Is God Dead?

[greybeta]

Sometime in the 1960’s, TIME magazine printed a headline “Is God Dead?” It lost a million subscriptions and it had to officially apologize to all of its readers.

This example is often cited by ministers as proof that America believes in God. A good Christian would say it is the God of Abraham and Isaac.

There are numerous studies showing some sort of biological necessity for God, that humans have some sort of emptiness in them that they feel a pressing need to fill. But what do most humans fill it with? Alcohol? Sex? Drugs? Mostly temporal things, right?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to fill it with something everlasting, something eternal? And yet, we know we attempt to fill our emptiness with ephemeral things. I try to fill it with anime, Magic: The Gathering, video games or blogging. And it’s never really enough.

That’s because I don’t have Jesus in my heart.

Isn’t that the answer my friends in the BSU want me to say?

I don’t have a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ, the one and only son of God. And Son of Man. And Holy Ghost. It’s that divine Trinity thing, the whole three faces as one thing.

What do people tell me when I ask them what a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ means? Curiously enough, I get a lot of different answers.

And you know, I don’t know what to think. Or maybe I just think that it’s okay to say Jesus was a madman, liar, AND divine.

Then again, they’re asking me.

Right now, I would say I don’t know. I don’t think it’s as blindingly obvious as some people make it.

They want me to say the Bible is God’s Word. Fine, it was divinely inspired, I really can’t argue that. But what makes the Bible so special?

See, I grew up in a dualistic mindset, with both Buddism and the Baptist form of Christianity being compared side-by-side all of my life. But see, someone told me that both use circular logic. All knowledge is based on assumptions, and it is trapped within circles.

Let me explain. If my first assumption is that there is a God, well then everything I know will be in terms of that assumption. I will see patterns in the universe that reflect intelligent design. This is also known as the a priori argument, a teleological argument that our Creator must have designed everything so perfectly that we are where we are now because of it.

On the other hand, if my first assumption is that there is no god, well then everything I know will be in terms of that assumption. I will still see patterns in the universe, but I could explain those away in terms of random chance. We might not want to admit it, but we could be the result of extreme luck.

What C.S. Lewis argues is that you can’t use one circle to determine if the other circle is incorrect. There must be something outside the circles to let us know which one is correct. It’s like the piano sheet music. Do the notes on the paper let us know we are playing it correctly, or is there something outside the sheet music that informs us that we playing the song correctly?

My Christian friends pray fervently that I discover that Jesus Christ is that thing outside the circles that lets me see the absolute Truth. Something about faith, they say.

I accept the challenge. I will go and seek this Truth. Now I may not find it before the end of the semester, before I graduate or maybe not even for sixty years, but I will find it. And yet the pessimist inside me says that I will come to a conclusion that will not be agreeable those praying for my soul.

But I will try my best because they say that people seldom regret failing, but people always regret not trying.

Comments

[visgoth.livejournal.com]

Part of my reason for rejecting religion is that religious people so often seek to quash inquiry.

It seems to me that a person of true faith would not object to the question "Is God Dead?" because they would believe that the answer to that question, no matter how the subject was examined, would be "No, God is alive and real." On the other hand, if a person had shaky faith, they might object to exploring the question, because they think answer might be that their faith is unfounded.

[thanoslug.livejournal.com]

What makes the bible so special is that it is the inspired word of God. At least, that's what makes it awful special to me. The thing about the bible is that, without faith, a lot of it doesnt make a whole lot of sense. Take a look at 1 Corinthians 2. The verse of most interest, in my opinion, is 14: "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

I wish you the best of luck in your search and will pray for its success.

[tybuc.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that to truly believe in God, you have to do so from the mindset of an athiest. Never challenging your beliefs is the sign of fear and conscious ignorance, and I don't imagine God's works are as easily accomplished through either. To be honest, there is so much wonder and fascination around us in both nature and the accomplishments of man that I don't think it's really all that difficult to see footprints of a higher being in them. That's just my two cents, tho.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

I think that you're confusing "God" with "Faith". It has been suggested, and with strong evidence, that there's a deep psychological need in people for faith. But that faith doesn't have to be in God. (Otherwise, how the hell would humanity have survived until the dominance of Christianity?) Campbell talks a lot about that, actually, how a lot of the modern ills in our society can be traced to the fact that we're clinging to a religion that really doesn't work for the modern day anymore, and this is leading a lot of people to lose their faith and try to fill the void with material things. He sees religion as a way of understanding and interpreting the language of symbols that are embedded so deeply in our subconscious minds.

That having been said, I don't think a 'personal relationship with Jesus Christ' automatically solves all problems, and anyone who is suggesting as much is, IMO, taking a view of the world that's so simplistic it's almost insulting.

If you haven't gotten around to reading 'The Power of Myth' and 'The Hero With 1,000 Faces', I recommend them to you again :) Campbell was, for all his critique of the modern church, a faithful man, and the way he talks about religion was almost enough to convert -me-.

[kmg-365.livejournal.com]

[T]here's a deep psychological need in people for faith. But that faith doesn't have to be in God. (Otherwise, how the hell would humanity have survived until the dominance of Christianity?)

Agreed.

Ancient civilizations had faith in god (or gods). It wasn't the God in which Christians believe, but I imagine the belief they held in their gods was as strong (and, perhaps, as immutable) as Christians'.

Of course, those foolish Egyptians were worshipping false gods...the Goua'ould!! :-)

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

And it's possible, even probable, that in many communities, there wasn't a concept of God or Gods the way that we understand it. I took a couple of anthropology classes in college that discussed this sort of thing because it's fascinating to me, having been raised in a strongly athiestic household (we always seem to gravitate towards what's different and exotic!) and from my readings, I got the impression that a lot of cultures have a sense of a natural order, where all things have a spirit in them that's not really greater or lesser than the spirit inside of men, but which need to be respected as they want to be respected themselves, a sort of 'Do Unto Others' that applies not only to men but to animals, plants, and even rocks and the earth. For a lot of these cultures, the central concept seems to be an idea of getting in tune and harmony with the natural order, and while there are, of course, creation myths, the gods in those myths don't play the central role that God does in the continuing Christian mythology, as it were.

I admit that I'm much more drawn to the idea of a spirit, seperate but one, living in all things than I am to a single patriarchal God who exists somewhere far away in the sky.

(It's also fascinating, BTW, how many cultures have a 'Mother Earth' goddess and a 'Father Sky' god, where strong matriarchal concepts are tied to the earth and the patriarchal concepts which are so similar to the Christian God are tied to the sky. I have theories about our culture's devaluing of women and despoiling of the earth being tied to the fact that we have a strong 'Sky Father' figure, but no 'Earth Mother' figure to balance him out.)

[thanoslug.livejournal.com]

Otherwise, how the hell would humanity have survived until the dominance of Christianity?

Well, if you believe the bible, then man has known God since man first existed. This makes it quite easy to believe in a need for faith in God as opposed to just faith in something.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

And if I believed the bible is right word-for-word, then I'd believe that ;) But I don't. I believe that the bible is a tool that was used to convey laws that were meant to rule a people a long time go, and stories that were meant to help them to make sense of the world around them. And I think that the laws are outdated (I, for one, would be pissed if my father prostituted me or sold me into slavery) but that some of the stories are helpful.

[thanoslug.livejournal.com]

Your belief or non-belief in the validity of the bible notwithstanding, my point was that Christians believe that man has had available to him a knowledge of and a potential relationship with God since the beginning and so, from their point of view, there is no problem with the idea of a God sized hole since the knowledge of how to fill it has always been available.

As for the laws contained in the bible - there is a reason for the division between the Old and New Testaments or Covenants. The law is a part of the Old Covenant with God.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

This may be true for die-hard, wholely committed believers, and if I had been addressing a comment to one of them, then I probably would have re-phrased my arguement by quite a lot. (I probably would have pointed out that, regardless of whether that knowledge was -available-, it's clear that the worship of God wasn't widespread or even really done at all in a lot of places, and yet the people still managed to function.) But I was talking to greybeta who himself is admitting a certain crisis of faith which, IMO, has been partially brought about by the "all or nothing" brand of Christianity that seems to surround him.

[yndy.livejournal.com]

Good luck with your spiritual journey...

Remind me some time to explain my Existential God theory to you. It's a little more involved and lengthy than I have time for right now, plus, I don't discuss religion in public forums (unless they are specifically designed for ecumenical discussion!)

:)

[exrandu.livejournal.com]

Welcome to Gnosticism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

Well, perhaps not exactly. But seeking Truth of the Divine, Knowledge, Gnosis...isn't that what you've decided to do, what you've been doing?

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

Isn't there a lot of "mystery religion" stuff surrounding Gnostisism as well, though? A lot of initiation into mysteries through heavily symbolic rituals, that sort of thing?

[exrandu.livejournal.com]

Sure can be.

But that's true for any religion at all. Humanity is tied up in rituals. I daresay the current decrepit state of our society is partly due to a severe lack of rituals.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

You've probably got something there.

But what I was getting at is that I seem to remember that the revelation of "mysteries" is central to Gnostisism, as in it's one of the things that defines the religion.

(One cool thing about the Gnostics is, IFRC, they believed in a female face of God, which they called Sophia, or Wisdom.)

[exrandu.livejournal.com]

the problem with Gnosticism is that besides seeking Gnosis, Wisdom, Knowledge, Truth, whatever you call it, there are few central practices. That is to say, there are a thousan myraid practices, all based on whatever that particular person or faction considered Gnosis. The point perhaps being that any practice can take you closer to the Divine, if you know how to let it.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that's the point.

Gnostisism really latches onto the idea of encouraging people into a state of unity with the divine through a roadmap of symbolism that, as the symbols are comprehended and absorbed, help to bring the seeker to a higher and higher state of consciousness.

Actually, now that I think about it, it's probably very heavily influenced by Oriental philosophy from India and China. I think it started to flourish first around the time that the silk road was open.

[exrandu.livejournal.com]

That's it exactly.

Historically, Gnosticism popped up and grew right alongside what we now call Christianity, but when the Romans canonized everything, it was (often violently) squashed. It has experienced a recent revival.

[stella-x3x3.livejournal.com]

D2-SEMPAI!!!