What are the good reasons to doubt God's existence?

This makes it seem as if you might think of “the devil” in some figurative way to indicate certain human inclinations. I would go a little further to suggest that the idea of hell and eternal judgment are probably themselves human elaborations intended to shape behavior.

I sure can’t understand this ‘devil’ character otherwise. Was he supposed to be co-eternal with but separate from God, that seems to go against a lot of other theology. Yet if he is not, then he exists as God’s creation and that leads to more difficulties.

I don’t see how crediting him with existence can be called figurative. He is the “snake” (an angel) in the story of Genesis who was assigned to be our adversary, because Eve chose to blame him. But he is a bit of scapegoat in this. His purpose, is to be the target of our blame if we must, but it is better if we don’t seek to blame anyone but shoulder the responsibility ourselves.

I have made it rather clear that I reject going too far in turning everything in the Bible and Genesis to metaphor only. I see no reason why these cannot refer to events which really happened, but good reason to see that considerable symbolism has been employed in the telling of the story.

Thank you Mitchell.

Oh I was aware of your post, therefor I was just interested in your opinion on his mere existence.

I can see that and I would agree, my main intention was to see if you believe in the damnation at all. Of course I didn´t mean a fiery place drawn by people in the middle ages with it.

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And just to be clear I also don’t see it all as metaphor only. But I do see the devil, hell and heaven exactly that way. But I can’t argue that from within Christian theology since I don’t already know enough about it and there are too many other things I’d rather read. :grimacing:

I assume this means you are Eastern Orthodox. I had to google the term you used and would be interested to learn more. The google article on cataphatic theology was a bit skimpy. So an explanation or link to an explanation of what you mean by “cataphatic mystic” would be helpful.

That would be another agreement I have with you along with the EO positions regarding atonement, original sin, and purpose of creation (though I could be overlooking some diversity of thought in EO in this). I would particularly relate this to the cataphatic identification of God with love, saying that the things we choose identify us far more than the things we are by nature. Thus one of my favorite sayings is, “I believe in a God who chooses love and freedom over power and control.” I am an open theist and often argue that omnipotence has to mean that God is capable of risk and self-limitation, what I call power over Himself which a lot of traditional theology seems to deny Him.

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Just briefly . . . my experience of God is absolutely and definitely something that’s contained within my mind. The human brain and brain-soul nexus is the part of our human existence where we experience (via both neurotransmitters and quantum biology) traits such as love, empathy, conscience, forgiveness, trust, faith, and relationships. So there’s really no other way to be in relationship with God except through the brain (which includes both Mind and Heart), which is where we process all that stuff.

Relationship with God feels like other positive relationships we know through friends, family, animal friends, and so on. There’s a certain logic to it, a logic that can be felt within the brain. There’s a sense of give and take, of listening and then speaking, of knowing another person and being known. You can feel the love coming from the other person’s Heart. You can feel it when the other person is trying really hard to explain something to you. You can feel it when the conversation has run its course and it’s time to say “thanks and goodbye for now.” Having a conversation with somebody else feels completely different than having a conversation with yourself (unless you’re suffering from a psychotic disorder, in which case you can’t tell the difference). So yes, a mystic uses the biological brain to connect with God. But don’t we all use our brains to connect with each other?

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And of course, the same can be said of our experience of everything else.

Perhaps the more interesting question is whether you believe the experience derives from the reality of something outside your mind, though I think the answer is a bit obvious. SuperBigV may have concluded our experiences (and those of his own in the past) are not derived from a reality outside of our own minds while we believe they are.

Indeed, this is pretty how much I explain it also. How can we know that other people exist? We gather it from our experiences which we organize in our minds as various people doing various things. Our experience of God is the same, just a little less localized. We see Him in the totality of our experiences. He is after all, a bit bigger in every way.

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Justin L. Barrett, a cognitive neuroscientist, gave an example in his speech on the Veritas Forum, a little quote from Harry Potter that he uses to describe this:
When talking to the dead Dumbledore during a state of unconsciousness/outer-body-experience, Harry asked him at the end if this was real or just happening inside his head. Dumbledores answer was:

" Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Just seemed fitting here

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Hi Mitchell,

I think I was typing my comments about relationship with God as you were typing your thoughts about open theism.

I’m not Eastern Orthodox, though some of my positions on God may sound similar. I don’t really fit well into any denomination, though I was confirmed in the Anglican church and am on the rolls as a member of the United Church of Canada (not that I’m very happy with the UCC at the moment . . .)

Like you, I was enrolled in divinity school, but then realized ministry would be difficult for me because of my unshakeable belief that faith and science are two sides of the same coin. (My early academic background lay in chemistry, art history, and art conservation, and chemistry has deeply informed my mysticism.)

I like your saying about a God who chooses love and freedom over power and control. This has been my personal experience of Mother Father God.

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Good one! Here in Canada, the Space Channel was recently running a Harry Potter marathon, and, as I watched, I took particular note of that exchange between Dumbledore and Harry.

The mind is kind of like a tardis – it’s really a lot bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside.

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I was reading a few more things from googling “cataphatic mysticism” when I realized another touch stone with something I have often said.

Unlike us, God’s choice of love and goodness is not conflicted. For that reason, by His love we can know God even better than we can know ourselves.

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Do you mean because they said it’s not necessarily a Christian church? Wow. In surprise settlement, United Church agrees it's not actually a Christian church - Randal Rauser

Similar comments can be made for the behaviour of many so called Christians, as shown by the appalling sexual perversity discussed worldwide from clerics and others.

I would add that atheists may have an excuse (ignorance) but there is no excuse for so called Christians - it is here that the fear of God is applicable.

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This is very interesting, @SuperBigV. Thanks for the discussion. It is interesting that the emphasis on judgment and repentance was so strong in your history. I resonate with it to a certain extent, because I struggled for much of my 20th and 21st years over whether I had committed the unpardonable sin. My parents really tried to help me to see that God is not like that, but with reading the Bible, I would say that there is certainly open definition to both Calvinism and Arminianism, as you say. Perhaps it’s more of an issue of each passage being specific to the times and situation, and not meant to be expanded to everything. Mark Noll (Scandal of the Evangelical Mind) notes the evangelical tendency to take every verse to apply to us, out of context. At any rate, that’s what I did.

C S Lewis, who influenced much of modern Christian thought, wrote that when he was 12, he spent much of a year striving to pray in the right mind to be accepted by God. He spent hours awake in “moonlit dormitories,” struggling to get the right frame of mind. When a kindly spiritist lady implied to him that all that might not be true, and he realized that Christian stories were like other myths, he left Christianity with joy. It was only much later, after reading more about myth and realizing that the Christian myth wasn’t of typical false background, that he came back (Surprised by Joy).

The implication that God might throw us all into Hell of eternal conscious torment (or just the rest of folks, not ourselves) because of a whim of being born of Adam, or sinning a small sin (something that really has struck me as ridiculous when I observe my 5 year old daughter with her little sins), has probably made more atheists and agnostics than the fear of God scared people into the church pews, I think. As Rachel Held Evans said, once you think that God isn’t just, you lose the interest in finding if he exists or not. Randal Rauser has some great posts about this Do three-year-olds deserve to be tortured eternally in hell? Apparently Ligonier Ministries thinks so. And they're alarmed at those who disagree - Randal Rauser

But I do think that God exists, and that He is not only just, but merciful. It’s probably we who try to explain the true justice and mercy who inadvertently put a bad character on it (and He understands that, too).

It’s partly because of this that I think that if He’s just, he is not going to bonk us on the head, or condemn us to Hell for honest questions. Rather, He welcomes the use of the brains He gave us. In fact, I really believe that an atheist that asks the right questions because of doubt (“You doubt because you love truth” --George Macdonald, who wrote “Justice”) is closer when she opts out of believing in a demonic deity, than the one who sticks with such an idea for, say, personal gain of status in society, for example. “Benefit of the Doubt,” by Greg Boyd, a pastor in Minnesota, outlines how he went from Pentecostalism, to atheism, and through countless houses of cards till he realized that believing in a creed wasn’t the point.

On the other hand, my child needs both my direction and my forgiveness when she does do something wrong. Macdonald writes that God’s punishment is corrective, not abusive. It’s to improve us and bring us closer. A wise teacher in residency told us that children who don’t have rules or a parent to guide them into learning real life are terrified. In the right way, teaching my child to fear consequences (time out or loving correction when disobeying), leading her to love truth and do right, not only helps her survive, but be able to forgive herself when she does the wrong thing or makes mistakes. There is also very much a rational role for a fear of God as a father–it’s a loving one that gives life rather than terrifies us out of our minds, in “mere abject terror,” as Lewis put it. In my opinion, it’s like the Psalm 103 image, “As a father has compassion.”

Anyway, thank you for your thoughts. Blessings.

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@Realspiritik and @DoKo, here’s the clip of Justin Barrett quoting Albus :slight_smile:-- at about 11:13.

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How did I wait this long to see this? Fascinating. Still watching.

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Hi Randy,

Yes, it’s hard to believe that Canada’s second largest mainline Christian church has decided it’s okay to have a minister who’s an avowed atheist – not an agnostic minister (because there are probably quite a few ministers who are struggling with their faith) but a person who’s published some fairly successful books about why we don’t need God!

I also want to thank you for posting the Justin Barrett clip. I watched the whole thing and found it riveting. At about the 25:00 mark, he introduced his thesis, and that’s when I ended up on the edge of my seat. His thesis revolves around a theory of the brain that’s often called Dual Process Theory. I’ve posted about this theory several times on BioLogos in the context of how we can better understand our relationships with God, ourselves, and each other.

Basically, Dual Process Theory posits the existence of two parallel but equally important processing systems in the human brain. Some researchers call them System 1 and System 2. Barrett uses the designations of Fast and Slow. My theory is that Jesus called them the Heart and the Mind.

A bit of background from my own journey . . . back in early 2005, I was desperate to understand the theodicy question. By that time, I understood with my entire being what Divine Love feels like, but I couldn’t get my mind on the same page as my heart. What’s with all the suffering?, my mind kept saying.

The conversation with Jesus (with whom I have a strong communication link) went something like this:

“You know Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?” he said.

“You mean the pyramid?” I said.

“Yes. So what you need to know is that the human brain has two different networks,” he said, “with one devoted to the soul’s needs and one devoted to the body’s biological needs. You can call one the Soul Circuitry and the other the Darwinian circuitry. To see how they intersect, with the experience of self-actualization at the heart of it all, take Maslow’s pyramid, break it apart, and make it into a cross. Put physiological needs and safety needs on the X axis. Put belonging & love and self-esteem on the Y axis. Then draw a circle in the middle, which is the target zone. The goal of the journey is to try to stay in the target zone by balancing your needs as best you can. The target zone isn’t a tiny little point of perfection. It’s more like a ‘do the best you can’ kind of zone.”

“But this diagram looks like a Celtic cross,” I said.

He just laughed.

Several years later, I stumbled across an article that introduced readers to the Dual Process Theory, and I immediately saw that it was almost identical to the Celtic cross model Jesus had told me about, except for the part about the target zone (or Christ Zone, as he called it) in the middle.

The bottom line, from a theodicy point of view, is that we sometimes have to work very hard to preserve the balance of body, mind, heart, and soul, and when we’re not able to sustain that balance (for reasons ranging from the genetic to the social to the economic), our brains can end up choosing dysfunctional coping mechanisms that cause no end of suffering and “evil.” To get out of the problems we create for ourselves and feel a lasting sense of peace, healing, and reconnection with God – to experience what Jesus called redemption – we need to accept the need for this balance and ask for God’s help in maintaining it. His “Celtic Cross” model is the path to feeling God’s love and God’s presence in our daily lives.

Once you start working with the Christ Zone model, it becomes clear that Jesus not only knew about it, but lived it, taught it, and died for it.

As Dr. Barrett points out in the video, the evidence for how our brains actually work is consistent with a theistic – and specifically Christian – belief system. He also had some other great points, but I think this post is long enough.

God bless,
Jen

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