A Hollow Agnosticism

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Chris Hedges is a heretic by the standards here.  To be sure.  But he's also been involved in pointing out how hollow and vapid most of the liberal Churchs have become.  How they have turned inward and become narcissistic.  So I would be interested in phatmassers opinions on Hedges critique of Bart Ehrman

 

EVIL IS NOT A PROBLEM. Evil is a mystery. Bart Ehrman in his book God's Problem cannot reconcile a belief in God with this mystery and the cold reality of the morally neutral universe we inhabit. He wonders how God could allow the Holocaust to happen and children to starve to death. He wants a God that will make it better. And when God won't or can't or isn't interested, he walks away in a huff. This petulant stance would please Sigmund Freud, who insisted religion was a form of infantile regression, but it is another example of our cultural narcissism and childishness. Ehrman has become, after leaving the faith, a self-avowed agnostic. But he remains trapped within the simpleminded belief that religious faith, to have legitimacy, means there has to be something logical and ultimately just about human existence.

"I realized that I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of life," he writes. "In particular, I could no longer explain how there can be a good and all-powerful God actively involved with this world, given the state of things."

There is strong desire on the part of many in the human species to believe that human suffering and deprivation is ultimately meaningful, that it has a purpose, that our lives make sense. Human cultures have long sought to placate the demands of an all-powerful God, or gods, in return for protection from the vicissitudes of fortune. This is the engine that drives the Christian right. This powerful human desire, however, should not be confused with the reality of the transcendent. God answered Moses' request for revelation with the words: "i am who i am." This phrase is probably more accurately translated "i will be what i will be." God is not a being. God is an experience. God is a verb, not a noun. God comes to us in the profound flashes of insight that cut through the darkness, in the hope that permits human beings to cope with inevitable pain, despair, and suffering. God comes in the healing solidarity of love and self-sacrifice. But God and the vagaries of human existence, including suffering, are beyond our capacity to explain or understand.

More here:

http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news-events/harvard-divinity-bulletin/articles/a-hollow-agnosticism

 

[Chestertonian]

Seeing as how TPoE is considered to be the single biggest stumbling lock to theism, if people saw things the way Hedges does, there'd probably significantly fewer atheists.

[BigJon16]

Chris Hedges is a heretic by the standards here.  To be sure.  But he's also been involved in pointing out how hollow and vapid most of the liberal Churchs have become.  How they have turned inward and become narcissistic.  So I would be interested in phatmassers opinions on Hedges critique of Bart Ehrman

 

EVIL IS NOT A PROBLEM. Evil is a mystery. Bart Ehrman in his book God's Problem cannot reconcile a belief in God with this mystery and the cold reality of the morally neutral universe we inhabit. He wonders how God could allow the Holocaust to happen and children to starve to death. He wants a God that will make it better. And when God won't or can't or isn't interested, he walks away in a huff. This petulant stance would please Sigmund Freud, who insisted religion was a form of infantile regression, but it is another example of our cultural narcissism and childishness. Ehrman has become, after leaving the faith, a self-avowed agnostic. But he remains trapped within the simpleminded belief that religious faith, to have legitimacy, means there has to be something logical and ultimately just about human existence.

"I realized that I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of life," he writes. "In particular, I could no longer explain how there can be a good and all-powerful God actively involved with this world, given the state of things."

There is strong desire on the part of many in the human species to believe that human suffering and deprivation is ultimately meaningful, that it has a purpose, that our lives make sense. Human cultures have long sought to placate the demands of an all-powerful God, or gods, in return for protection from the vicissitudes of fortune. This is the engine that drives the Christian right. This powerful human desire, however, should not be confused with the reality of the transcendent. God answered Moses' request for revelation with the words: "i am who i am." This phrase is probably more accurately translated "i will be what i will be." God is not a being. God is an experience. God is a verb, not a noun. God comes to us in the profound flashes of insight that cut through the darkness, in the hope that permits human beings to cope with inevitable pain, despair, and suffering. God comes in the healing solidarity of love and self-sacrifice. But God and the vagaries of human existence, including suffering, are beyond our capacity to explain or understand.

More here:

http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news-events/harvard-divinity-bulletin/articles/a-hollow-agnosticism

 

 

 

I think he makes a few interesting points. 

 

 

He wants a God that will make it better. And when God won't or can't or isn't interested, he walks away in a huff. This petulant stance would please Sigmund Freud, who insisted religion was a form of infantile regression, but it is another example of our cultural narcissism and childishness. Ehrman has become, after leaving the faith, a self-avowed agnostic. But he remains trapped within the simpleminded belief that religious faith, to have legitimacy, means there has to be something logical and ultimately just about human existence.

 

 

This. It is in a way selfish and impudent to think that God must act as you think He should. Ehrman also makes the mistake of thinking that God is of this world, and that we are too. 

 

 

There is strong desire on the part of many in the human species to believe that human suffering and deprivation is ultimately meaningful, that it has a purpose, that our lives make sense. 

 

In a way, suffering does have a purpose. We were made for Something. As Christians, Christ shows us, as well as throughout "Salvation History" that true love comes through and bears suffering. Life experience and even human biology can teach us this as well. If a woman knows of  the amount of excruciating pain giving birth to a child causes, then what in the world could ever provoke her to seek having a child? I would argue that that one thing is love. And I'm not talking about the "fluffy, pink, feel-good" stereotypical love. I'm talking love-love. Realistic love. "Love that cannot suffer is not worthy of that name." St. Clare of Assisi. 

 

 

God answered Moses' request for revelation with the words: "i am who i am." This phrase is probably more accurately translated "i will be what i will be." 

 

This is an interesting interpretation. It says a lot to support his first point that I quoted. 

 

 

God is not a being. God is an experience. God is a verb, not a noun.

 

I was liking it up until I got to this. And then I was like, "ope, thaaat's wrong." That is a pretty heretical statement. 

 

 God comes to us in the profound flashes of insight that cut through the darkness, in the hope that permits human beings to cope with inevitable pain, despair, and suffering. God comes in the healing solidarity of love and self-sacrifice. But God and the vagaries of human existence, including suffering, are beyond our capacity to explain or understand.

 

I really liked this last part, though. To me, it actually seems to totally disregard and refute his heretical statement. To say in one sentence that God is a verb, and then in the other that that "verb" has the ability to come to us and give us hope is kind of illogical. It totally disregards the whole God being a "verb" thing. A verb is something that you do. God is not what you do. God is an entity, and although He can come to you through what you do, He is not the action itself. 

 

 

 

Now, I'm not a theologian or any type of expert. This is just my "two cents." Someone who likes to show how much smarter they are then me will probably come by and throw it in the phat-trash eventually. 

[Era Might]

The more complex an argument is for or against the Gospel, the less patience I've grown to have for it.

 

"Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life?" Not comforting to rationalists and academics, I admit, but if I've found anything hollow in my life, it's reason and academia. Not that I dislike those things, but they always leave me cold.

 

I think the Gospel is very simple. Everything is Christ. Every mouth is shut before that fact. Feed the hungry. Keep yourself unstained from the world. And hope until the end.

 

And if it's not true, what have you lost?

 

Yes, there are pharisees and bourgeoisie and health and wealth evangelists and corrupt priests and divorced and remarried Christians and people who aren't very likeable. Ok. That doesn't change the simplicity of the Gospel: you are no better than any of them, and don't have to be.

Edited June 6, 2013 by Era Might