No One Sees God

[djeter]

"In No One Sees God (2008), Novak brilliantly recasts the tired debate pitting faith against reason. Both the atheist and the believer experience the same “dark night” in which God’s presence seems absent, he argues, and the conflict between faith and doubt stems not from objective differences, but from divergent attitudes toward the unknown.

Drawing from his lifelong passion for philosophy and his personal struggles with belief, he shows that, far from being irrational, the spiritual perspective actually provides the most satisfying answers to the eternal questions of meaning. Faith is a challenge at times, but it nonetheless offers the only fully coherent response to the human experience." (Publisher’s blurb) So good I have double the reading selections and these current reading selections make up part one.

I use several of these when I debate in online forums with atheists. This one is my favorite:

“Gathering force over many years, one discovery has hit me with the force of a law: If you make mistakes about your own nature, you will make as many mistakes about God, and quite properly then, reject what your inquiries put before you. The god you fantasize will appear to you not very great, a delusion, a snare from which others ought to be freed. You will despise this god.”

Isn’t that great? Doesn’t it perfectly capture the cultured god despisers in our midst?

More here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/09/08/no-one-sees-god-%e2%80%93-michael-novak/

dj

 

[Barbkw]

“If you make mistakes about your own nature, you will make as many mistakes about God, and quite properly then, reject what your inquiries put before you. The god you fantasize will appear to you not very great, a delusion, a snare from which others ought to be freed. You will despise this god.”



God the Father, gave us His Law.

Not vice versa.

That’s the difference between objective Truth and relativism (truth determined at the will of each person.)

Of course, hard hearted and stubborn people want to hear nothing of God’s Law for man.

On the flip side of this, Jesus reprimanded the religious ruling class of His day in Matthew 23.

 

[BlueShadow123]

Its very true that you cannot personally see god. It is based on faith. I do understand where atheists are coming from though. They don’t think an ‘all loving’ god will create hell. They also don’t agree with many passages in the bible about slavery, homosexuality or about even anti-feminist scriptures. They see the god as not loving but rather as dangerous because of how harsh he can be in the bible. And i wont lie, being a believer, i have to admit, that a lot from the old testament is very harsh… lets just say that an atheist tends to use what they ‘have’ and take that as what we are. Meaning, they cannot see god, so they feel no reason to believe in it. also ill add that there are many websites and youtube videos going around that show ‘contradictions’ in the bible. Hundreds of them. I don’t think the bible has any contradictions but they show the verses and everything, if you want, you can look it up. Anyways, atheists also have evolution shoved down their throats, and being a student, ill admit that we are taught it is evolution only and that if you believe in god, you are ignorant. That is what we are basically taught and that is the attitudes of people these days. You see more and more of these attitudes everyday. Its hard being a christian these days without people looking down on you and thinking your ignorant just because you don’t believe in evolution. The reason I don’t believe in evolution is because i have studied the topic for yearsssss, and let me tell you, in the end, there is no real, hard-core, solid ‘evidence’. But back to the post, the thing you quoted is incredibly accurate. Atheists do believe that believers are living in a ‘delusional world’ and that they need to be ‘freed’ from religion. =/