Happy is he who does not see yet believes?

[eddydenton]

Jesus said to Thomas: You see me and believe. Happy is he who does not see me and yet believes.

I have recently been thinking about this statement? Why should one be expected to believe contentedly without any justification?

If the Chinese government told you they’d just sent a party of five men to the Mars, found proof of extra-terrestrial life but didn’t bring back any proof, but said to you “happy is he who does not see yet believe”, would you believe them?

What argument is there for blind faith?

 

[LilyM]

Humility and a right relationship with God.

We tend to think the be-all and end-all of truth is our own feeble and pathetic senses and intellects and the limited proof they can offer us which they only do of the really bleeding obvious - from the universe’s and God’s point of view of course.

The be-all and end-all of truth is not us, it’s God. He already reveals Himself to us within ourselves and in everything and everyone around us. We shouldn’t be so naive and petty as to require anything else by way of confirmation.

Demanding perceptible proof is fine when we’re dealing with human beings as limited as ourselves, such as the Chinese government. God isn’t a fellow fallible human being.

Demanding it of God, truth embodied and incarnate, is insulting and presumptuous, as if truth itself could decieve!

It’s kinda like the child whose mother feeds bathes and clothes it, binds up its wounds, kisses its booboos, stays up all night with when it’s sick, drives an hour out of her way to buy its favourite food for it, and wipes its soiled bottom, yet the child still demands further evidence that the mother loves it.

 

[eddydenton]

Humility and a right relationship with God.

We tend to think the be-all and end-all of truth is our own feeble and pathetic senses and intellects and the limited proof they can offer us which they only do of the really bleeding obvious - from the universe’s and God’s point of view of course.

The be-all and end-all of truth is not us, it’s God. He already reveals Himself to us within ourselves and in everything and everyone around us. We shouldn’t be so naive and petty as to require anything else by way of confirmation.

Demanding perceptible proof is fine when we’re dealing with human beings as limited as ourselves, such as the Chinese government. God isn’t a fellow fallible human being.

Demanding it of God, truth embodied and incarnate, is insulting and presumptuous, as if truth itself could decieve!

It’s kinda like the child whose mother feeds bathes and clothes it, binds up its wounds, kisses its booboos, stays up all night with when it’s sick, drives an hour out of her way to buy its favourite food for it, and wipes its soiled bottom, yet the child still demands further evidence that the mother loves it.

This is true. We are inherently flawed as human and no such confirmation derived from our limited senses and intellects could provide an ultimate truth. But when you say he reveal Himself to us within ourself and our world and everyone else, it is nonetheless up to us to interpret these revelations and determine what message God is telling us. What if, with our “pathetic senses and intellects”, we are misinterpreting what God is trying to tell us, even to the point of misinterpreting whether these revelations are coming from God at all?

To say “we shouldn’t be so naive and petty as to require anything else by way of confirmation” is greatly underrating what is being asked of us. Faith is a giving of one’s self over to a higher power (not exactly petty) with no other evidence than ancient scripture, again interpreted by the easily deceived human intellect, and the revelation of something in our own life that we, perhaps too quickly, assume to be God.

I do not think it is presumptuous to demand some proof that we are giving our lives to that which we believe we are. To elaborate on your metaphor of the mother and the baby, the mother may indeed be doing these things, but it is as though the mother is invisible and speaking another language and the baby can hardly comprehend and real physical world let alone be expected to know who’s voice it is, where it is coming from and what it is saying. It is only natural the baby would need the mother to show herself to him so that he could know that it wasn’t a part of his imagination or he wasn’t going crazy. It is too much to expect the baby to know all or even a little of was going on without some revelation in a manner that he can comprehend with his little mind.

 

[LilyM]

As Abraham said to Lazarus in the parable ‘if they will not listen to the Law and the Prophets, then they will not believe even though one should come back to them from the dead’ (Luke 16:31)

Now you’ve BEEN GIVEN already both the law and the prophets - they’re contained in scripture and the magisterium. You’ve already been given the ‘one come back from the dead’ too - Jesus, and there’s more than enough people who saw Him die and rise again and testified to it to provide a solid core of evidence.

You’ve already have all the ‘proof’ anyone could need and that any of us could wish for. You’re just like the child in my example, who has all the proof already that its mother loves it. And yet is still demanding more.

I just pray you’re not one of those Jesus is discussing in the parable who, having to hand all that is needful, including the accounts of His own blessed death and resurrection, won’t listen to them - because if you are, then you sure aren’t likely to be satisfied with anything else He could provide in the way of proof either.

 

[eddydenton]

Sorry, I don’t mean to seem critical. I am someone who has been brought up as a Catholic and I want to hold onto my beliefs. But when I have questions like this that challenge my beliefs I need answers that satisfy me on both a spiritual and philosophical level. I could easily give myself in to the idea of a loving, salvational God and be happy knowing I’m going to Heaven. But it wouldn’t answer my question as to why God reveals Himself in such elusive ways that are so easily misinterpreted by our feeble human intellect. Why does God makes it difficult to believe in Him? If your answer is that this evidence should be enough, frankly I am disappointed, because it’s not enough.

There are stories in virtually every ancient religion, particularly the Eastern ones, that tell of Lazarus-like resurrections and have been passed down in scripture. It is compelling, but it is nonetheless flawed by human intervention and motivation, like a Chinese whisper. I need more.

 

[ateista]

I need more.

You will never get “more”.

The posters, whose answer in a nutshell is: “who are you to dare to ask for proof?” - so conveniently forget that Jesus also said: “whatever you ask in my name, I will fulfill it, because I will go to the Father”.

And this humble request is not something outrageous, it is just asking for what already has been done - to Thomas. Why was he so exceptional? No answer is possible and no answer will ever be given, except the “cop-outs” like above.

 

[eddydenton]

What do you mean no answer is possible? This is GOD we’re talking about. He can do anything. It is very possible. Yet it doesn’t happen. This is my big WHY? Yet no one can answer this with a philosophical argument. Your response is simply to believe. Use faith to answer doubts about. Believe because you believe. You don’t believe something just because you tell yourself you should. Belief needs to come from within. From the heart. And I can’t trick my heart into believing in God. If the ancient proofs of God’s existence are supposed to convince me of God’s existence then I am doomed because they don’t. As much as I want to believe in the truth of God, my heart is not won by these meagre proofs.

 

[ilovekittens]

Humility and a right relationship with God.

We tend to think the be-all and end-all of truth is our own feeble and pathetic senses and intellects and the limited proof they can offer us which they only do of the really bleeding obvious - from the universe’s and God’s point of view of course.

The be-all and end-all of truth is not us, it’s God. He already reveals Himself to us within ourselves and in everything and everyone around us. We shouldn’t be so naive and petty as to require anything else by way of confirmation.

Demanding perceptible proof is fine when we’re dealing with human beings as limited as ourselves, such as the Chinese government. God isn’t a fellow fallible human being.

Demanding it of God, truth embodied and incarnate, is insulting and presumptuous, as if truth itself could decieve!

It’s kinda like the child whose mother feeds bathes and clothes it, binds up its wounds, kisses its booboos, stays up all night with when it’s sick, drives an hour out of her way to buy its favourite food for it, and wipes its soiled bottom, yet the child still demands further evidence that the mother loves it.

But we base every single other aspect of our lives on the information that our “feeble senses and intellects” provide us. For something as big and defining as a religious commitment, it is not a silly question to seek similar sensory/intellectual confirmation of that religious truth.

 

[Padilla7921]

What argument is there for blind faith?

Faith is always blind when a believer first begins having it. However, at some point, faith ends and knowledge begins. At this point, wherever it is or whenever it happens, an individual knows that God exists. The individual gains knowledge of an objective truth through subjective experience.

I use the example of, well, myself, when I argue this point. I had faith in God, I believed in His existence for so long. But, there came a point in my relationship with Him that I realized that I wasn’t praying to nothing, that I wasn’t getting answered back by the dark recesses of my subconscious. I’m priestly calling isn’t coming out of thin air, my love isn’t for something that doesn’t exist, and the love I get back isn’t a self-creation of my feeble mind. Faith is no longer a proper descriptor for what I have, for what others have. This faith has ended and has turned into knowledge, and this knowledge was gained with my personal relationship with Him.

 

[eddydenton]

Faith is always blind when a believer first begins having it. However, at some point, faith ends and knowledge begins. At this point, wherever it is or whenever it happens, an individual knows that God exists. The individual gains knowledge of an objective truth through subjective experience.

I use the example of, well, myself, when I argue this point. I had faith in God, I believed in His existence for so long. But, there came a point in my relationship with Him that I realized that I wasn’t praying to nothing, that I wasn’t getting answered back by the dark recesses of my subconscious. I’m priestly calling isn’t coming out of thin air, my love isn’t for something that doesn’t exist, and the love I get back isn’t a self-creation of my feeble mind. Faith is no longer a proper descriptor for what I have, for what others have. This faith has ended and has turned into knowledge, and this knowledge was gained with my personal relationship with Him.

There is no denying the value of subjective experience but can you really call it objective truth? From what reference point can you view its objectivity? Everyone is confined to their own subjective experience. There have been many evil actions done because what was a subjective belief was mistaken for an objective truth. The whole Nazi philosophy was based on this premise.

What also makes me curious is that people from other religions have this experience of sublime metaphysical experience. Buddhists would claim that in reaching Nirvana they have had a divine experience from their subjective truth. Would this then also be an objective truth or “knowledge”?

Please excuse my overly critical nature. I’m just searching for answers to questions that have bothered me for some time.

 

[ateista]

What do you mean no answer is possible? This is GOD we’re talking about. He can do anything. It is very possible. Yet it doesn’t happen. This is my big WHY? Yet no one can answer this with a philosophical argument. Your response is simply to believe. Use faith to answer doubts about. Believe because you believe. You don’t believe something just because you tell yourself you should. Belief needs to come from within. From the heart. And I can’t trick my heart into believing in God. If the ancient proofs of God’s existence are supposed to convince me of God’s existence then I am doomed because they don’t. As much as I want to believe in the truth of God, my heart is not won by these meagre proofs.

My dear friend, we are talking about a hypothetical God - who supposedly “exists”.

Indeed, one cannot trick oneself to believe the unbelievable. What I meant is: “you cannot expect an answer from the people”. They don’t want to admit that Jesus promised something and notoriously does not deliver. They try to rationalize it, but they fail. Observe, how this point is being shunned and neglected every time. Jesus promised and did not deliver.

And let me clarify: I don’t say “believe because you believe”. I say: “if it makes no sense, discard the hypothesis”. Just like I did many decades ago.

 

[Genesis315]

Seeing is not the only “justification.” For example, St. Paul says faith comes through hearing. We believe many, many truths about a wide variety of things that we have never personally seen.

 

[Genesis315]

Plus, the God who by His ever essense is non-contingent, omniscient, omnipotent, and is perfect simplicit, goodness, and the principle truth and His “testimony” would be the most credible and infallible. That’s why believing His promises and acting accordingly (faith) is also perfectly reasonable–to do otherwise would be completely irrational which is why sin is often described as acts contrary to reason–and our tendency to act irrationally just shows the corruptibility of our nature the need to subject the flesh to the spirit–the rational soul. Of course, only God by His very essence is incorruptible, but by the Incarnation He has united His nature to ours so that we may unite ours with His and also enjoy that incorruptibility.

 

[Genesis315]

My dear friend, we are talking about a hypothetical God - who supposedly “exists”.

Indeed, one cannot trick oneself to believe the unbelievable. What I meant is: “you cannot expect an answer from the people”. They don’t want to admit that Jesus promised something and notoriously does not deliver. They try to rationalize it, but they fail. Observe, how this point is being shunned and neglected every time. Jesus promised and did not deliver.

And let me clarify: I don’t say “believe because you believe”. I say: “if it makes no sense, discard the hypothesis”. Just like I did many decades ago.

It sounds like you once asked for something important to you and didn’t get it even though Jesus promised to give you anything you asked in His name. Is that the case?

Sometimes a loving Father does not give His children what they want, but what He knows is best, even if it seems painful at the time.

 

[ateista]

It sounds like you once asked for something important to you and didn’t get it even though Jesus promised to give you anything you asked in His name. Is that the case?

No, it is not.

Sometimes a loving Father does not give His children what they want, but what He knows is best, even if it seems painful at the time.

In that case the “loving” Father should not make promises, he does not intend to keep.

Jesus did not say: “whatever you ask in my name, I may or may not fulfill, depending on whether I deem it appropriate”. It was a simple, straightforward promise. It was not coerced, it was freely given. And it is not fulfilled. That is the naked truth. What do you call someone, who promises, and does not deliver?

 

[eddydenton]

Plus, the God who by His ever essense is non-contingent, omniscient, omnipotent, and is perfect simplicit, goodness, and the principle truth and His “testimony” would be the most credible and infallible. That’s why believing His promises and acting accordingly (faith) is also perfectly reasonable–to do otherwise would completely irrational.

But there are two logical problems here. One I have already commented on. Namely that, even though God’s “testimony” may be infallible, our ability as imperfect humans to interpret this testimony may be incorrect. For example we may received what we perceive to be signs or instructions from God may be misinterpreted and thus our “acting accordingly” may not be acting by the true will of God. Or whats more, the signs may have not come from God at all but some other supernatural being (the devil, saints, angels, demons etc). Thus, supposing the God was indeed communicating by some sort of spiritual revelation, it is still undermined by human flaws and could not necessarily be called the undisputable will of God.

The other logical problem is the reflexivity principle. That is, following the word of the Almighty because it the Almighty. Let me explain what I mean by this.

Imagine a man says “everything I say is true”. Then he says “I am God”. Does that mean he is God because he has said “everything I say is true”, which is true because “everything he says is true”?

Let me apply this to your idea about God. God said “I am non-contingent, omniscient, omnipotent and the principle truth”. Therefore does that make everything God says true simply because he said “I am non-contingent, omniscient, omnipotent and the principle truth”?

It relies on you making an assumption from the beginning of what God is in order to believe what he says. But you don’t have any objective knowledge of what God is other than what He has said he is, his so-called “testimonial”. Mind-blowing stuff but nonetheless food for thought.

 

[Padilla7921]

Please excuse my overly critical nature. I’m just searching for answers to questions that have bothered me for some time.

Oh no, don’t worry, I don’t take your critical nature as offensive. Descartes said to “doubt everything.”

There is no denying the value of subjective experience but can you really call it objective truth? From what reference point can you view its objectivity?

The idea itself doesn’t get much deeper than it already is. The realization of the objectivity of the truth comes from your relationship with that which is objective. It is because of this that I say the realization of the objective truth is rooted in the subjective experience. You have to experience that objective truth subjectively before you can fully know its reality.

Everyone is confined to their own subjective experience.

We are not confined to our own subjective experience. We merely exist in it. We can transcend this subjectivity through gaining an understanding of objectivity.

There have been many evil actions done because what was a subjective belief was mistaken for an objective truth. The whole Nazi philosophy was based on this premise.

Yes, but the objectivity of God is forever connected to the basic tenets of Christianity. Here, if one follows Christ’s example, no evil can be done. It is when one takes their own interpretation of this truth that evil is done.

What also makes me curious is that people from other religions have this experience of sublime metaphysical experience. Buddhists would claim that in reaching Nirvana they have had a divine experience from their subjective truth. Would this then also be an objective truth or “knowledge”?

I do not doubt that people from other religions have spiritual experiences. It’s not like Catholicism is the only religion in which one can experience God (Judaism, Islam, Protestantism, Eastern religions, etc). Specifically regarding Buddhism, Nirvana is a state of the mind, a state where one is devoid of all human (earthly, what have you) desires or troubles.

 

[eddydenton]

Sometimes a loving Father does not give His children what they want, but what He knows is best, even if it seems painful at the time.

I just want to know if God exists. But He hasn’t given me that. I can’t see how it is for the best that I doubt His existence. That only leads to sin and eventually Hell (according to Christian belief).

I am very open to arguments that are based in reason but too often I am asked to believe in something that just seems illogical and I can’t follow something in good faith if it is not reasonable and logical.

 

[eddydenton]

Oh no, don’t worry, I don’t take your critical nature as offensive. Descartes said to “doubt everything.”

Thank you kindly

The idea itself doesn’t get much deeper than it already is. The realization of the objectivity of the truth comes from your relationship with that which is objective. It is because of this that I say the realization of the objective truth is rooted in the subjective experience. You have to experience that objective truth subjectively before you can fully know its reality.

But here you make an assumption that you already know what the objective truth is in order for you to know that you have come into contact with it.

I do not doubt that people from other religions have spiritual experiences. It’s not like Catholicism is the only religion in which one can experience God (Judaism, Islam, Protestantism, Eastern religions, etc).

Does this then mean that they could claim to have experienced objective truths through their subjective experience of their respective religions? If so it raises issues of polytheism. Unless of course you mean that the one God could manifest Himself in different forms eg. Allah, Buddha? But even then there are issues about the objectivity of God because He has given different laws and and practices to different religions.

You can see how claiming an objective truth through a subjective experience is problematic.

 

[LilyM]

No, it is not.

In that case the “loving” Father should not make promises, he does not intend to keep.

Jesus did not say: “whatever you ask in my name, I may or may not fulfill, depending on whether I deem it appropriate”. It was a simple, straightforward promise. It was not coerced, it was freely given. And it is not fulfilled. That is the naked truth. What do you call someone, who promises, and does not deliver?

Yes, but what does ‘in My name’ actually mean? I’ll tell you one thing - it doesn’t just mean asking for whatever YOU feel like asking for and tagging the words ‘in Jesus’ name’ at the end, as so many people think it does.

How can anything asked for that is contrary to God’s will be asked for ‘in His name’? And why WOULD anyone think that God would ever promise to do anything that is contrary to His will? It would be like asking you to honour agreements that you didn’t make or intend to make, that were not signed by you, but rather by someone else forging your signature.

It seems clear that what is asked for must, if we are truly asking ‘in His name’, be consonant with God’s will, even Jesus taught us so in His prayer at Gethsemane. And ultimately (and IIRC there’s even liguistic scholarship to back this up) THAT is what it means to ask ‘in My name’