Mr. Galaska is currently on virtual tour with his book and will be stopping off at various blogs throughout the month. As part of his tour, I invited him to guest post here and asked him the question:
Do you think a skeptical world is a bad thing? Do people need faith? If yes, why?
In the context of Finding Faith in a Skeptical World, I use the word skeptical to mean skeptical about God. Obviously it’s a good thing to be skeptical about a guy who promises to rewrite your mortgage if only you’ll pay him $3,000 or a street performer who shows you how easy it is to track the pea under the walnut shell.
I think skepticism about God is unfair, subtle and widespread. And I do think it’s a bad thing insofar as it dissuades people from pursuing faith. Intellectuals like Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins are very popular and persuasive skeptics who can be intimidating with their scope of knowledge and ability to turn a phrase. But it doesn’t take a superior mind to see the weaknesses in their arguments that the verbosity fails to hide.
Skeptics account for the beginning of life as the result of the “magic of large numbers.” They know that the creation of life is a highly unlikely random event, but given billions of planets and billions of years they claim it happened anyway. Scientists studying DNA disagree and many conclude that the spontaneous generation of life is impossible. They agree with Albert Einstein, who called the universe’s creative and organizing force “the mind of God.” While Einstein’s focus on logic apparently kept him from taking the spiritual leap into faith in a personal God, he understood that a creator is necessary. You wouldn’t know it, but ongoing discoveries have caused many other scientists to believe in God, too.
Unfortunately, uncritical people reading Dawkins and Dennett often accept their views as fact and any thought of faith is killed then and there. Richard and Daniel would be gratified to know this.
I was an atheist for a long time partially because of a philosophy course I took in college. Cold logic seemed to convincingly dismiss the idea of God, and I bought into it. Decades later I became motivated to learn about faith and opened my mind to it. After shedding much of my skepticism by exploring the pro-God arguments I finally took the leap into spiritual faith. And once I did, I found that life improved dramatically.
As an atheist with no faith in God or the afterlife, you’re left with a finite existence that’s lived in a world ruled by human nature. From an individual point of view, every day that goes by puts you one step closer to the end. And along the way, you’ll experience the loss of friends and relatives, the infirmities that come with old age and finally….nothing.
When I sought faith I met an elderly woman at church. She was in her nineties, had osteoporosis and used a walker, but every Sunday she’d get up, get dressed, put her makeup on and come to church. When you asked her how she was doing, she’d smile sweetly and answer, “I’m blessed.” At first I thought, “What’s up with that? She’s got physical problems that aren’t going away, can hardly walk and is getting even older by the day.” I came to realize that as a Christian she was looking forward to a time when she’d be done with her body and living free of her problems for eternity. This ability to look past problems and put them in the perspective of your final destination gives Christians an optimism that lasts their entire lives. But it’s not available to atheists.
This is only one of the benefits for an individual who believes in God. Others are the strength and guidance that come with prayer, forgiveness for misdeeds that reduce the psychological baggage many of us carry, and a peace that resides within you.
On another level, if there is no God then his moral lessons are no more valuable than the rules man comes up with on his own. Unbelievers like to point out the deadly things that have happened on Christianity’s watch: the Inquisitions and Crusades come to mind. But these occurred under the auspices of a church that had been thrust into a position of political power that caused the teachings of Christ to be stood on their head, if not ignored completely. The overarching command for Christians to “love your neighbor as yourself” was obviously not on the minds of the perpetrators.
Despite man’s ability to ignore the teachings of his faith, it still helps to moderate behavior. In World War II the U.S. reprehensibly interned Japanese-Americans, but does anyone doubt they would have been executed by our opponents if they were in the same position? Even today, with the controversy over waterboarding, at least there was a review process that limited the types of interrogation methods used. There is no such restraint on atheistic totalitarian regimes that are bound only by the ethics of expediency. Which means no ethics at all.
Skeptics find faith in God to be unnecessary, but this leaves us subject to the unfettered whims of men. Look at what happened over the past century: atheistic regimes run by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and others were responsible for the murder of millions upon millions of people. And yet some of us are confident in man’s ability to restrain himself without guidance from a higher authority. To believe this defies history and common sense.
It’s apparent to me that we’re better off with faith both as individuals and as a society. Unbelievers (like I once was) tend to have an air of intellectual superiority and self-assuredness that comes from a sense that they’re realists who have the personal strength to get through life without the opiate they’re convinced that faith is.
Do people need faith? It depends on whether they want to go through life’s trials and tribulations without the hope, strength and peace it offers. Anybody can get through life without it – and lots do. But you can’t put a price on the benefits of believing in something that gets you through life with an undying positive anticipation of the future.
Before I get into anything else, I just want to say…
Isabel Gillies had a wonderful life – a wonderful, poetic husband, two lovely sons, a house she and her family had turned into a home, and a bright future ahead. When her husband accepts a job in Ohio, she leaves New York to create a new life for her family. She even ends up getting a job teaching acting at the university her husband is teaching at.
There is a talk going on right now in one of my author/blogger groups about the difference between book promotion and book selling, and I wanted to talk about it on my blogs.
Brrrr! I don’t think we’re officially into winter in Australia yet, but it certainly feels like it! Today is quite cold, cloudy and altogether winterish - just without the snow.
The Earth and the creatures that live on it are strange, weird and utterly amazing. Nowhere is that more clearly demonstrated than Ian Harrison’s visitor’s guide to Earth.
Review by Mr. JM
