Saturday, March 03, 2018

Mystery again …

… The Atheist’s Imagination | Mark Bauerlein | First Things.

… Pinker’s God has no mystery. He’s a do-gooder or a do-nothing. (Secularists don’t assert an evil God—that would be even more superstitious than a good God.) But Christians know that God is, in full, unknowable, and a day of intense suffering is at the center of their worship. 
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3 comments:

  1. Peter7:47 AM

    Proselytizing atheists like Pinker and Dawkins have a co-dependency relationship with unquestioning scriptural literalists, preferably unsophisticated ones. They seem to share in common the belief that the Bible is an alternative natural history and God is a problem-solver, arguing pretty much only about His efficiency and temperament. Also, contemporary American political divides are a subtext of a lot of these "angry atheist"
    writings. Most of them self-identify with the progressive zeitgeist of major U.S. universities and are preoccupied with the three great existential questions facing mankind: A) How did the universe begin?; B) What is the origin of life?; and C) Why do the wrong people keep winning so many elections?.

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  2. Vikram Johri8:56 AM

    I have myself asked this question many times but have not reached a satisfactory answer. If I believe in the mystery of God--and I do--then it has to also be, by definition, a personal God, one whose presence is mysterious to me in my specific circumstance. Such a God cannot be the God of scripture whose mystery will be the mystery for all men, something of a paradox. Which is why the scriptural God should be a benevolent God, not a mysterious one, and so, the question of the world being a bad place continues to rankle.

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  3. Frank Wilson9:32 AM

    I look upon the scriptures as man's attempt at tackling the mystery. I wouldn't be without the Book of Job or Ecclesiastes, but I wouldn't go out of my way to base my life on them. A worship of scripture sounds like a bad idea to me, and I think the Zen idea of sitting quietly and doing nothing in order to open oneself to the mystery is sound.

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