Archbishop admits Tsunami caused him to doubt the existence of God

[WillieWoohah]

Anyone else questioning their faith in the aftermath of this catastrophe?

http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/02/nbish02.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/01/02/ixportaltop.html

Quote:

The Asian tsunami disaster should make all Christians question the existence of God, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, writes in The Telegraph today. In a deeply personal and candid article, he says "it would be wrong" if faith were not "upset" by the catastrophe which has already claimed more than 150,000 lives. Prayer, he admits, provides no "magical solutions" and most of the stock Christian answers to human suffering do not "go very far in helping us, one week on, with the intolerable grief and devastation in front of us".

[tk2kewl]

1. at least the fundies can take solice in the fact that the dead

are mostly non-christians

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Nature has done horrifically damaging things before.

This neither proves nor disproves the existence of a supreme being -- it could be part of a plan, or maybe just a random disaster. My own belief is that if there is a god, he/she/it produced the Big Bang a gazillion years ago and has just been sitting back, watching and not interfering, ever since. Kind of like having a big ol' ant farm.

That there are people in the world like George Bush and we let them assume power over us makes me at least as likely to doubt the existence of a rational, just and merciful god. What kind of buggered-up species would let something like that happen?

[Pirate Smile]

5. Free will and Mother Nature can cause a lot of pain.

[WLKjr]

36. I was brought up to think that all things happen for a reason

It may not be apparent at the moment, but eventually when you start to develop some hindsight, you recieve enlightenment of some sorts. I think it has happend to me in my life a few times.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. The Lisbon Earthquake had a huge impact upon European

Christendom in the mid-18th Century. Glib, pat answers didn't quite cut it in the wake of the enormous trauma.

[Pirate Smile]

4. A freeper came and posted on DU the day after it happened and said

"Doesn't it make you see that God exists and he has a plan"

How disgusting is that! What kind of a God do you believe in to believe that.

If you believe in a loving and benevolent God, it does make you question why these things happen.

[demwing]

7. I believe in a living and benevolent God

and I dont question why these things happen any more than I question why tragedy strikes the children of families where the parents are obviously loving and devoted.

But then, I'm not a Christian, nor do I have very Westernized beliefs. The concept of a loving God and a potentially painful or tragic life are not opposing views. God is not limited by my understanding, and life is not limited to what goes on between birth and death here on Earth.

This answer is neither pat nor glib. If anything, it is purposefully incomplete, but only because the philosophy I am trying to express is not served well by a scant paragraph on a political website, and I could write volumes and still only scratch the surface.

My heart breaks for the victims and their families, because I know that the pain they suffer is real. But I also know that their relationship with God, even if unrealized, transcends that pain.

Imagine a religious leader encouraging his flock to question their faith, unless he has an answer to that question or has first renounced his faith and position in the Church. How sad.

[Ilsa]

6. It's a very normal and Christian thing to do, to have doubts,

question God, his/her relevancy, etc, after something this traumatic. If you can't question faith, then you are a nonthinking robot. And I don't think God intended us to be mentally lazy or complacent like that.

[demwing]

8. There is nothing wrong with questioning faith

It is the testing that makes faith strong.

What I see as wrong is a spiritaul leader encouraging his followers to lose their faith.

If he has lost his, thats OK. If he wants to convince others to think as he does, let him feel free. Bust first let him step down from his position of aauthority in the Church. It seems to be the highest hypocrisy to cling to your position of authority while denying the the very source of your authority.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. Have you actually read what he said?

Because he's not encouraging people to lose their faith at all. He is saying that events like this do pose questions about faith.

There is some discussion here.

[demwing]

12. Of course I read what he said...

or at least what he was reported as saying, and I admit there may be some differences between the two.

But if the report is correct, if the Archbishop of the Canterburry, head of the Anglican Church of England, says:

"The question, 'How can you believe in a God who permits suffering on this scale?' is therefore very much around at the moment, and it would be surprising if it weren't - indeed it would be wrong if it weren't."

without giving a philosophical follow up to his Church, based on their particular teachings, to help them answer that question, then he's not helping them to strengthen faith at all, he's helping them to question the existense of God, and then abandoning them to their own speculations.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. There's a link to his full article in the top right of the Telegraph news

piece - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/01/02/do0201.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/01/02/ixportal.html . This was also linked to from the post in the Religion forum that I linked to.

The quote you have occurs not quite halfway through the piece. There's plenty after that.

[demwing]

16. OK, I'm reading

thanks for the heads up.

I'm glad that there was more to say than was reported. I should know better. :)

[starroute]

9. The insistance that God be all-good has always been a problem

It's a philosophical dilemma that's built into Christianity and can't ever be reasoned away.

The pagan religions had gods who would regularly pull a hissy fit and lay a bunch of disasters on mankind until some other god got them drunk or whatever and talked them out of it.

But Christianity got into this dualism thing, whereby their god was purely good -- and also omniscient and omnipotent -- while Satan got to carry the burden of being purely evil, but didn't have a whole lot of power to go along with it.

The result is that whenever anything bad happens, Christians are forced to either (1) blame the victims for bringing it on themselves by being miserable sinners or (2) get into complicated arguments about why it's really for the best in the long run.

But the for-the-best arguments aren't ultimately very persuasive. As in the Arthur C. Clarke story where it's discovered that the star of Bethlehem was a supernova that wiped out an entire planet of sentient beings, the causes generally seem out of proportion to the supposed good effects. So that leaves only the blame-the-victims attitude of the fundies.

For my part, I tend to see the universe as an interplay between a spiritualizing force (which you can call "God" if you like -- I don't) and raw materiality. Little by little, life and consciousness get nudged along an upward path, but raw matter keeps doing its thing and occasionally produces earthquakes or asteroid impacts or other severe disturbances to the ongoing alchemical attempts of consciousness to refine it.

[Disturbed]

11. Believing that there is a god...

that has anything to do with the planet or it's inhabitants is pure delusion. I cringe when I hear people "It's the will of God,", God saved my life", "God works in mysterious ways" or God's plan is for the best".

[demwing]

15. That's your understanding

It's not mine, nor is it the understanding of billions of other humans.

Perhaps you should just acknowledge that you disagree with those people, and that you find their faith beyond your ability to reason, rather than insult so many.

[starroute]

21. I don't think post #11 was talking about faith

Whenever there is a disaster that kills a large number of people and only leaves a few survivors, you will invariably find some idiot popping up to say that those survivors must have been under divine protection.

They never question their own assumption that the few survivors were in some way better, or more worthy, than the many innocents who died. They never ask why an omnipotent god would deliberately kill a hundred innocents while randomly sparing one or two. They don't boggle at the equally common and even more far-fetched assemption that all the people who might have been killed if they hadn't stepped out for a smoke or whatever at just the right moment (like the personal who posted here a couple of days ago about the wtc disaster) were under divine protection as well.

Despite your assertion, I don't believe for a moment that billions of people on the planet share that peculiarly self-referential form of belief that passes as religion in America these days. Most human beings have enough sense to realize that it really *isn't* all about them.

[fujiyama]

13. Well atleast he admits

that he did face a crisis of faith.

I couldn't imagine a fundamentalist evangelical preacher in this country admitting such a thing. I see that in Britain, the Christian religious leaders are a bit more sensible.

[lukasahero]

17. My crisis of faith started 11/3/04

but it's not about the "existence" of something greater than myself (call it god if you will) - in that I still "believe". (Yes, I know dozens of DUer's will be happy to call me feeble and unreasoned, but I believe in love too even though it can't be scientifically tested.)

My crisis of faith is over the fact that I used to believe the Christian perspective that there was a "caring" God. That's been shot to hell (so to speak ;)) and I no longer believe that "God" has any interest or concern what happens. Silly me to have ever thought otherwise...

[Az]

20. Unreasoning?

I know of no reason for someone to simply lay down their beliefs and walk away from them without a prolonged and deep period of consideration. You walk the path you have to. Not the one others demand of you.

[trotsky]

18. The atheist philosophy: "Shit happens."

If atheism is a "faith," as many theists like to call it, there's no questioning necessary.

[Az]

19. Emotions, Trama, and Belief

Belief comes about by how our brains work. As we experience things we store the events along with the emotional relevance they hold for us. Conflicting ideas contest each other based on how our mind holds them in merrit. The emotional weight the bring with them setting the basis.

When a tramatic event happens it can shift the balance drastically. The enormity of the event can bolster or overcome the current balance of a particular belief. Thus it is that such events form a nexus for matters of deep beliefs. Many can lose their faith at these junctures. And of course depending on your view this can be a good thing or a bad thing. But for the individual a shift such as this is seldom a pleasant experience.

[Stunster]

22. Why should it?

"It is reasonable to assume that without plate tectonics, no planet
could be habitable."

From an absolutely fascinating article, whether one is a theist or not:
http://www.origins.org/articles/bradley_existenceofgod....

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. Your link doesn't work

I suspect you did a copy and paste from another DU thread - it's got the "..." rather than the full URL.

[Az]

24. Corrected link

http://www.origins.org/articles/bradley_existenceofgod.html

[Stunster]

25. Sorry, here's the link

http://www.origins.org/articles/bradley_existenceofgod.html

[Az]

26. Classic error

Assumes universe was built for humans. Not that humans came about due to the conditions of the universe.

Nothing new here. Read it yourself and be your own judge though. I am by no means the end all authority.

[Stunster]

27. "Anthropic Cosmological Principle"

Seems the universe itself made the 'classic error'.

[Az]

28. We have been down this road before

And again it presumes the universe was made for us. Not that we are the result of the universe. Unless you have something new to present on this issue I see no reason for us to frustrate each other any more on this one.

[WillieWoohah]

30. Perhaps the universe is hard-wired for sentient conscious beings

Not necessarily humans.

If you consider the infinity of possible universes that could exist (without leading to logical contradictions), only a small subset of those would actually give rise to some kind of conscious sentient beings.

It's kind of a grander version of "if a tree falls in a forest and no-ones around, would it make a noise". If a universe came into being and never produced conscious life (e.g. because the gravitational constant was too weak and stars, planets etc never formed), would it really exist?

The problem I have with the Anthropic Principle is that in order for the universe to come into being, it needs to go through several billion years of galaxy/star/planet formation, evolution yada yada yada in order for conscious sentient life to arise, during which time it doesn't really exist, except in a kind of potential sense. This just seems bogus to me.

[WillieWoohah]

29. Perhaps the Muslims in Indonesia were "raptured" into heaven

Maybe the devout Muslims of Aceh who lived a materialistically simple life were the "true" believers and followers of God, and the rest of us fallen folks left behind are going to have to endure the coming of the anti-Christ and 7 years of end-times tribulation here on earth...

Have any of the fundies considered that possibility? :)

[Dcitizen]

31. Apparition sites revealed warning messages very often.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. Can you rephrase that?

Because I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.

[shawn703]

33. The problem is that we try to fit God into an equation n/t

[Selwynn]

34. Only indicates faith was mis-based in the first place :(

It is the misconception of omnipotence and omniscience and the clinging to fundamentalist interpretations of what God is and is like that create this crises of faith - when the uncompromising forces of reality tear down the straw houses of fundamentalism and literalism.

Not having any illusions that a god of love - which implies freedom, risk, uncertainty and trust - either causes catastrophe or could stop catastrophe but chooses not to, unspeakable horrific tragedy does not cause me to blame a god not at fault, but it does cause me to take comfort in the nature of his compassion and grace even in the midst of the very, very worst. God's promise that he will "never leave us nor forsake us" wasn't for the times when things were going great - it was for the times when things are utter shit.

It is his promise to be in the utter shit with us, weeping with those who weeping, proving a source of comfort and strength to go on even in the darkest of hours. In other words - I don't expect my lovers or friends to have supernatural powers when I grieve. But by the fact that they are my friends or lovers, they will be there with me, comfort me, and carry me when I can't carry myself - and that it why I cherish them. It's the same with God, only magnified and more personal in some ways - that friend that sticks closer than a brother.

I don't love and cherish my relationship with God because he is a kind of "superman" that is able to prevent tragedy but frequently doesn't. I love and cherish my relationship with God because he is a friend, and he loves me and I him, and he gives me comfort and grace for whatever I face. There is nothing that God can do, that he isn't actively doing for everyone at every present moment. Certainly what God might want to do is often curtailed by human resistance, but there is never anything God is holding back. God's covenant with us is not that he CAN prevent all human suffering or tragedy, because he can't by the very nature of his character as love - love is free not coercive, risky not certain. So is this world.

Creation itself was a risk of love, not a coercively controlled automaton. God's covenant with us therefore is that with him, no matter what we may face in life, we can experience a life worth living. Not one free from suffering, or loss, or hardship or even catastrophe. But one where, not matter what things we face, his grace and comfort and tender support and strength fuels our spirit and our human resolve, and our human hope and determination to strive for the good and go on living, and risk again, to rebuild, to start anew. God's covenant promise to his children is that if we walk with him, we can come to the end of our lives, look back on our lives - even lives lived through this catastrophe, and 9/11 and the loss of loved ones and all the sad things we've experience - and when looking at the full picture say to ourselves "living was wroth dying for. If I had it to do all over again... I would."

This is the promise of faith -- a life that is... worth it. Everything else is a distortion of what actually matters. I don't love God because I think somehow it is able to prevent catastrophe. I love God because of his covenant to me to go with me and before me even in the most darkest hours of my life and give me grace and strength while tirelessly working hope out of even the deepest despairs.

Sel

[Donald Ian Rankin]

35. Actually,

The title was added afterwards, by the newspaper and not the Archbishop, and he complained vociferously that it wasn't true that "The Tsunami caused him to doubt the existence of God", or that that was a fair summary of the article.

I leave it to readers to judge for themselves if it is.