The Blasphemy Challenge
Normally, I would post a response to this article on my other weblog, but it seems to be particularly applicable here.An excerpt from the article:
"I've come to the conclusion that alongside the fact that there is no Santa Clause and there is no Easter bunny, there is also no God. So, without further ado, my name is Chandler and I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit."
Another: "My name is Joel. I deny the Holy Spirit, as well as God, Jesus, Buddha, Zeus, Mohammad, Joseph Smith, Sponge Bob, the pope, Santa Clause, Mother Mary, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, Optimus Prime, all the saints and Spiderman."
What's strange is that the man who developed the project was raised Catholic and "then became a Born-Again Christian as a young adult." (Sidebar: This seems a bit like anti-Catholic rhetoric to me. How can you become "born again" if you were a faithful Catholic in the first place? Is Catholicism not Christian? Did he somehow 'lose' his salvation?) He demands proof for believing, refusing to take any answer on faith.
A short course on apologetics:
- Jesus of Nazareth is a documented historical figure. This is not merely from Christian sources, but from Roman census records and proto-court documents.
- The documents about Jesus' life that make up the current Christian Bible were recorded within fifty years of his death. (Sidebar: For an explanation of the "two Bibles" of Catholicism and Protestantism, see here under 'The Two Torahs of Rabbinic Judaism.') It stands to reason that there would be a fair amount of people around to refute any errors, omissions, or untruths.
- Faith: There are thousands of things that we all believe in, yet can't emperically see. The sun, atoms, and that someone really loves us are all things that we can't see, yet believe. C.S. Lewis wrote, "I believe that the sun is there, not because I can see it, but because everything I can see is illumined by it. I believe in God for the same reasons."
- Miracles and signs: People frequently ask for signs, in order that they might believe, then ignore what might be presented to them. The same goes for miracles--the unexplained happens, and instead of interpreting it as the work of God, we choose to believe that the initial diagnosis was a mistake, that we did something to change the course, or that the event was just random happenstance.
My biggest concern is that if you don't have faith, you don't have hope...and that's no way to live.
Labels: apologetics, disbelief, faith, news article
posted by Currer813 @ 9:52 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home