Reasonable Doubt

For the wondering, the wandering and the hopeful

My email and question to Dinesh D'Souza about Christ and belief.

Hi Dinesh D'Souza
I am sure that you get tons of emails but I was watching a few of your debates and noticed one audience member mentioning that you had answered one of his emails so I will give it a shot. I think you did a fantastic job by the way, the two debates I watched so far being the ones with Dan Barker and Daniel Dennett. Being an Agnostic myself, that does NOT mean though that I agree 100% with you. It is possible to win a debate and still be wrong, I think. You did make some logically valid, to my mind, points though and are very well spoken so I applaud you. Many Christians are NOT able to so elucidate the reasons for their beliefs. It is refreshing to see someone who can, and not only that but can do so without resorting to Scripture. I think Dennett made some good points as well, but being a philosopher as he is, he is probably much better at the written word than he is at public speaking.
 
Anyway, to my question. Even if I was to concede everything you believe, that there is God, that Jesus is his son and that he died for the sins of the world because he loved us, what does my belief or lack thereof have to do with it? Why do I have to believe it in order to obtain this salvation? Is not his love great enough to be able to encompass those of us who just find it incredibly difficult to believe? I am sure there are those who are Atheists because they are looking for a way around morality, but I am not one of them. I am a family man, have 2 children and I don't drink to excess or do drugs of any sort. There is really nothing in my life that I am looking for a way out. My problems with Christianity and religion in general are intellectual ones, not moral. But I have never been able to call myself an Atheist and I do take exception to what you said about Pascal's wager showing the falsity of the Agnostic position. If we can never have enough information to make an informed decision, isn't Agnosticism the only logically and I would say, morally valid solution? The ability to say, you know what? I just don't know. I mean who says we HAVE to make a decision, as you say? You say we don't have enough information but we have to make a decision. Why? Who says so? Did God say so? If so, I find it incredibly unfair and cruel of him to expect decisions of us for which we don't have and possibly can never have enough information to make an informed decision.
 
I really hope you respond to my question as I have been asking this questions for years and no one has ever been able to, or even attempted to answer it.
 
By the way, I was raised in Church, kind of like you, but I was raised a Southern Baptist, so I am pretty well familar with the Bible and what it says.
 
Thanks a bunch

God and the Big Bang

Big-bang

 

Ok, so pretty much everyone knows that I call myself an Agnostic. Even though I have some major issues with religion in general and Christianity in particular, I have not and still can not call myself an Atheist. A lot of Atheists spend their time destroying religion, and in many cases they have done a pretty good job of it, but they have not been able to destroy God, Nietzsche's assertion that God is dead to the contrary. Even if it was shown that God, Yawhew, Jehovah and Allah do not exist, it still would be a possibility that some sort of God exists.

One of the biggest reasons I come to that keeps me Agnostic is the question of what came before the big bang, or more precisely what caused the big bang. I recently watched a couple of fantastic debates on youtube, the first being between Dinesh D'Souza, the conservative commentator and Christian apologetic, and Daniel Dennett, the noted Atheist philosopher, and the other between Dinesh again and Dan Barker, a former minister turned Atheist. To Dinesh's question of what happened before the big bang, Dan Barker replied that it is a meaningless question for the following reason. Since time and space both came into existence at the Big Bang, time did not exist before that moment and since asking what came before is a temporal question you can't ask it. It would be like asking what is north of the north pole, it's a meaningless question. And this is an excellent point, but.... it's not very satisfying. Our minds just cry out to know what happened before the big bang. it might be meaningless to ask what came BEFORE the big bang but, to my mind, that doesn't answer what CAUSED the big bang. To my mind, cause and effect go all the way back to the big bang, the singularity itself, so the big bang must have a cause. Common sense would dictate it couldn't have just happened, for no apparent reason at all. Maybe a better question is WHY did it happen, to which an Atheist would reply that that is another meaningless question, the universe doesn't have reasons, it just is.

But here's the thing, and the reason why we have to be very careful about the language we use. One guy stood up and asked a question of D'Souza that if you posit a God that created the Big Bang, couldn't you just as easily ask what caused God, who created the creator, and then who created that creator, ad nauseum, into infinity. But... I thought we just agreed that time did not exist before the big bang, therefore before the big bang, actually there is no before the big bang, there is no cause and effect because cause and effect are a temporal construct. Therefore one could still posit that God, who existed OUTSIDE of time, created the Big Bang, at which time, time itself came into existence. There is no problem with saying God has no creator, he has always existed, or since time didn't exist, it is better to say he existed outside of time. I am that I am.

Whew!!!! Got that out. lol

Now...

I'm surprised Dinesh did not think of this answer, he kind of equivocated on the issue and his answer was not satisfactory.

One good answer that he did posit is that the universe encompasses all that is, all of nature. Everything that is considerd nature and natural is contained within the universe, therefore the universe could not have created itself, that would be saying nature created itselt, but nature didn't exist before the big bang. Again, we are using the term 'before' when we know there was no 'before', but according to this logic, which seems sound to me, since the universe can not have a natural cause, it must have a other than natural, or supernatural cause.

Another Atheist objection I've heard over the years is that if we say God created the universe we are stuck with who created God to which the theist replies he has always existed. The Atheist says well why not just say the Universe has always existed and just cut out the middle man. Sounds like a good argument. In other words, why not just call the universe itself God. I used to think this argument was so sound that I used it myself. The problem with it is that we DO know, from science, not religion, that the universe DID in fact have a beginning, at the big bang. We KNOW that the universe is not eternal, it had a finite beginning some billions of years ago, so we CAN'T say that the universe always existed as a way to get around God. The universe had a beginning and I'm still stuck asking why.

Or maybe...time is like in calculus where, when you go backwards in time towards the big bang, you can approach but never actually reach the big bang itself. Scientists say that their science only works back to some infinitesimally small fraction of a second after the big bang, before that the science breaks down. So maybe, if you can approach but never reach the singularity itself, time HAS always existed, therefore space and the universe HAS always existed, which means there WAS no beginning, a beginning being only an illusion. In this case, we COULD call the universe itself God. Well fine, we can do that, and maybe scientists and religious believers are talking about the same thing, but an Atheist would object that that is not what a person normally means when they speak of God. I don't know, I have no answers. I'm agnostic. It seems that logic can be used to argue either case, which brings us to Dinesh's point, that we will NEVER have sufficient information, and YET we still have to choose. We have to choose between belief and unbelief. But do we really? Why? Who says? Why can't I be Agnostic? Isn't agnosticism, in the face of insufficient information, the only logically sound solution? The ability to say, you know what? I just don't have a friggin clue!!! I just don't know. And I think my doubt is perffectly reasonable. But my doubt extends both ways, I doubt God's existence at the same as I doubt his non-existence. What a conundrum huh?-------------

There has to be a better way!

I was thinking today about the movie Forest Gump and the part where crowds of people were following him on his cross country runs. I was wondering what it is about certain people or what they are doing that draws people to them like magnets. I think in his case, it was the sense that people got that here was a guy who had everything all figured out, who was not rushed or hurried in life, who was not running to and fro, caught up in the corporate rat race, worried about the making and spending of money. He did not care what people thought of him, he grew his beard long and just started running. He experienced nature and lived a more sane, relaxed life. I think people gravitate to those who are doing something different. Most people have this sense, even it is buried deep within them, that all is not right with the every day world, the way we work ourselves to death, all for the making of more and more money, which will not bring true happiness no matter how much money is made. I think most people want to do something different and when they see other people doing something different, they are attracted to such people.
This was the secret of Jesus. Here was a man who said that things can and should be done differently, that religion does not matter, that in fact religion is superfluous if one does not have love. Here was a man who had not a home, except where he layed his head at night. People saw how different he was and they gravitated to him. The religious authorities saw how different he was and murdered him. Christians today forget how different Jesus truly was and instead try to make a caricature of him, something that is no more relevant to people's lives than that of any other dead man of history. They know not what Jesus was truly all about.
This was the secret of Socrates. Here also was a man who did things differently, who thought differently, who lived differently. And once again, he was murdered for it. Here was a man who loved philosophy and knowledge and who hated the pretenders to wisdom. There are actually a lot of similiarities between Socrates and Jesus.
I think there is a place deep down within us all that just knows that there has to be a better way. Some people strive to live a better way, while others just give up and die intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.
Just my thoughts!
Forest Gump, who lived a better way.

Christopher McCandless! The dude who died in the Alaskan wilderness looking for a better way.

Jesus, who WAS the better way and was killed for it.

Socrates, who lived and taught a better way and was killed for it.
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So much more!

There is music out there that means something... I know it's hard to believe but there is. Music that you will not hear on the radio, will not see on American Idol. I can just imagine some of this great music being played on AI. The judges and the crowd would be in awe, would not know what to do with this music. "You mean you don't want me to dance? You mean you want me to feel something? Something bigger than myself?"
Listen people, music is the language of the soul!! It shows us the way to something much larger than who we are, much bigger than anything than anything any individual person could ever come up with. Real music is not created, it flows through us, it energizes our souls. It shows us the way to truth! It invigorates us! It tells us something about the universe, about ourselves!! Shit, man!!! So much of music today is just ludicrous crap!!! There is so much more!! But our consumer society does not want you to know that!! So shhhhh!!!!!!
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Or it could just be the couvoisier!

The Blog of Henry David Thoreau

a man in reserve
...Thoreau's Journal: 18-Dec-1841

Some men make their due impression upon their generation, because a petty occasion is enough to call forth all their energies; but are there not others who would rise to much higher levels, whom the world has never provoked to make the effort? I believe there are men now living who have never opened their mouths in a public assembly, in whom nevertheless there is such a well of eloquence that the appetite of any age could never exhaust it; who pine for an occasion worthy of them, and will pine till they are dead; who can admire, as well as the rest, at the flowing speech of the orator, but do not yet miss the thunder and lightning and visible sympathy of the elements which would garnish their own utterance.

If in any strait I see a man fluttered and his ballast gone, then I lose all hope of him, he is undone; but if he reposes still, though he do nothing else worthy of him, if he is still a man in reserve, then is there everything to hope of him. The age may well go pine itself that it cannot put to use this gift of the gods. He lives on, still unconcerned, not needing to be used. The greatest occasion will be the slowest to come.

via blogthoreau.blogspot.com