Thursday, August 7, 2014

A response to the Skeptic Zone on the old "What would it take to make you give it up" issue

Here. 

A couple of things. The Catholic Church has repeatedly condemned fideism as heresy. Lewis says that he isn't asking anyone to believe if the weight of the evidence is against it, and says that is not the point where faith comes in. Is Lewis a heretic? I there are some who will quote Bible verses here, but I know the verses and I don't interpret them as requiring suppression of doubt, 

A lot of confusion arises when these questions are asked because it looks like a request for a one-sentence answer. But if you read stories of people who move from theism to atheism, or vice versa, it's a lot of things put together. 

When I was younger I had a lot of doubts and questions, and drove everyone nuts by asking questions. I did hear the "We're not to question" response from some people, but most of the time people tried to provide something intellectually responsive. The Christian community, as I experienced it, did not, as a whole, try to get me to simply quash doubt. If it had, I might very well not be a Christian today. 

And then you have P. Z. Myers, who says that belief in God is something so defined that there couldn't be any evidence for it. 


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