God Has The Answer But What was the Question?

Does Irwin not see that we are indeed combatants—fighters in a war of rationality against superstition? But Irwin, of course, refuses to go the last step and see that there are real consequences of religionists working out their certainty in the public sphere. His is a chickenshit compromise that ignores the realities of faith.

Finally, if God is a question, not an answer, that pretty much guts conventional religions—or at least religious practice. How do you pray to a question? What about the certainties evinced in practices like Communion, or wearing Magic Underwear? Do we still keep these practices? In the end, Irwin says nothing new; his column is a total waste of space. I believe that your logic, and precisely the way you articulate it, should be used as the best example, in fact a standard, on how all gawd issues should immediately be addressed.

From my perspective there is really only one thing to do in the face of your position: And, my question to PCC, riffing on your last paragraph: One reason might bee that Prof. These are answers, answered long ago, and never to be doubted as truth. And people want it to be simple.

Religion relies on unquestioning faith. Science relies on evidence. I like your response, too, Jerry, but one thing is left out: The more one fills in particulars, narrows the definition, the more easily one can reject it. I agree, and did think about that. The religious already have an answer for that: Catholics especially resort to this.

Now, please ignore these massive shelves of books on god, telling us exactly what he is and wants from us.

Early Islamic theologians insisted that God has no attributes at all. Maybe they still do — I must sadly plead ignorance. Maybe they were trying to avoid theological traps; maybe they were being modest; maybe somew of them were sensible to simply start feeling uneasy about how prosaic it all becomes…. It was a long time ago and some, eg. Plus Al Razi was almost certainly a non-believers. So there may well have been a few others who were sincerely modest. By way of examples, he brought up arguments theologians would have over divine capabilities and other matters. It was accepted that Allah was capable of sitting on the throne, though since Allah is regarded as immaterial, how could this be?

And what were the state of his stools? And while he sat on the stool, did he ever use a stool softener? There has been change over time on this. I remember reading of the debate in I think the 11th or 10th centuries in Islam over whether god could even manipulate particulars — there was a thought that immaterial could only interact with immaterial, or something like that. Adopted Spinozism, have we? V agreeable people are excellent in some situations, in others, you wish they would grow a spine.

The same is true for belief in God. The True Believer harbors certainty, which really means that he assigns such a low probability to the contrary position that his belief is effectively a certainty. And for an atheist, the probability that God or the tooth fairy exists is so low that the issue is similarly trivial. Indeed, I have to wonder whether the omission, by a learned philosopher, of the concept of probability was deliberate. But uncertainty about existing states of nature is a different matter.

Canoe offers a relevant example. No right, no wrong; just different.

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We approach the question respectfully and with an open mind in that we recognize that not everyone has the same goals we do, our own goals may change, and our methods may need reassessment. Above all, there is no great virtue in concluding one way or the other. It comes down to the nature of the God claim.

If the issue is forced into one of identity, atheists always lose.

Does God answer prayers?

Faith is an uneven playing field. Whether he likes it or not — or means to or not — Irwin is trying to impose a negative framework on us. Passive aggression is still aggression. The one that comes to a negative conclusion and says so. The part that I find most dishonest is not admitting uncertainties and doubts — thinking about how we know what we know often exposes a lot of uncertainty in nigh every belief we hold, if you want to be thoroughly, philosophically pedantic — but proposing that uncertainties warrant a character-based approach to the truth.

Personal bias suddenly stops being a distortion to guard against and starts being a flag to wave. The undiscovered country is suddenly not a place to explore and map, but somewhere you can doodle whatever you want, including dragons, mermaids, and sea serpents. What might have made for good, entertaining fiction is suddenly sidling up to the non-fiction section of the bookstore in the hopes of being seen.

Worse still, it compounds this nonsensical dishonesty with psychiatric pretensions; how you settle on the issue is supposed to signal what kind of person you are. An otherwise decent and even optimistic individual is suddenly treated like a killjoy for the temerity of Not Believing, even if they are Not Believing in the most transparent pigswill. Now, an attempt to provide an honest — if frankly unlikely — argument becomes an underhanded smear campaign, which itself is based on even shakier claims. When will the Supremes have to adjudicate that problem in the era of the multicult?

So politically incorrect to attempt such humor. Much to cogitate on as well in the responses. Nourishing food for thought on a Sunday! Is there not an equivalent in the USA? Atheists were said to be immune to the threat of divine punishment for perjury, so should not be tolerated! Oh well, a step in the right direction was to have all Protestants on the same boat.

He then fast-forwards to a novel by Kamel Daoud,. But this seems a really utterly disconnected ideas to try to link into an argument.

Sorry, but that last step may need some elaboration. Actually, both steps need some elaboration. Or have I fundamentally failed to understand the purpose of the exercise? I am continually amazed at how many institutions of higher education there are in the US that I have never heard of. No doubt exterminating the Jews really resonated with Hitler. Maybe resonation is God? Wow I just thought of that. I must go now, I have a column to write.

Even when we feel that God is not answering our prayers, you can always know God is a God of love.

The Bible tells us He loves us:. God created us and knows infinitely more than we know. He knows what is best for us, and what would not be good for us. If you have children, when they were very small, sometimes they asked for things that would not be good for them, or would harm them. For good reasons sometimes parents do not always give their children what they ask for, when they ask for it. Parents give them what is best for them. It is the same way in our prayers to God. God gives us what is best for us.

Our lives must be right with God before He can answer our prayers. God has certain conditions that must be met before our prayers can be answered.

One of the first, is we feel our need of help from Him. One cannot pour water into a cup that is already full. If we have cherished sins in our lives, and refuse to give them up, or if we are doing things we should not be doing, and are disobeying Him, we cannot expect Him to answer our prayers. He cannot answer our prayers if we have sins in our lives that are unconfessed or if we are hanging on to cherished sins. Also, if we refuse to forgive others who have wronged us, God cannot hear us. One of the reasons we feel our prayers are not being answered, is because we stop praying.

In reality, we should not be worried so much about if God hears our prayers — He does and He does care. What we should be worried about is if because of temptations, hard times, and trials we get discouraged, and give up praying. God is a God of love, and He is interested in every detail of our lives. He hears our prayers, and answers every sincere prayer if we meet His conditions.

We must not expect that every answer will be "yes", since we are sinners and do not always ask what is best for us. We must continue trusting Him, regardless of His answer at the moment. God's timetable is not the same as ours. He knows better than we do when is the best time for our prayers to be answered. God is eternal and does not measure time as we do. In the story of Abraham, God promised a son to Abraham.

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Abraham tried to solve the problem in his own way and the result was disastrous.