A great question and one in which the answer just may be, ‘it depends..!’ Gary Gutting, professor of Philosophy at The University of Norte Dame takes on this profound question in a March 22nd, 2012 OpEd Piece for the New York Times. You can read the article here.
Gutting weaves together such diverse ideas as the ontological existence for God, the problem of evil and our belief in the afterlife.
The question ‘Does Religion Need God’ is an age-old one. Theologians have long debated the importance of Orthodoxy (right beliefs) and Orthopraxy (right actions). No less an eminent figure than Immanuel Kant published his Deontological Ethical Principal of duty-based ethics.
Maybe the initial question ‘Does Religion Need God?’ should be rephrased, ‘Can we be good without God?‘ God doesn’t need Religion but a Religion without God only replaces the Divine Will with Human Will -turning our intelligence into a manageable deity.
What are your thoughts to the NewYork Times article and to the question, 'Does Religion Need God?'
5 comments:
Regarding the question of 'does it matter that God exists?', life has no meaning without God and immortality. Our existence is merely the product of time, chance, and necessity. It is not the crreation of an all-loving, personal creator. Our worth and meaning in life comes from God. Without God there are no adequate, reasonable answers to the fundamental questions of life. Where do we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? This life is reduced to an irrelevent speck of time in the larger continum of time.
Regarding why an all-loving and good God would allow horrific tragedies in the world, it is true that we may not be able to understand or know what God's reasons are for allowing these things to occur. But that does not preclude that God doesn't have adequate and good reasons for creating a world like that we have with all the suffering that occurs. God can and does sometimes bring good out of suffering and evil. There are numerous examples of how good has come from suffering. Probably the most significant example of all is that of Jesus Christ, who innocently suffered horrific persecution, torture, and death for our salvation. He took upon himself the sins of the world so that we might have an eteranl heavenly home with Him. This is why the Christian worldview makes so much more sense of the suffering and hardships that this life gives us. We know the world we live in. We know we will have difficulties in this life, some worse than others. Degree of difficulty is not at issue. The issue is that Jesus provides an answer. In Jesus, God entered the world and experienced our pain and He provides the way, the truth, and the life for us all. He is the cornerstone of the Christian worldview and we can be confident in this because of the evidence He has left us. When one examines, with an open mind, not only the evidences for God, but particularly the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, we find compelling reasons to have faith in the Christian worldview. I don't see this as "blind faith" as Mr. Gutting suggests. I see it as a much more reasonable approach to life. I have utmost confidence and conviction in the Christian worldview because of the reasonable arguments and evidence that exists. I am not making a leap of blind faith, I am making a reasoned, educated, and rational decision to invite Jesus and the Holy Spirit of God into my heart and transform me into a person capable of having a close relationship with my creator. It must be remembered that Jesus did not come into this world to make bad people good, or, for that matter, just to establish a religion. He came into this world so that dead people could live. We are all desd to God, separated from Him and all in need of a relationship with Him. We all are helpless to rectify the problem. Yet everyone seeks this relationship. Everyone knows there is a God sized hole in everyone's heart that only God can fill. Many of us look in all the wrong places and what we find we find wanting. This is why the search that I, personally, have conducted brings me peace and confidence.
Mark, solid reasoning and thinking. I think that humanity has been on a quest to try and find meaning apart from God. Each generation brings to the table their attempts to answer the meaning of life apart from God.
Money, fame, power, success are the usual suspects; all of whom ultimately fail and leave us as empty as we were before we sought after them...
Truly only in Christ do we find the answer to the biggest questions in life: Where did we come from? Why am I here? and Where am I going?
These answers come from the Bread of Life, the Spring of Water that will always satisfy!
I think that all religions need a god. Whether the god is a statue, a person, an animal, one's self or an idea. All are god's that are worshiped in "religion". Look at the plagues for example. Each one of those were a direct attack of the religion of their time. Why did God do that? Was it because he was so concerned for the jews and he was trying to just do something good for them....or was their a higher purpose.
Ex 7:5 "The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it."
Does religion need god...yes, it's simply the definition of what religion is, but the question is which God is true? Isn't this the theme of the majority of the Bible. God proving himself over and over to be the one true God.
Does God do things to prove to us that he's good? Yes, but not to defend himself from what we as mere sinful humans perceive as Good and Evil. It's no different I'm sure then when the truth left the Ark with Noah and his family. Noah and his family definitely seen what God did for them as good I'm sure, but like a bad game of telephone somebody somewhere down the line after it became just a mere story of the past had a better idea how to interpret the stories of "crazy Noah" so to make God sound not so evil or vice versa to explain God as just an evil jerk.
I'm thinking when the folks who were building the tower of Babel probably asked themselves the same question...do we really need God? Hey how about we stop searching out God, but rather just keep building until we reach this so called God. Looked what happened to them. Nothing but confusion.
No different...most people probably believe in religion, that is a religion with a god, and will just build their lives until they meet this so called god.
...this scripture better explains what I'm trying to convey.
Romans 1:21-25
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Ray K, great comments my man.... This post is also inspired by a new atheism movement that has called itself Atheism 2.0, Here is the link: http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0.html
It is religion w/o God; which means that it is just a mere substitution of 'Self' in the place of 'God.'
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