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JerryR's avatar

More on the necessity of doubt. See previous comment.

I once taught college business courses and was usually assigned a night school course in addition to my normal load so I could make extra money. One night before class I was waiting alone in an office that I shared with others. In walks an elderly Jewish gentleman. I had never seen him before but he said he was an adjunct and was early and had been assigned this office.

We started to chat and somehow it turned to religion. That’s when I found out he was Jewish. It was a very friendly discussion since both he and I were believers in God and religion.

He told me there must be doubt because without it, faith was meaningless. He said doubt is a necessary condition for faith. We don’t have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, we have knowledge or certainty. And many of the things we do are based on this certainty. But other things in nature are not so certain but we have to act to lead our lives even if we didn’t know what is true or not.

He said God was such a thing. There are lots of evidence and logic pointing to God but there was nothing as close to certainty as there is for the sun rising tomorrow. (Yes, I know the sun doesn’t rise and the earth spins). So there must be things that give us doubt and that the existence of God must be doubtful. He said faith is necessary to believe in God.

Some other things that caused doubt were that bad events happen to good people. Or that so called evil or bad things exists because it’s necessary for doubt and then for faith to have value. Otherwise there is no virtue in anything we did, just people doing what this certain God wanted. We would be automatons.

So what is called evil is necessary for us to have doubt and for this life to be meaningful.

An interesting implication of all this is that good things become evil over time. As we eliminate bad thing after bad thing in our world, past happenstances that were called good now become undesirable or evil. We currently witness in our society that the level of income for some groups is much less than others. But the level of income for the lesser groups are much higher than it was for the upper income people only a hundred years ago. So a level of existence that was certainly not evil a short time ago is evil to many in our current world.

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JerryR's avatar

Patrick,

I am reading Stephen Evan's. book. Very interesting and I am enjoying it.

Nothing to contradict anything I have said and actually a lot to reinforce my comments. But I am only in the first chapter so I will have to see what all he says. But I found the following statement in. the first chapter extremely relevant:

"if there is knowledge of God at all, we would not expect that knowledge to be limited to highly intelligent or highly educated people."

And so should discussions of God's existence and the evidence to support His existence - they should be accessible by anyone and not esoteric.

It's amazing that intellectuals and atheists such as Bertrand Russell and J. L. Schellenberg would be so ignorant of how a creator of the universe would make his creation optimal. Surety of His existence would be one guaranteed way for the creation to be meaningless.

Again, I am not expecting a reply but only clarifying my thoughts and previous position.

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