Douglas Adams inserted a hilarious bit of theological satire into The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that I would have added to my last post if I had remembered it in time. Adams has just finished introducing a comically convenient plot device: the Babel Fish. This is a creature that feeds on sound waves and excretes brain waves – all you must do is place a Babel Fish in your ear, and then all languages are immediately translated into your native language.
Now it is such a bizarrely impossible coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The argument goes something like this:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
While at face value this is “the Design Argument Against the Existence of God,” don't miss the real point. It's not actually a rebuttal to the Design Argument or a positive argument for atheism. It's a satire of the “it's so we can have faith” defense for a lack of evidence for God or a particular religion.
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Power of Prayer: Believing Too Much
One place where Christians engage in doublethink is through a love/hate relationship with the concept of believing that God will actually do something when they pray. On the one hand, believers are supposed to believe God does things. But on the other hand, it's nice to be able to write off God's no-shows as the product of kooky beliefs in a “vending machine” God. (This is often a euphemism for a God that is distinguishable from no God at all.)
Some Christians actually believe that if they pray for healing, God will answer with healing. A fairly extreme group supporting such faith in action is Unleavened Bread Ministries. They have a page full of cool stories of how God healed people.
The interesting thing about one of the families involved in this ministry, the Neumanns, is that the results of their faith are a matter of public record. Last spring their 11-year-old daughter became extremely sick. Her parent prayed for her instead of taking her to see a doctor. What follows might have been the work of Satan. It might be a continuing test of their faith. What I do know is that Madeline Neumann died from a treatable form of diabetes while her parents petitioned an all-powerful, all-loving God for her healing. Her parents think she died because they didn't have enough faith. I think she died because her parents had too much faith. Faith like this is a form of criminal negligence, or at least it should be.
A lawsuit is currently brewing to see if the parents are guilty of second-degree murder. The Neumanns defense is quite interesting. Their friends' website states, “Before I give my case and point, let me say this: If we are going to judge this family -- which we really have no right to do -- we need to understand completely what the Bible states about healing and prayer. In short, the Bible states that we should trust God for healing and use prayer to achieve that goal.”
Don't ask God why this happened. We know why. The Neumanns let their child die from a treatable condition because they completely, sincerely, and absolutely had faith in the love and power of their God. If God wanted her to live she would have lived, and if God didn't why should they seek to oppose God's will through medicine? We must understand how much sense this makes viewed through the lens of their religion. The problem was not that her parents didn't care. The problem was not that they acted irrationally, given their worldview. Madeline Neumann died because her parents are people of childlike faith and consequently acted like children. Any religion that sees childlike faith as a good thing or believes that God will reward childlike faith should not be surprised by outcomes like this. Moderate religion lacks the language to properly express what went wrong – a culture with a healthy disrespect for faith is needed to combat tragedies like this.
There are two key places where the Neumann differ radically from mainstream evangelicals. Most obviously, they blamed the result on a lack of faith – this mistake has nothing to due with the Bible. Most of the book of Job is about refuting the idea that tragedies should automatically be blamed on sin. Plenty of differing evangelical beliefs come from differing picking-and-choosing, but the Neumanns are wrong here even if the Bible is true.
But while as a matter of fact, the Neumanns differ wildly from mainstream evangelicals by forgoing medical treatment, biblically speaking, it is not obvious why they are wrong. A case can be made for an alternative view, but it is hard to argue biblically that the Neumanns are necessarily wrong. What was wrong with trusting God with their actions rather than trusting the effectiveness of modern medicine? The Bible tells Christians to put their faith in God with much greater clarity than it tells Christians not to trust him for other things. While “do not test the Lord” is an explicit command, it was not the Neumanns' goal to test God but only to trust that he would take care of them and to live in a way that is consistent with this belief. The fact that Madeline's death did not cause them to call God a failure should be proof enough that they were not testing God and were not presuming to know the will of God but only living by faith in the way that they thought they should.
Among evangelicals, some form of the following catch-phrase is quite popular: “Prayer should be our first resource, not our last resort.” This is a convicting line for people whose first reaction to an accident is to call 911 first, and pray second. This is wrong! This is a sign of our weak faith! Forgive us Lord! But does prayer work? Adult Christians have such a hard time having childlike faith because they aren't children, and that's a good thing. They've seen too many prayers unanswered and too many colds successfully soothed with NyQuil to not use medicine as a first resource.
More “mature” approaches to prayer are to pray primarily in ways where if it did nothing at all, one would never know the difference. “God, be with person X during event Y,” “God help event X happen, if that's your will,” or prayers whose explicit goal is to change the attitudes of the one who is praying. When faced with a “no” answer that is indistinguishable from no answer, one is to react as if that's how it's supposed to be. “Yes” is to be paraded about in glory of God. Are there more “yes” answers than would be expected at random? These questions are not supposed to be asked, because this would be testing God. This needs to be called what it is: fear of the possibility that prayer doesn't really do anything. If it is biblical, it merely means that this fear of the truth is present in the Bible and not just in Christians.
Doctrines of prayer seem designed so that if prayer did nothing at all, people would never know the difference. And so prayer continues to do nothing at all, while people continue to be convinced that it is changing the world. If people who think God works miracles all the time still don't see that nothing is happening, how much more should we doubt the reality of God's answers to “be with me when...” prayers?
Prayer's true power should not be underestimated. The true power of prayer is its ability to blind people to its impotency as they believe all the way to second-degree murder. This power needs to be opposed.
Some Christians actually believe that if they pray for healing, God will answer with healing. A fairly extreme group supporting such faith in action is Unleavened Bread Ministries. They have a page full of cool stories of how God healed people.
The interesting thing about one of the families involved in this ministry, the Neumanns, is that the results of their faith are a matter of public record. Last spring their 11-year-old daughter became extremely sick. Her parent prayed for her instead of taking her to see a doctor. What follows might have been the work of Satan. It might be a continuing test of their faith. What I do know is that Madeline Neumann died from a treatable form of diabetes while her parents petitioned an all-powerful, all-loving God for her healing. Her parents think she died because they didn't have enough faith. I think she died because her parents had too much faith. Faith like this is a form of criminal negligence, or at least it should be.
A lawsuit is currently brewing to see if the parents are guilty of second-degree murder. The Neumanns defense is quite interesting. Their friends' website states, “Before I give my case and point, let me say this: If we are going to judge this family -- which we really have no right to do -- we need to understand completely what the Bible states about healing and prayer. In short, the Bible states that we should trust God for healing and use prayer to achieve that goal.”
Don't ask God why this happened. We know why. The Neumanns let their child die from a treatable condition because they completely, sincerely, and absolutely had faith in the love and power of their God. If God wanted her to live she would have lived, and if God didn't why should they seek to oppose God's will through medicine? We must understand how much sense this makes viewed through the lens of their religion. The problem was not that her parents didn't care. The problem was not that they acted irrationally, given their worldview. Madeline Neumann died because her parents are people of childlike faith and consequently acted like children. Any religion that sees childlike faith as a good thing or believes that God will reward childlike faith should not be surprised by outcomes like this. Moderate religion lacks the language to properly express what went wrong – a culture with a healthy disrespect for faith is needed to combat tragedies like this.
There are two key places where the Neumann differ radically from mainstream evangelicals. Most obviously, they blamed the result on a lack of faith – this mistake has nothing to due with the Bible. Most of the book of Job is about refuting the idea that tragedies should automatically be blamed on sin. Plenty of differing evangelical beliefs come from differing picking-and-choosing, but the Neumanns are wrong here even if the Bible is true.
But while as a matter of fact, the Neumanns differ wildly from mainstream evangelicals by forgoing medical treatment, biblically speaking, it is not obvious why they are wrong. A case can be made for an alternative view, but it is hard to argue biblically that the Neumanns are necessarily wrong. What was wrong with trusting God with their actions rather than trusting the effectiveness of modern medicine? The Bible tells Christians to put their faith in God with much greater clarity than it tells Christians not to trust him for other things. While “do not test the Lord” is an explicit command, it was not the Neumanns' goal to test God but only to trust that he would take care of them and to live in a way that is consistent with this belief. The fact that Madeline's death did not cause them to call God a failure should be proof enough that they were not testing God and were not presuming to know the will of God but only living by faith in the way that they thought they should.
Among evangelicals, some form of the following catch-phrase is quite popular: “Prayer should be our first resource, not our last resort.” This is a convicting line for people whose first reaction to an accident is to call 911 first, and pray second. This is wrong! This is a sign of our weak faith! Forgive us Lord! But does prayer work? Adult Christians have such a hard time having childlike faith because they aren't children, and that's a good thing. They've seen too many prayers unanswered and too many colds successfully soothed with NyQuil to not use medicine as a first resource.
More “mature” approaches to prayer are to pray primarily in ways where if it did nothing at all, one would never know the difference. “God, be with person X during event Y,” “God help event X happen, if that's your will,” or prayers whose explicit goal is to change the attitudes of the one who is praying. When faced with a “no” answer that is indistinguishable from no answer, one is to react as if that's how it's supposed to be. “Yes” is to be paraded about in glory of God. Are there more “yes” answers than would be expected at random? These questions are not supposed to be asked, because this would be testing God. This needs to be called what it is: fear of the possibility that prayer doesn't really do anything. If it is biblical, it merely means that this fear of the truth is present in the Bible and not just in Christians.
Doctrines of prayer seem designed so that if prayer did nothing at all, people would never know the difference. And so prayer continues to do nothing at all, while people continue to be convinced that it is changing the world. If people who think God works miracles all the time still don't see that nothing is happening, how much more should we doubt the reality of God's answers to “be with me when...” prayers?
Prayer's true power should not be underestimated. The true power of prayer is its ability to blind people to its impotency as they believe all the way to second-degree murder. This power needs to be opposed.
Monday, December 29, 2008
The Power of Prayer: Anecdotal Evidence
James 5:16b: The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.
Matthew 17:20: And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”
The Bible makes a number of very bold claims about the power of faith and prayer. Personally, I have seen faith greater than a mustard seed and I haven't seen any mountains move. I suppose most people have shared this experience. In light of how clearly false a literal interpretation is, it's not much of a surprise that most Christians think the mountain moving part is a metaphor. But a metaphor for what?
With few exceptions, the power of prayer is seen only through cool stories of how God works, rather than in verifiable claims. For now, I will meet the stories on their own ground.
About a month ago, I was driving home from Maryland in the dark and in pouring rain. I'm not sure why (probably to earn macho points), but I thought it would be a good idea to see if I could make it all the way without stopping. Three hours later, I had made it to my exit, but it was raining so hard that I didn't see the exit ramp until right after I passed it, even though I knew it was coming. If there's a good way to turn around on the New Jersey Turnpike, I still don't know it. A sign could have been proclaiming “Miss your exit? Go here, stupid” and I still couldn't have seen it through the rain. Half an hour later, I stopped at a gas station to ask which way was up. They gave me go-until-you-see-Wawa-then-turn-right-and-go-down-that-road-for-a-while style directions. After driving down that road for “a while,” I was still lost.
In the style of a Christian stopping to pray, I stopped for about a minute to collect my thoughts and simmer down. An hour ago, I was 15 minutes from home – that's gone, don't dwell on that. Anger is irrational here – adrenaline will just get me killed, so let go. Viewed from the bigger picture of say, today, a lost hour or two isn't really that bad. Prayer was very intentionally left out – I didn't go through some facade of “just in case.” I apply Pascal's Wager to an honesty loving deity rather than a faith loving deity, so I don't pray.
I found another gas station, and stopped to buy a detailed road map and have the clerk point out where I was. But he had a better idea. Despite the fact that I was 14 miles from home, he lived less than two miles away from me. Not only that, his ride home had just canceled on him, and his shift ended in ten minutes. Needless to say, I was more than willing to give him a lift for free. Heck, I almost gave him a tip.
If I had been a Christian, this would have been among my more dramatic examples of an answered prayer. Thank you God for making his ride cancel on him, and for leading me to that exact gas station! God hears before we even ask!
But I didn't ask. So why should I be impressed when Christians tell similar stories about what happened when they did ask? Either God is a rewarder of sincere disbelief, or stuff like this just happens without any deity calling the shots.
Matthew 17:20: And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.”
The Bible makes a number of very bold claims about the power of faith and prayer. Personally, I have seen faith greater than a mustard seed and I haven't seen any mountains move. I suppose most people have shared this experience. In light of how clearly false a literal interpretation is, it's not much of a surprise that most Christians think the mountain moving part is a metaphor. But a metaphor for what?
With few exceptions, the power of prayer is seen only through cool stories of how God works, rather than in verifiable claims. For now, I will meet the stories on their own ground.
About a month ago, I was driving home from Maryland in the dark and in pouring rain. I'm not sure why (probably to earn macho points), but I thought it would be a good idea to see if I could make it all the way without stopping. Three hours later, I had made it to my exit, but it was raining so hard that I didn't see the exit ramp until right after I passed it, even though I knew it was coming. If there's a good way to turn around on the New Jersey Turnpike, I still don't know it. A sign could have been proclaiming “Miss your exit? Go here, stupid” and I still couldn't have seen it through the rain. Half an hour later, I stopped at a gas station to ask which way was up. They gave me go-until-you-see-Wawa-then-turn-right-and-go-down-that-road-for-a-while style directions. After driving down that road for “a while,” I was still lost.
In the style of a Christian stopping to pray, I stopped for about a minute to collect my thoughts and simmer down. An hour ago, I was 15 minutes from home – that's gone, don't dwell on that. Anger is irrational here – adrenaline will just get me killed, so let go. Viewed from the bigger picture of say, today, a lost hour or two isn't really that bad. Prayer was very intentionally left out – I didn't go through some facade of “just in case.” I apply Pascal's Wager to an honesty loving deity rather than a faith loving deity, so I don't pray.
I found another gas station, and stopped to buy a detailed road map and have the clerk point out where I was. But he had a better idea. Despite the fact that I was 14 miles from home, he lived less than two miles away from me. Not only that, his ride home had just canceled on him, and his shift ended in ten minutes. Needless to say, I was more than willing to give him a lift for free. Heck, I almost gave him a tip.
If I had been a Christian, this would have been among my more dramatic examples of an answered prayer. Thank you God for making his ride cancel on him, and for leading me to that exact gas station! God hears before we even ask!
But I didn't ask. So why should I be impressed when Christians tell similar stories about what happened when they did ask? Either God is a rewarder of sincere disbelief, or stuff like this just happens without any deity calling the shots.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)