Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Breaking news: Faith Rendered Unnecessary

Robert Spaemann thinks he can prove God’s existence.

The post title is only a mean prod. To oversimplify, I suppose that even a decisive proof of God's existence (which I think is totally impossible, btw, if one accepts the traditional Christian view of God - a matter that also speaks against the claims of modern antitheists like Dawkins etc.) would not answer the question as to whether that God should be trusted (i.e. 'believed in' after the Christian creedal sense).

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Translation, anyone?

Laughing Boy said...

Do we need faith to believe in God? Is that what biblical faith is about? Paul says that the unseen God can be known through the things that are seen. He further says that all men are without excuse because the knowledge of God is within them but they exchanged that truth for a lie.

It may not be possible to prove God's existence to fallen Man, but if you are suggesting a Kierkegardian leap of faith is required to believe He does, I think you've veered off course.

Faith is not of ourselves, anyway.

byron smith said...

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "Robert Spaemann is a dead giveaway isn't he? He could not have evolved by chance. He proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. Q.E.D."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Chris Tilling said...

Laughing boy, I tend to think that such passages as you cite from Rom 1 are taken out of context as you use them. "Do we need faith to believe in God?" My answer: Yes, in the traditional Christian sense.

Byron, that was clever but now I don't know what I believe. I'll try to relogic my own existence first, as surely a perfect being called Chris must exists, otherwise I wouldn't be perfect.

OK, that's me back, now I'll get to work on getting God to exist again. :-)