Sunday, April 28, 2019

Questions of faith …

… Think on these things: A comparison of 'God Is Not Great', by Christopher Hitchens, and 'The Rage Against God', by Peter Hitchens.

 One of Peter’s main points of disagreement with Christopher is the latter’s assertion, in the opening chapter of God Is Not Great, that ‘Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith.’ On the contrary, writes Peter, the ‘new anti-theism is… a dogmatic tyranny in the making.’ Atheists ‘cannot admit that their... insistence that there is no God is in fact a faith’. He has elsewhere summarised the atheist position as ‘There is no God, and I hate him.’
Both theism and atheism are faiths, quite simply because one cannot prove or disprove whether or not God exists (actually, if there is a God, he doesn't exist; he simply is). One can have reasons for choosing one position or the other. But either way, faith is an adventure, not an axiom. Of course, when I die, if I turns out I was wrong and there is no God, I will never know that I was wrong. Were I atheist, when I died, if it turned out I was wrong, I would know.

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