{"id":7269,"date":"2012-04-22T21:51:16","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T21:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=7269"},"modified":"2012-04-22T21:51:16","modified_gmt":"2012-04-22T21:51:16","slug":"doubt-and-belief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/doubt-and-belief\/","title":{"rendered":"Doubt and belief"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Wall Street Journal\u2019s<\/em> Houses of Worship column<\/a>,\u00a0by the author of When God Talks Back<\/em>:<\/p>\n

in more experientially oriented evangelical Christian communities . . . people expect to have a personal relationship with God. They go for walks with God, have coffee with God, ask God what shirt they should wear in the morning and even what shampoo they should buy. They expect God will talk back. . . . Looking at your closet and asking God whether he’d prefer the black shirt or the blue one is a way congregants [learn which of their thoughts] they should treat as God\u2019s communication with them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But wait:<\/p>\n

evangelical Christians doubt, too. Doubt is part of the experience of faith . . .\u00a0 People doubt that they understand God rightly; they doubt that the promise of joy they hear from the pulpit really applies to them. And in a world in which they know wise, good people who do not share their faith, they may<\/em> doubt divinity itself.\u00a0 [Emphasis added.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, well, that\u2019s OK, then.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why does having doubts about an arguably absurd belief\u2014that the same God who let five people die <\/a>in this month\u2019s Oklahoma tornado, say, or 16,000 in last year\u2019s tsunami<\/a>, nevertheless cares about your clothing choices or is worth praying to because you are the center of his multi-centered universe\u2014why does doubt make that belief more respectable, or, in many formulations of the meme, even admirable and courageous?<\/p>\n

I consult my horoscope each morning to find out how I should conduct myself or what I should expect from the day, but I occasionally doubt whether the person who authors it actually has<\/em> done a close reading of the star charts, and, on my despairingly skeptical days, even whether there really are<\/em> astral influences from some intangible celestial substance that determine human characteristics on a monthly basis and that govern our fate.\u00a0 But then after wrestling with my doubt, I conquer it.\u00a0 That\u2019s success?\u00a0 I realize that the presence of doubt is supposed to show that belief in a loving God is not simply reflexive but rather fully compatible with reason.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not as if the doubting believer has gone out and done some careful experiments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mother of Trayvon Martin credited Jesus <\/a>for the indictment of George Zimmerman.\u00a0 Was she right, in the eyes of conservative believers? And if not, why not?\u00a0 How can a believer avoid making such mistakes?\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Wall Street Journal\u2019s Houses of Worship column,\u00a0by the author of When God Talks Back: in more experientially oriented evangelical Christian communities . . . people expect to have a personal relationship with God. They go for walks with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[169,182],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7269"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7276,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions\/7276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}