Belief in a personal God is quite different from a lot of other beliefs
Believing the Pythagorean theorem is true will probably not make someone change their life, but if someone believes that the Christian God exists then they have, in essence, no way of not changing their life. Lots of stuff has to suddenly be different. A person has to start reading the Bible, should probably go to church, needs to stop doing XYZ, start doing other stuff, accept that true happiness is found in the actions of Jesus and start conforming oneself to his life, and so on.
If you're an atheist, imagine that God made you have a 100% certain belief in the Christian God overnight and you suddenly woke up and said "I am 100% sure the Christian God exists!" This would probably lead to quite big changes in daily life. Hopefully you would be willing to make them all, otherwise you would experience quite a lot of cognitive dissonance!
It would be hard to objectively evaluate how strong the case is for Christianity if you're not willing in principle to make these changes, should Christianity turn out to have good evidence in its favour. Why? Because you literally can't believe that the Christian God exists (in any real way) without being willing to make these changes. Why? Because a person would experience a great deal of cognitive dissonance if they thought Christianity had good evidence and they weren't willing to change their lives in response, because belief in Christianity = changes to your life. There's a necessary belief => action link. This means that the case for Christianity may be weak, but it's not like you could have decided otherwise if it hadn't been weak - assuming you were unwilling in principle to make changes to your life. This situation makes belief in a personal God different from a lot of other beliefs, which are more 'passive' and have no strong belief => action link.
If you're an atheist, imagine that God made you have a 100% certain belief in the Christian God overnight and you suddenly woke up and said "I am 100% sure the Christian God exists!" This would probably lead to quite big changes in daily life. Hopefully you would be willing to make them all, otherwise you would experience quite a lot of cognitive dissonance!
It would be hard to objectively evaluate how strong the case is for Christianity if you're not willing in principle to make these changes, should Christianity turn out to have good evidence in its favour. Why? Because you literally can't believe that the Christian God exists (in any real way) without being willing to make these changes. Why? Because a person would experience a great deal of cognitive dissonance if they thought Christianity had good evidence and they weren't willing to change their lives in response, because belief in Christianity = changes to your life. There's a necessary belief => action link. This means that the case for Christianity may be weak, but it's not like you could have decided otherwise if it hadn't been weak - assuming you were unwilling in principle to make changes to your life. This situation makes belief in a personal God different from a lot of other beliefs, which are more 'passive' and have no strong belief => action link.
posted by Will G | Wednesday, January 06, 2010
5 Comments:
It would be hard to objectively evaluate how strong the case is for Christianity if you're not willing in principle to make these changes, should Christianity turn out to have good evidence in its favour.
Why? Because you literally can't believe that the Christian God exists (in any real way) without being willing to make these changes.
But be willing to change my life *if God exists does not entail that God exists.
I think you might be a little too strong in your position. A person could certainly be willing to change his life is he were -convinced- that the Christian God existed. Furthermore, he could think there is great evidence that that God may exist - but until something happens to make that evidence conclusive to him, he is certainly not required to change his life.
I agree, I was thinking about people who would not be willing to change their life if they knew the Christian God existed, but would rather just continue doing things the way they do them now.
You say:
"I agree, I was thinking about people who would not be willing to change their life if they knew the Christian God existed, but would rather just continue doing things the way they do them now."
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I've been trying hard to imagine why or what would change in this person's life. Could you give a for instance? What would be the necessity for change, and changing what exactly? I can't think of a single thing that I'd do different, except maybe take the other side of the "does god exist" argument.
On a side note: I do know a few "born again"'s that have become the worse for it.
"I've been trying hard to imagine why or what would change in this person's life. Could you give a for instance? What would be the necessity for change, and changing what exactly? I can't think of a single thing that I'd do different, except maybe take the other side of the "does god exist" argument."
The reason for the change is that the 'mind' part of the image of God was made an exact copy of God when it comes to how we're supposed to relate to others. So just like God loves the other members of the trinity with every fibre of His being, and humans about half as much (I guess?), so we should love God and others the same way. That's living according to the original 'design specifications'.
We can't actually do anything like this in terms of our actions - although we can think nice thoughts in our heads. So that's why God did everything for us - which is what He should do since He's a lot more capable of helping us than we are of helping ourselves. Because of Jesus' death on the cross, all anyone has to do to go to eternal life (where these relationships happen and people experience God's happiness) is to accept Jesus dying in our place as a gift. If you don't accept it as a complete gift, it's hard to realise what's really going on. Out of gratitude people change in response, and also because God changes them slowly over years, or decades.
Some changes might be: you would have to forgive others. You may already do this, but normally without some sort of religious involvement it is hard for most people to forgive significant stuff. You should find some role you're good at and use that role to help others from the point-of-view of serving God (it might be teaching or something). Participate in a church. Give up stuff that the Bible says you shouldn't do (you may not be doing that anyway). Pray to God a lot, and not just pray but actually trust God that He has your best interests at heart. Those are some general things I can think of. But actually, I think what's most important is accepting the idea about the image of God I talked about above and being willing to conform to that, I don't know how in your individual instance that would involve change. For a lot of people it involves big changes.
"On a side note: I do know a few "born again"'s that have become the worse for it."
You raise an interesting point, where people become 'religious' and hypocritical because of their faith. I think this is almost always a result of misunderstanding grace. The first misunderstanding is that they tend to think that they're earning salvation or making it easier for God to save them by doing good things. But salvation is a gift and if you don't receive it like a gift you misunderstand it. And secondly, they tend to forget Luke 17:7-10 which says that if something is really done for God then you can't take credit for it, because God is owed our service as creator. Religious/pious people tend to take credit for what they do, and actually this isn't how it works, anymore than I can take credit for never murdering anyone.
Hi, I am from Melbourne.
Please find a completely different Illuminated Understanding of The Divine Reality via these related references.
There is NO personal "god" and yet paradoxically The Divine Person loves all beings absolutely, and always has, too.
www.dabase.org/tfrbklih.htm
www.dabase.org/dht7.htm
www.dabase.org/realgod.org
www.dabase.org/noface.htm
www.adidam.org/teaching/aletheon
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