Believe anything

[Bravus]

G.K. Chesterton had that great line (which the rules of this forum forbid me posting!) about when people stop believing in God, it's not that they believe nothing, it's that they'll believe anything.

And there's good evidence for that, in things like the New Age craze and enthusiasm for dreamcatchers and the power of crystals and so on.

But I wonder whether perhaps those who believe in God *also* will sometimes believe anything. In recent days we've had Dr Rich's post about only a few SDAs in Southern California knowing the *real* gospel and not releasing it until mid-2012, we've had the story of the radios mysteriously given to uncontacted Amazon tribes that were tuned to Advent World Radio that converted them (because, you know, uncontacted Amazon tribes totally speak English or Spanish...) and a wide variety of other conspiracy theories and other odd beliefs.

I'm genuinely not attacking believers, but asking what I think is a real and important question in terms of protecting believers from dangerous nonsense.

I do wonder whether a belief system that, kind of by definition, *requires* believing in the face of the evidence predisposes people to believe crazy stuff.

[Dr. Shane]

Sola Scriptura is what should keep us from believing in too crazy of stuff. Of course, some people will point out that there are crazy things in Scripture like Jonah and the big fish, Jesus walking on water and walking through walls, etc.

[fccool]

Recently there's been a story of a miracle from God on GC site. It was a story about an Adventist family, whose car broke down.

They prayed hard and went for the loan to the bank, and it was denied. But, they kept praying and a couple of month later the father's company gave officers allowance for a company car. Since the father was an officer, he got a car. A miracle from God and an answer to a prayer.

Most Christians have no problems of turning the regular occurring events into miracles. So, some questions beg answering:

- Would the company still give the allowance for the company car to every officer if Adventist family car did not break down?

It's really not that hard to see that much of these stories are contrived. Our pastor keeps telling the story during every funeral that makes me both ashamed and uneasy. It's about a guy who's mother passed away, but he was not Christian. And then a day after funeral he saw Jesus who told him "I will be responsible for the prayers of your mother, so why won't you give me your heart". And the guy was weeping when the sister came up, and told her that he now believes. Now, this story is not just told as some story. It's told in order to convince people that they should become Christians because of the prayers of their parents... and it's done so when they are emotionally unstable.

I don't necessarily dismiss those things. If there's a God, then why not? But that's the point. Anything really goes if there's no legitimate way to disprove otherwise. I could say that I saw Jesus standing in my bedroom this morning and he wished out pastor a happy birthday and he wanted him to have a $1000, and still be considered sane. Especially if Pastor has been praying for some financial help. That would make it a miracle.

[Bravus]

I've felt the same about some of the 'God thing' stories in Town Hall recently:

Woman feels confused, pizza man miraculously calls 911, but she has a brain tumor and dies.

If God was gonna do a miracle, I think I'd have picked 'cured brain tumor' over 'kind pizza guy'. Not to mention that making the pizza guy's kindness miraculous somehow devalues it.

[SivartM]

Isn't God so kind to miraculously give us cars and stuff while millions of children are starving? :\

[Gail]

LOL Great pondering!

Who am I to judge another person's experience? Yet, God is a God of dignity and reason as much as of faith and miracles.

There is a time for miracles, and a time to wonder why a miracle didn't happen here. Solomon could have said that!

The Bible talks about signs and wonders being a sign of the anti-Christ power, so I think it reasonable to think that the supernatural does occur.

There are some people who have just too many strange and wonderful things happen to them to be coincidental. My daughter is one of those. In fact, it was those acts that led her, finally, a logically-minded person, to believe in God.

[Gail]

Okay, I've been thinking about this a bit...

How are you supposed to know what you are to believe, if some part of believing requires some faith?

What if faith was everything? Can you trust just anyone and everyone who says to you, Trust me? And yet, God does that.

Why? or why not?

[Lisa Diane]

Thanks you for the post.

[hch]

The mother of the little girl that was with the woman at the time was grateful that the pizza man knew what to do and did it rather than having the child left alone with the grandmother in a panic. How traumatic it would have been if the grandmother had just died in the presence of the child. Being at the right place, doing the right thing, and being a blessing at the right time is not a miracle it is a God thing.

And remember, we live in a sinful world. God could have healed the old lady. For 50-years she had been surrounded by loving SDA Christian friends that faithfully gave her the message. She said it was a great message, but it was not for her. to her dying day, she had ample opportunity to take a stand for Jesus, but she chose not to do so.

But right up to the end, God demonstrated His love for her, even though she did not respond in kind. Perhaps we will see the rest of the story when we are safe in heaven. The family appreciated how God worked through the pizza man even if some bystanders that hear of it do not understand.

[hch]

Crazy stuff is in the eye of the beholder.

The antediluvians knew that Noah was preaching crazy stuff. From the time of Adam, it had never rained. There had never been a local flood: never mind a global flood.

Noah knew that the antediluvians were believing crazy stuff, because they were rejecting the word of truth.

And with all the crazy stuff being talked about in Noah's Day, the majority decided to wait and see - until it was too late to get into the lifeboat. But in our enlightened space age we don't have to worry about the crazy stuff.

That is unless we are in Laodicea. That church is blind and in need of nothing except the things that they think they already have. But as it was in the days of NOah, some will wait and SEE. Maybe that is why Jesus gave us the parable of the 10-Virgins? Maybe He was hoping to wake up some of them before it was forever too late?

[hch]

2 Timothy 2:15

Acts 17:11

Jeremiah 29:13

[Bravus]

OK, I take the Noah example. But the Heaven's Gate cultists who believed there were aliens following the Hale-Bopp comet and committed mass suicide also believed crazy stuff.

Your response doesn't give us any way of distinguishing between Noah-crazy and Heaven's Gate-crazy.

[abelisle]

There's an easy solution to these queries re: credulousness.

Everyone is saved (even those who don't want to be) and re-educated to different degrees (for whatever length of time is necessary) so that we all will be 'qualified' to be citizens of Heaven.

So, it's not what we believe at all but it's a shame that religion forces us to believe for it(religion) to work.

Just another credulous idea

Alex

P.S. Universalism and theosis are NOT my original ideas.

[Gail]

Faith... that's a pretty big concept for some people!

How does that fit with reason? Is it reasonable? To me it doesn't seem like a very big stretch to believe in what you can see. And if that was the case faith would relegate itself out of the supernatural zone.

What makes the difference between faith in a legitimate God plan and a crazy Jim Jones scheme?

[Bravus]

There's the rub, and a very nice clarification of my original question. If true faith means believing without or in the face of the evidence, how do we usefully distinguish it from false faith?

Lots of the crazy out there is dangerous to one's life and health, and much of it also to one's soul.

[cardw]

I think that is the essential question.

How do you distinguish between crazy faith and useful faith?

I see faith in a very practical sense. It's a willingness to try something out to see if it works and trust or have faith that it might actually do what it claims.

Now I think that if the risk that it doesn't work is death then I think one might want to test the water with something a little less risky.

Crazy faith keeps going even though all the evidence and experience tells you that it isn't working or it might actually be harmful. I think this happens in many cases where authority is the basis of choices rather than working it out for one's self.

Scott Peck in his book The People of the Lie suggested that evil is laziness. I see many people prefer to let someone else do their thinking for them and aren't really willing to face the possibility that there isn't a god out there saving anyone.

I see faith, in this instance, as a means to stay out of despair. I move forward every day even though I have no guarantee that anything is going to work out. What is amazing is that most times it does. And even when it doesn't, if I stay in faith, different ways seem to emerge.

What is interesting is that Jesus didn't say to have faith in something. He just said to have faith.

One day I will die, but in the mean time I would far rather put my energy into a trust approach than a despairing approach. It seems far more reasonable based on the results and the fact that despair has only one possible result.

[hch]

I wondered why the format was yellow.

Without being able to quote a greater authority, man is going to believe anything and everything that comes down the pike.

The intrinsic trend of the human mind is to believe what it wants to believe. I think they call it situational ethics?

[hch]

Bravus,

The people in Noah's day were like the Heaven's Gate cultists.

It has never been easy to distinguish truth from error.

The better the pitch, the more likely it is being sweetened.

When I was job hunting several years ago, a hospital offered to hire me on the spot. And they offered me a much better salary than another job that I was considering. The lo-pay job was closer to home, but the administration was in a turmoil and they had a long processing time before I could begin work.

I needed a job and I couldn't afford to wait, but the job that offered the great package seemed too good to be true. I decided to pass on the best offer and wait for the low-pay job.

Two-three weeks later when I started working for the low-pay facility, the evening news announced that the hospital with the great pay package just went bankrupt. All of its employees were unemployed and there were no funds to pay back wages.

Was that an instance of discernment, luck, or even Providence?

I would say Providence. Why? Because I once worked a job that required allot of driving and on the way to work one day, I thought "wouldn't it be nice to have Ann's job?" Then I repented for coveting Ann's job. But I closed my prayer, "If Ann's job should ever be open, I's like it."

That evening while I was at supper, Ann knocked on the door. "I just turned in my notice. You came to mind. I could not reach you on the phone so I thought I would drive over to tell you. If you are interested, I've recommended you."

The hiring process was another story in itself. But I got the job and not only that. Ann's job paid $8.00 an hour less than what I was making at the time. My lifestyle was geared to my income. I negotiated with Ann's boss and he met my salary needs.

Knowing how God has led me in the past, I believe that Providence has been and is guiding my life.

Did the Heaven's Gate cultists and those that missed the boat in Noah's day have an experience with God to justify their actions, or were they hoping to gain a relationship by their course of action?

[fccool]

Henry,

There's a phenomenon in psychology that was dubbed simulacrum. Essentially it is the ability of human subconscious mind to create an image of something that it really wants to be real, and then interpret both the world and the events as though such image is real.

I think there are a couple questions you must consider before you automatically assign these things to God's providence.

1) Do you believe that God's will is for you to be comfortable and get paid great salary and look after you personally in light of suffering of so many that could be alleviated for mere several dollars a day?

2) Do you believe that the same COULD AND DOES happen without putting God into equation. I.E>

a) Do employees think about other people when they select candidates for a job?

Does certain choice in job end up being better in some cases without person knowing it in advance?

3) If we assume a reality without the God of the Bible, do you believe that such events would still happen in your life?

There's little thing in Philosophy and Science that's called Occam's Razor. Many people incorrectly apply it to disprove God's existence, but it's a mere principle by which both you and I live (in 99% of cases)... whether we know it or not.

The principle basically states that when we are faced with two possible explanations for the same set of evidence, our minds will naturally prefer the explanation that makes the fewest assumptions. The reason that many make exemption in case of Christianity and God Thing is because they don't believe that they assume certain things. They actually think that the reality that they formulated in their minds is real... i.e. it is as real as the air they breathe and ground they walk on.

So, in your case, if we apply the Occam's razor principle then we'd have to ask the basic set of questions I'm asking above. Believe me, you'd ask the same questions in every other situation other than the one you set in your mind as a reality.

For example, you hear a loud sound coming from the closed. You walk into your room and you open up the door. There's a box on the ground inside the closed. There's nobody else in the closed. Your mind could automatically generate several hypothesis about how the box falls. For example:

1) The box was loose or crooked and slipped over time

2) God did it to get your attention

3) Satan did it to scare you

4) Some sort of animal pulled knocked it down and escaped

Naturally, the Occam's Razor will cut #2 - #4, and it does so in virtually every aspect of your life daily. You don't ascribe every good thing that happens in your life to doing of God.

For example, you don't go around the grocery and looking for something and find what you are looking for and then think that God made it happen. You don't think of a neighbor doing a random act of kindness, like cutting your grass, to be the act of God's providence. Those "God Things" tend to be something big that you really want to happen, perhaps subconsciously really wanted them to work out for the better... and wanted real help outside of yourself? So, when these do work out, does it seem plausible that you would then believe that the outcome is because of the supernatural intervention... just like you wanted it to be in the first place?

This is a fairly dangerous question to ask, but can you perhaps see that there's a chance that certain things are viewed a certain way because you want them to be true? While you abandon the Occam's Razor for the sake of certain faith that you hold to be as good as true, you use it for virtually everything else.

This is really a tough stuff to ponder... so perhaps in many cases it's better to keep beliefs intact and live a productive life doing so. A life filled with peace of "knowing the truth".

[Tom Wetmore]

Part of my belief about God is not to automatically attribute things that naturally happen to his handiwork. In fact I think that God actually intervenes in life far less frequently than most Christians believe, or want to think. I believe that while a creator God would have to be very powerful and wise, I think that He would have to exercise incredible self-restraint to not get to meddling around with the course of history. I think that most of his "miracles" are very gentle nudges, since a minor change of direction over time alters the course of history profoundly far into the future. But if he kept meddling now to solve all the small human dramas of the moment, he knows that the chain of events unleashed by each small nudge could ultimately spell disaster and create chaos that could take generations to undo or correct.

But what I do believe is that He is more than happy to work with our perception of those events, to build trust in his plans. He can use those positive natural events to build confidence and the negative events to build strength and perseverance. But the important element of the relationship is trust - a trust that knows that ultimately it will all turn out OK. It is a safe place to be.

[Tom Wetmore]

And I think that the trusting approach is what faith is all about. I see it as the ultimate attitude antidote to fear. That attitude of trust is one of the child-like attributes that Jesus saw as essential. Consider that a child holding the hand of a parent trusts in spite of their fear of the dark, or whatever, that they are safe. The greater the trust, the greater the fear that can be faced. I do not see faith as being anything else but trust.

[Igakusei]

I agree with your first sentence. I actually find the idea that God helps me find my keys in the morning somewhat offensive, considering that he passively watched 250,000 people get wiped out by a tsunami in Thailand in 2004.

[Igakusei]

That last post was a little off-topic since I had just posted the same argument elsewhere on this board, and something you said reminded me of it.

More to the OP:

I feel that while you're on to something, you're only halfway there. Almost everyone I've talked to that has rejected the idea of God has done so on a critical, evidenciary basis. These are not the type of people who will replace one fairy-tale for another, since they rejected the first one on the grounds that it has not met its burden of proof.

I acknowledge that this may be my limited experience, but most people I've met who "believe anything" are the type that do not examine evidence critically, and drift from nonsense to nonsense.

It's not that skeptics believe nothing (or anything), it's that we have decided to believe only things for which there is sufficient reason and evidence. I don't feel that the Christian or any other anthropogenic God has met this requirement, and I certainly don't think that dream-catchers, fairies, or unicorns do either.

[Bravus]

Good call, Chesterton may have confused two different groups with one another.