasing tangible proof from archaeological digs and the abundantly meagre nature of the standard objections.
It was the greatest atheist of modern times, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who on his deathbed was asked what he would say to God if he found that He did in fact exist.
The grand old man replied that he would ask God why He had not given humanity more evidence of His existence. Which reveals just how little even the wisest of doubters understands about Christianity.
God does not give us absolute proof because this would work against our free will. He gives us just enough evidence so that we can find Him and just enough to reject His existence if that is our desire.
Don't blame the God in whom you do not believe because He asks you to work just a little before you have faith.
Bertrand Russell, by the way, eventually abandoned his atheism even though he had been its champion.
If I cannot believe in God because I have not seen Him, he wrote, I thus have to have seen everything to know that He is not there. I have not seen everything, therefore I cannot conclude that there is no God.
In other words, the materialistic opposition to God implodes when investigated with an open rather than an empty mind.
Russell became an agnostic. Those who claim to live by logic must, if they are honest, live by logic's immutable laws.
Russell was also a pacifist -- and one of the arguments against Christianity is that it causes war. Problem is, this is nonsense.
There is no doubt that wars have been and are fought in the name of religion, but this is hardly relevant.
As we surely know, it is not guns that kill people but people with guns who kill people.
Equally, it is not religion that kills people but people with religion who kill people.
Misguided individuals do all sorts of horrible things in the name of religion, just as they do in the name of freedom, love and any other motive that they can pervert.
posted by Metamora Patter at 4/15/2006 01:27:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home