Posted on 03/22/2014 5:46:52 PM PDT by Diago
While I had doubts about the existence of God before entering college, I considered myself a Christian and checked off the Protestant Methodist box on my application. Still, I had some apprehension in attending Boston College—a religious, Jesuit, Catholic institution. So, it came much to my surprise that nearly as soon as I stepped on campus, my faith in Christianity and God started to wane.
I took both sections of Philosophy of the Person my first year at BC, not because I was interested in the subject, but solely as a means to fulfill the Core curriculum that’s a major part of BC’s Jesuit identity. I hadn’t previously taken a philosophy course, though I quickly came to enjoy the deep and abstract thinking required of the class as a contrast to the quantitative work present in my economics and finance courses.
We read a number of proofs for the existence of God, and as any good intro philosophy class allows, we examined each side of the argument. After both class discussions and my own thinking, I realized I sided more with arguments against God. I recall writing an essay disputing St. Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs of existence, my finishing line reading, “Couldn’t God have left more compelling evidence [for his existence]?” Little did I know this marked an important turning point in my educational journey—it was the first time I seriously considered the distinct possibility that God didn’t exist.
These thoughts continued during a two-semester Religious Quest class my sophomore year that compared Islam and Christianity. It was my first exposure to Islam besides what I’d seen and read in the news, and I also learned extensively about Christianity. Never before had I gained such a detailed perspective on the origins, sects, and traditions of the two religions. The power of community provided by each faith throughout history was immense, and based on their shared teachings of peace and worship, it was easy to see why each has thrived and accumulated millions of members worldwide.
A major point of the class was how similar the religions are, and indeed, they are more similar than I’d have ever thought. But by examining them so closely, I also studied their many differences. And those differences, most historians agree, have contributed to millions of deaths around the world—not only between the two religions (The Crusades), but also due to intra-religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants (30 Years’ War) and Sunni and Shiite Muslims (Iran vs. Saudi Arabia & Iraq).
After a great deal of reflection undertaken both as a requirement inside the classroom and on my own, I came away with two conclusions. One, no higher being would ever tolerate millions of people being killed over the right way to worship him. Two, the differences between each religion made it unlikely that followers of both could be accepted into the same afterlife, meaning that, if there were a God, millions would be left out of eternal life—in my view, an unjust punishment for having the “wrong” belief.
Due to those two required core classes, by the second half of my sophomore year I had enough qualitative reasons for not believing in God. A class I took the following semester supplied me with more technical explanations. I enrolled in evolutionary economics, a course that discussed how humans have developed certain traits through evolution. Evolutionary psychologists believe that sexual selection and preference has shaped much of how we behave today, explaining behaviors such as riskier tendencies in men compared to women, outward displays of fitness to attract mates, and, ultimately, the development of a creative and intelligent human mind.
As one can imagine, the class required intensive reflection on views of human behavior that we’d previously considered to be quite basic. We also expanded our knowledge by reading a number of evolutionary passages, including a section from Richard Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene (emphasis on gene). His work, in addition to meticulously explaining how natural selection works down to the genetic level, offered a solid explanation of how life began without a creator.
By the end of the semester, I fully believed evolution as a fact for the first time. Further, as someone who finds the existence of God and evolution mutually exclusive, it was much harder for me to identify with the Christian faith. But I was not yet committed to saying I didn’t believe in God.
That changed the next semester, the first of my junior year. I registered for Philosophy of Existence to fulfill my minor in the subject—a route I would never have pursued had I gone to a different school. We studied a number of existentialist philosophers, some who based their philosophies in religion, and others who didn’t. Two of the latter were Sartre and Nietzsche, known atheist scholars. Sartre wrote that the essence of being human is being free, while Nietzsche famously said, “God is dead … and we have killed him.” They both provided a view of the world in which mankind had created the notion of God.
By the end of the class, and after deep contemplation, I finally realized what I truly believed—there is no God. Both the idea of a higher being, and the many religions of the world, were founded by man to inspire hope and influence human behavior.
Despite entering college as a Christian, two months from now I will graduate this Jesuit, Catholic school as an atheist. Ironically, the basis of that belief was developed in classes I was required to take based on Jesuit values and ideals —the education of the whole person through BC’s core curriculum. The Jesuits don’t teach students what to think. They teach them how to think. Above all else, that’s what college is for. And I’m grateful that I chose BC as the place to learn that.
Editor’s Note: The views presented in this column are those of the author alone and do not represent the views of The Heights.
Hebrews 6:4-6
4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,
6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
I wish I could shrink heads but that would mean spending all day with Democrats. No thanks.
Lol. Good one, a bit snide, but not brutal. Way to go.
Not having a personal relationship with the Loding one's religion is not such a terrible thing.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
creator of the universe, YHvH, is however.
It has been said that, philosophically, the problem of evil is only a problem for believers. Atheism provides no coherent metaphysical explanation or account of evil.
Cordially,
Where does that leave Catholicism, given the current (Jesuit) pope?
Somewhat ahead of the Congregationalists who founded Harvard and Yale, the Anglicans who founded Columbia, the Presbyterians who founded Princeton ...
Atheism provides no coherent metaphysical explanation or account of evil.
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Exactly, which is why I wrote “strangely enough”.
To answer the problem of evil, atheists discard the very basis of judging what is evil. Incoherent, as you so astutely noted.
Of course, they still believe themselves to be good. They’ll even dare say they’re better than Christians. However, once they eliminate anything higher than mankind as their moral foundation, they must choose between three different standards:
1. Personal morality - The atheist is never wrong, no matter what he/she chooses. Murder? Not a problem. Rape? Not evil if atheist says it’s not. If it feels good, do it!
2. Common morality - Whatever the majority chooses is right. As long as the majority agrees with the atheist, that is. Slavery was A-OK according to the majority at one time; it could be again, easily. As long as the slaves are considered less human than their oppressors, that is. Stupid Christians are stupid, and not as smart as REAL people! They have not evolved past superstition, perhaps they should do the grunt work REAL humans are too good and smart to waste time on!
3. Morality of the elite - A small group of people should determine what is right and wrong for everybody else. We’ve seen how this one works, way too many times, but it is an inevitable outcome of rejecting God. But it’ll work this time, we swear! We just haven’t had smart enough people try it yet!
Or an accepted transcendent moral standard by which things are judged. The supreme moral reasoning of one atheist can conditionally justify fornication, while another can argue against it and for marriage..
Both assert this is consistent with the Golden Rule, but which itself presupposes a foundational morality, in the light of which what you would have done unto you is determined. Thus in Scripture it is the second great commandment, after love for God, which entails obeying what He wrote.
The way I see it, is that atheism provides no coherent philosophical for good, which is a problem for UNbelievers.
The ironclad reasoning of this seasoned philosopher and theologian is sure to change the beliefs of millions of believers in a Supreme Being.. In fact his arguments are so powerful that God himself now has doubts about his own existence.
I do not disagree. Perhaps it might have been better if I had said that good and evil are illustrative of just some of many insurmountable philosophical and ethical quandaries that confront unbelievers.
For starters, since atheists are know-it-alls who tacitly assume exhaustive, universal knowledge, I would like to see Sikora give some account of ANY of the abstract, invariant, universal laws that he finds operative in his finite brain and which are on display in his writing. Since he does not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, what ground does he have for these laws he is using to try to explain the material, ever-changing particular facts of a world governed by chance that he posits in an effort to remain autonomous from God?
Cordially,
Excellent point, dear sister in Christ!
I would like to see that also!
Yes, even omniscience, so they can stand in judgment upon almighty God as they knew, and He did not, what the outcome would be for the actions of the Giver of Life in cleaning the Canaanites house (like maybe saving the innocent babes from becoming like their parents, and below.) They complain about God allowing evil in the world, and then complain when he stops an a terminally degenerate nation from replicating itself more. Implacable.
Target hit on the above. In the state debates of posting the 10 Commandments in public places, some take the "middle road" and just want to place the ones that are not "controversial." Meaning even some atheists see "goodness" in teaching "do not kill; do not steal; do not lie" but think addressing things like covetousness and adultery are too "judgmental" to "preach." Then of course you have the Commandments dealing with our relationship with God are first and which establish the Holiness of the remaining commandments which address our relationship with fellow man.
So yes, they reject the "transcendent moral standard by which things are judged."
Which pertains to the 1st great commandment .
So yes, they reject the "transcendent moral standard by which things are judged."
And while it can be argued that any moral standard is subject to variant interpretations, yet as with the Constitution, at least there is something to interpret, and in which the scope and breadth of interpretations is limited, rather than every man doing what is right in his own eyes.
We need to ask Sikora a simple question: If the world is governed by chance, how do laws arise? By accident? And then: If law is "accidental," then how can it be law? And if there is no law, then how can the world be the way it is, and not some other way?
I wonder if he would understand such questions. He is evidently no systematic thinker, rather a sort of "machine" or mechanistic thinker of a type to which David Bohm alluded, in Wholeness and the Implicate Order [1980]:
Consider ... an attempt to assert that all of man's actions are conditioned and mechanical. Typically, such a view has taken one of two forms: Either it is said that man is basically a product of his hereditary constitution[***], or else that he is determined entirely by environmental factors.[***] However, one could ask of the man who believed in heredity determination whether his own statement asserting this belief was nothing but the product of his heredity. In other words, is he compelled by his genetic structure to make such an utterance? Similarly, one may ask of the man who believes in environmental determinism whether the assertion of such a belief is nothing but the spouting forth of words in patterns to which he was conditioned by his environment. Evidently in both cases (as well as in the case of one who asserted that man is completely conditioned by heredity plus environment) the answer would have to be in the negative, for otherwise the speakers would be denying the very possibility that what they said could have meaning.... [p. 65f][***] Don't ask anything about heredity (DNA) or the environment — you know, stuff like how did they arise, why are they the way they are and not some other way, etc.??? — they are "just there," evidently induced out of a magician's magic hat....
I hate to be unkind. But I do believe it is fair to say this Sikora fellow is a smug, self-satisfied moron. He went to college and managed to be made stupid....
Global Warming.
Excellent points, dearest sister in Christ, thank you!
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