Posted on 02/28/2026 11:22:16 PM PST by Cronos
As he explains in his deep-dive meditation on faith and philosophy, “Why I Am Not an Atheist,” the spirit told him to put his trust in God.
..The visits continued for years. Beha was raised Catholic, on New York’s Upper East Side, by a very bookish family that sent him to Princeton.
..Beha debates the old masters: Descartes, Kant, Locke, Mill, Hobbes, Camus, Nietzsche and many, many others, but he starts with a poke at the “New Atheists” Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and the like — all of them now passé, in his view.
Some years ago in these pages, the incomparable journalist Michael Kinsley welcomed Hitchens’s book “God Is Not Great” with a memorable line: “Hitchens is an old-fashioned village atheist, standing in the square trying to pick arguments with the good citizens on their way to church.”
...The book is built as a long counter to “Why I Am Not a Christian,” a famous essay by the British polymath Bertrand Russell, who called belief in God “a conception quite unworthy of free men.” Russell was one of the minds that nudged Beha into years of committed faithlessness.
...Ultimately, atheism failed him, as it did some in the French Revolution who briefly converted the Notre-Dame Cathedral into the spiritually barren Temple of Reason. The religion of nonreligion can be like nonalcohol beer: What’s the point?
...It’s more about his often miserable life getting better with the right woman, a Catholic confession, regular attendance at Mass.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Beha seems to forget the historical documents of both the old and new testaments about God’s nature and his interaction with humans. The works of Jesus being noticeably missing.
Instead he realizes the shortcomings of modern atheistic philosophical systems and tries to forge some type of reason for adopting theism under the moniker of romantic idealism.
Methinks he might try accepting the new testament documents as authentic history of the works of this “man” Jesus of Nazareth. The miracles of Jesus and his resurrection clearly define the boundaries of philosophers speculations about the rules governing what the results of godless scientific empiricism and rational/irrational theological presuppositions can do for us.
In his letter to the Colossians, chapter 2, verse 8, Paul wrote,
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ”
Respectfully submitted.
Great comment IMHO!
Man cannot live by rules alone.
Man also needs faith.
Maintenance is not achieved by rules alone.
Maintenance also needs dedication, devotion, and self-discipline - all of which include faith.
“world” = entropy (things decay) < rules alone, cannot maintain man’s struggle with that problem
The 2nd law of thermodynamics argues for belief in God.
The argument for believing in God-D?
To keep from being as awful as the New York Times maybe.
No argument. Your choice. Your eternity.
Dedication, Devotion, Discipline. YES, the elements of FAITH.
And, what is FAITH if not our search for REALITY.
Much of my youth was spent with my Aunt who lived by many rules, all of which were sheltered by the philosophy “Show Me, Don’t Tell Me”, a comfortable quiz by which to judge any rule.
My first brush with FAITH told me to consider and then accept that the God assigned to me had always been and would always be.
I ask, what do we know and can see that always has been and always will be?
I have been told and I believe. Now Show me.
I had been ‘told’ without ‘seeing’, yet I came to believe in its logical beauty, its suggestions easily taken with no pain to others. Paths to an understanding.
Yet, like most, I continued longing to be shown.
Then it came.
I was reading and listening to articles concerning space and our universe(s), many theories, the lack of unity among so many wanting to solve and know.
After much reasonable debate, a REALITY was begrudgingly asked and answered.
With our research far from complete, at this stage with no data to the contrary, we have to say, yes, Space is infinite and even if the Bang did happen, the question is , into what did it bang , perhaps Infinite Space.
I was TOLD by the WORD and Infinite Space became the physical ‘ShowMe’.
I believe that Space HAS to be Infinite and always has been and always will be.
Akin to God always having been and always being, Space is God’s infinite home.
BeGood/StayStrong
And atheism is a position of faith. For to believe that an exceedingly vast, systematically ordered universe, exquisitely finely tuned for life, with profound, intricate, elaborate complexity and extensive diversity, can be all a result of purely natural processes requires much faith.
Yet they attack faith based upon evident warrant, than that the universe logically testifies to design, requiring a First Cause (at the least), that of a being of supreme power and intelligence being behind the existence of energy and organization of matter, and laws regarding the same.
Is there scientific evidence for God? Is atheism a position of faith? Yes and Yes. See also Perplexity AI on the Scientific Evidence for God by Ronald Cram, and, Referenced list of evidences of this universe being finely tuned for life, even down to dna, indicative of a supernatural cause, from perplexity.ai)
Note that atheists ejects "irreducible complexity," arguing that simply bcz evidence for the universe being the result of natural causes is currently lacking does not mean it could not, yet they reject a supernatural creator - even a a proposal - since the degree of evidence they require is currently lacking. But multiverse models as well as "space seed" theories are proposed despite lack of of actual evidence.
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