FWIW I think this applies to any 'authority' or theological thinker/writer of whatever stripe.
Edwards was a product of his milieu and society just as we all are. As an evangelical Christian I had an interest in Edwards to some extent, as indeed I had in other 18th century figures such as the Wesleys and Whitefield - although the Wesleys were on the Arminian side of things, of course.
Now I'm Orthodox then 'The Fathers' (and Mothers!) are the expected reference point. That throws up other issues, of course, such as the pronounced anti-Semitism of some of these guys.
We all have to steer a way through these things whatever tradition we are affiliated with.
Yes, so I'm making an obvious point I suppose. But it's all easier said than done.
One of my favourite US theologians has been the late Katie Cannon of the Uniting Presbyterian Church, who grew up in North Carolina at a time when she wasn't allowed to use the swimming pool or library alongside white children, and her work at Union Theological Seminary drew on the creative work of bell hooks, Audre Lorde and Zora Neale Hurston. Katie was one of the mentors who encouraged the West African theologian Mercy Amba Uduyoye to found the influential Circle for Concerned African Theologians. She also supported the queer theology of Episcopalian priest Carter Heyward (God's Fierce Whimsy) and the feminist theological ethics of Beverley Wildung Harrison stimulating the theology of younger Black theologians like M Shawn Copeland (Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being) and so many writings now coming out of African Diaspora depts at US universities.
A few things I’ll note, for clarity: There are (at least) two Union Seminaries in the US: Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and Union Presbyterian Seminary, which is in Richmond, Virginia. The latter is actually the older of the two, and until 2009 its name was Union Theological Seminary.
Cannon had a master’s and a Ph.D from Union in New York, but she was on the faculty of Union in Richmond. There, she taught, as well as led the Squaring the Womanist Circle Project and established The Center For Womanist Leadership.
And Cannon was ordained in the United (not Uniting) Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (sometimes called “the Northern church”), one of the predecessor bodies of the PC(USA). Prior to the formation of the PC(USA), most African American Presbyterians in the American South were members of congregations of the UPCUSA, not of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (sometimes called “the Southern church”). Cannon was the first African American woman to be ordained a minister of Word and Sacrament in the UPCUSA.
Going back to faith and coincidences, I’ve mentioned on the prayer thread that my mother-in-law died Saturday morning. Our church generally sends out an email when someone dies, and for various reasons (including giving us time to contact family), that email did not come out until Sunday morning. So while some at church were aware before the email came out, many weren’t.
My wife did say yesterday morning that, while she “knew” her mom is now okay, she sort of wished there could be something that confirmed that for her.
Then, after church, a friend came over to find my wife. She said “Your mother is okay. I rarely have dreams that I remember vividly, but I dreamed about her last night.” She had dreamed that people at the church kept asking her how my mother-in-law was, because they hadn’t heard from her in a few days. She was becoming really worried, and was feeling bad for not checking in on her, because everyone wanted to know how she was.
She continued, “but then the scene changed and I was outside in front of a movie theater and I spotted her in a red top or coat going into the movie theater with a few people. And I felt very relieved to see that she was okay. I wondered what she was going to see. I began telling all her friends that she was okay.”
When she woke up, she wrote down the dream so she’d remember it, and then made a note to write my mother-in-law a card to let her know she was thinking of her. It wasn’t long after that she got the email that my mother-in-law had died. She printed what she’d written down about the dream so she could give it to my wife.
Coincidence or not, my wife definitely was comforted.
We all have to steer a way through these things whatever tradition we are affiliated with.
Yes. We have to deal with the real failings of people whose intellectual work we otherwise value. (Like our great grand-children will have to do with ours.)
@Gamma Gamaliel, my experience has taught me that it's important to steer right out past those things, too, and become acquainted with thought that is "out there", even critical of what I accept. Which is even harder.
I don't do the "change is good" mantra. A lot of change is horrendous, arbitrary. But some change is good.
@Nick Tamen thank you so much for the clarifications and corrections. I shouldn't have relied on secular media sources (the New York Times tributes to Katie Cannon) because those are often misleading. I had no idea that there was another Union Theological Seminary in the South.
FWIW I think this applies to any 'authority' or theological thinker/writer of whatever stripe.
Edwards was a product of his milieu and society just as we all are. As an evangelical Christian I had an interest in Edwards to some extent, as indeed I had in other 18th century figures such as the Wesleys and Whitefield - although the Wesleys were on the Arminian side of things, of course.
Now I'm Orthodox then 'The Fathers' (and Mothers!) are the expected reference point. That throws up other issues, of course, such as the pronounced anti-Semitism of some of these guys.
We all have to steer a way through these things whatever tradition we are affiliated with.
Yes, so I'm making an obvious point I suppose. But it's all easier said than done.
Indeed - but it is do-able.
In the context of the idea that we each, at least potentially, have some degree of intentional control over our own worldview, I'm intrigued about the role played by our religious traditions in forming and maintaining those worldviews.
Two particular aspects that strike me are: the varying degree of authority of different Christian traditions; and how much of their adherents' worldview different traditions seek to influence or dictate. Which leads me to think about the extent to which Christian traditions can, in effect, be worldviews in their own right.
Yes. We have to deal with the real failings of people whose intellectual work we otherwise value. (Like our great grand-children will have to do with ours.)
Gamma Gamaliel, my experience has taught me that it's important to steer right out past those things, too, and become acquainted with thought that is "out there", even critical of what I accept. Which is even harder.
It's hard, but my experience is that becoming acquainted with thought and writing that's critical of our own positions is just the starting point.
I don't do the "change is good" mantra. A lot of change is horrendous, arbitrary. But some change is good.
In the context of our own worldviews, and some of the prejudices they contain, I would say some change is not just good, it's essential.
I take away a couple of things from this. Firstly, that up until that era, for individuals, doubts about the existence of God were mostly internalised. These days, the tendency of individuals questioning the existence of God (in contrast to believing in God, or knowing God) is to externalise the problem. Secondly, that the past isn't just a place where they do things differently - the inhabitants of the past also think differently from us. They have different worldviews.
(emphasis added)
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
I take away a couple of things from this. Firstly, that up until that era, for individuals, doubts about the existence of God were mostly internalised. These days, the tendency of individuals questioning the existence of God (in contrast to believing in God, or knowing God) is to externalise the problem. Secondly, that the past isn't just a place where they do things differently - the inhabitants of the past also think differently from us. They have different worldviews.
(emphasis added)
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
Why would atheists and agnostics questioning the existence (or non-existence) of God not be concerned about it?
I take away a couple of things from this. Firstly, that up until that era, for individuals, doubts about the existence of God were mostly internalised. These days, the tendency of individuals questioning the existence of God (in contrast to believing in God, or knowing God) is to externalise the problem. Secondly, that the past isn't just a place where they do things differently - the inhabitants of the past also think differently from us. They have different worldviews.
(emphasis added)
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
Why would atheists and agnostics questioning the existence (or non-existence) of God not be concerned about it?
Most of the ones I know have very little concern about it at all. They're more exercised by the question of why some otherwise rational people do believe in gods.
I take away a couple of things from this. Firstly, that up until that era, for individuals, doubts about the existence of God were mostly internalised. These days, the tendency of individuals questioning the existence of God (in contrast to believing in God, or knowing God) is to externalise the problem. Secondly, that the past isn't just a place where they do things differently - the inhabitants of the past also think differently from us. They have different worldviews.
(emphasis added)
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
Why would atheists and agnostics questioning the existence (or non-existence) of God not be concerned about it?
Most of the ones I know have very little concern about it at all.
So how many atheists and agnostics do you know who are questioning the existence of God? And of those individuals, how many are concerned about it?
Thank you, @Gramps49. I’m not sure how fortunate she is to have me, but she and we are definitely blessed with incredible friends and a great church community.
Gamma Gamaliel, my experience has taught me that it's important to steer right out past those things, too, and become acquainted with thought that is "out there", even critical of what I accept. Which is even harder.
It's hard, but my experience is that becoming acquainted with thought and writing that's critical of our own positions is just the starting point.
This process shapes me and will continue to via dialectical collisions -- and likely more bruising -- until I am not. There seems no end to opportunities for growth through experience, relationships and "the right book." As @MaryLouise said upthread aways:
I know discovering certain authors has been epiphanic and serendipity for me at times, more than a coincidence, to open the right book at the right time.
I don't do the "change is good" mantra. A lot of change is horrendous, arbitrary. But some change is good.
In the context of our own worldviews, and some of the prejudices they contain, I would say some change is not just good, it's essential.
"Change is good" is an idiotic thing to say in the aftermath of bad leadership decisions at work, for example. Thus, I don't use it as a mantra. But I hear it all the time.
Whether a change in world view is essential and for whom depends on one's goals, values and power relationships I think.
@Kendel I was thinking too about the need to develop intersectional awareness, bringing other undervalued or overlooked dynamics into play: sometimes it has helped me not just to read texts that make me more self-critical or aware of the flawed assumptions of my own faith tradition but that open up new ways of looking at a writer or theologian. I’m less interested in evangelical revisions of Jonathan Edwards because they sound too much like cherry-picking to suit the same-old, same-old. What made me look again at the Puritan tradition recently was a line from a poet named Susan Howe where she writes about Jonathan Edwards as a pilgrim in a spiritual wilderness and his "disciplined journey through conscious despair, humiliation, and the joy of submission to an arbitrary and absent ordering of the Universe."
She retrieves details about Edwards that made me see him afresh.
As Jonathan Edwards rode from parish to parish across Massachusetts, he would compose sermons but had no time to write drafts while on horseback crossing rivers, great distances with only rough tracks for roads. He would use a mnemonic device and pin pieces of paper to parts of his clothes – a buttonhole, a sleeve or pocket flap – that he associated with his thoughts. Edwards would arrive home with fluttering scraps of paper all over his jacket or coat, an eccentric but practical man of great purpose and vision.
Because Susan Howe is looking to retrieve fragments rather than the systematic over-determined aspects of Calvinist belief in early New England, she looks to scraps of paper, letters, jottings and archived memories. Edwards was deeply loved, she notes. Working in the archives of the Edwards family, Howe takes a few lines from letters written by the widow Sarah Pierpont Edwards to her daughter after Jonathan Edwards has suddenly died, in Princeton, 1758. Because Susan Howe has recently lost her own husband, she focuses on the tensions and contradictions --belief and unbelief, comfort and devastation -- around distraught grief and acceptance of God’s will in a new widow’s words.
Sarah writes: “O My Very Dear Child. What shall I say? A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud.”
“Oh that we may kiss the rod, and lay our hands on our mouths! The Lord has done it. He has made me adore his goodness, that we had him so long. But my God lives; and he has my heart. . . . We are all given to God: and there I am, and love to be.”
And Howe, secular and a principled agnostic, responds “Maybe there is some not yet understood return to people we have loved and lost. I need to imagine the possibility even if I don’t believe it.”
"Change is good" is an idiotic thing to say in the aftermath of bad leadership decisions at work, for example.
Sorry to hear it - that's rather messed up. "Hiding behind mantras" looks like a rather transparent leadership policy.
Thus, I don't use it as a mantra. But I hear it all the time.
I never hear it. Here in England, "change is bad" is a widely internalised attitude. No mantra required.
I don't know how many here who say or believe it. Maybe half or less.
And it's coming from the lead, affected by bad leadership decisions, not the affected leaders.
Started my acquaintance with Katie Cannon here, while wrapping a gift this evening. A Black, Womanist who is a Christian and theologian! I'm looking forward to getting to know here better.
Thank you, @MaryLouise and @Nick Tamen
I take away a couple of things from this. Firstly, that up until that era, for individuals, doubts about the existence of God were mostly internalised. These days, the tendency of individuals questioning the existence of God (in contrast to believing in God, or knowing God) is to externalise the problem. Secondly, that the past isn't just a place where they do things differently - the inhabitants of the past also think differently from us. They have different worldviews.
(emphasis added)
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
Why would atheists and agnostics questioning the existence (or non-existence) of God not be concerned about it?
What makes you think atheists and agnostics question the existence of God?
Started my acquaintance with Katie Cannon here, while wrapping a gift this evening. A Black, Womanist who is a Christian and theologian! I'm looking forward to getting to know here better.
Thank you, @MaryLouise and @Nick Tamen
Started my acquaintance with Katie Cannon here, while wrapping a gift this evening. A Black, Womanist who is a Christian and theologian! I'm looking forward to getting to know here better.
Thank you, @MaryLouise and @Nick Tamen
What, please, is a Womanist?
@mousethief as I understand it, many US-based Black women in the 1980s chose the term 'Womanist' to describe Black women's experiences in androcentric or patriarchal churches and society in preference to the term 'feminist' used by white women, since feminism did not take into account the impact of race on Black lives. The development of intersectional thinking brought many other factors into the debates.
I take away a couple of things from this. Firstly, that up until that era, for individuals, doubts about the existence of God were mostly internalised. These days, the tendency of individuals questioning the existence of God (in contrast to believing in God, or knowing God) is to externalise the problem. Secondly, that the past isn't just a place where they do things differently - the inhabitants of the past also think differently from us. They have different worldviews.
(emphasis added)
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
Why would atheists and agnostics questioning the existence (or non-existence) of God not be concerned about it?
What makes you think atheists and agnostics question the existence of God?
After some reflection, the short answer to that question would be "people such as C S Lewis", and a longer answer would speculate on the possible meanings of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic".
I am reminded reading this thread of my student days on the edges of the evangelical Christian Union. There were Scripts of Reasons people don't believe in God and of how to refute those Reasons. Some keen student evangelicals would have evangelistic conversations with agnostics and atheists. I wouldn't say they were nonplussed when their targets deviated from the Scripts; they didn't have quite enough self-awareness. Rather they responded to each deviation from the Script as if their target had meant to say the correct line.
There are some posts on this thread that aren't evangelical but nevertheless have an air that they're responding to what the poster thinks the other poster should have said if the addressee were coming from where the first poster thinks they ought to be coming from.
To be more concrete, saying, "if you believe that you must be a positivist", allows the poster to address their posts to the ideal positivist in their head rather than listen to the actual poster they're ostensibly replying to.
A point that strikes me is the difference between atheists and anti-theists. Most of my family were atheists, but they weren't interested in religion or God. I did meet anti-theists at uni, and they were very interested! I would say with the former, it was difficult to have any conversation on these topics, with the latter, relentless conversations might occur.
I am reminded reading this thread of my student days on the edges of the evangelical Christian Union. There were Scripts of Reasons people don't believe in God and of how to refute those Reasons. Some keen student evangelicals would have evangelistic conversations with agnostics and atheists. I wouldn't say they were nonplussed when their targets deviated from the Scripts; they didn't have quite enough self-awareness. Rather they responded to each deviation from the Script as if their target had meant to say the correct line.
There are some posts on this thread that aren't evangelical but nevertheless have an air that they're responding to what the poster thinks the other poster should have said if the addressee were coming from where the first poster thinks they ought to be coming from.
That made me smile. Echoes of days gone by? Or maybe the role of Mornington Crescent played by "Jack".
These days, if all the world's a stage, I'm more aware of the extent to which people *aren't* deviating from their scripts. Or maybe it's an abiding concern for those individuals still suffering the slings and arrows.
Scripts aren't the only device keeping us from acting as reliable narrators of our own fortune.
I take away a couple of things from this. Firstly, that up until that era, for individuals, doubts about the existence of God were mostly internalised. These days, the tendency of individuals questioning the existence of God (in contrast to believing in God, or knowing God) is to externalise the problem. Secondly, that the past isn't just a place where they do things differently - the inhabitants of the past also think differently from us. They have different worldviews.
(emphasis added)
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
Why would atheists and agnostics questioning the existence (or non-existence) of God not be concerned about it?
Most of the ones I know have very little concern about it at all.
So how many atheists and agnostics do you know who are questioning the existence of God? And of those individuals, how many are concerned about it?
Perhaps depends a little on your definition of "questioning" - col
I am reminded reading this thread of my student days on the edges of the evangelical Christian Union. There were Scripts of Reasons people don't believe in God and of how to refute those Reasons. Some keen student evangelicals would have evangelistic conversations with agnostics and atheists. I wouldn't say they were nonplussed when their targets deviated from the Scripts; they didn't have quite enough self-awareness. Rather they responded to each deviation from the Script as if their target had meant to say the correct line.
There are some posts on this thread that aren't evangelical but nevertheless have an air that they're responding to what the poster thinks the other poster should have said if the addressee were coming from where the first poster thinks they ought to be coming from.
To be more concrete, saying, "if you believe that you must be a positivist", allows the poster to address their posts to the ideal positivist in their head rather than listen to the actual poster they're ostensibly replying to.
The other version of the evangelistic phenomenon to which you refer whereby the "in" speaker or book du jour reports giving an answer to a question which dumbfounded the atheist interlocutor and so convinced them that they converted on the spot.
Strangely when they give the same answer to a real life person, they get their arse handed to them on a plate.
My own thoughts on the main question is that apparent coincidence can be miracle, Providence (God transcends time, after all, so events from the past can be in response to a prayer prayed tomorrow), God nudging our awareness of things, and of course we can be mistaken, too.
Started my acquaintance with Katie Cannon here, while wrapping a gift this evening. A Black, Womanist who is a Christian and theologian! I'm looking forward to getting to know here better.
Thank you, @MaryLouise and @Nick Tamen
What, please, is a Womanist?
@mousethief as I understand it, many US-based Black women in the 1980s chose the term 'Womanist' to describe Black women's experiences in androcentric or patriarchal churches and society in preference to the term 'feminist' used by white women, since feminism did not take into account the impact of race on Black lives. The development of intersectional thinking brought many other factors into the debates.
I take away a couple of things from this. Firstly, that up until that era, for individuals, doubts about the existence of God were mostly internalised. These days, the tendency of individuals questioning the existence of God (in contrast to believing in God, or knowing God) is to externalise the problem. Secondly, that the past isn't just a place where they do things differently - the inhabitants of the past also think differently from us. They have different worldviews.
(emphasis added)
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
Why would atheists and agnostics questioning the existence (or non-existence) of God not be concerned about it?
What makes you think atheists and agnostics question the existence of God?
After some reflection, the short answer to that question would be "people such as C S Lewis", and a longer answer would speculate on the possible meanings of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic".
Lewis had a rather unfortunate habit of normalizing his own experience.
As for the meanings of those two words, it doesn't really matter what the possible meanings are, except as an exercise in lexicography. It matters what an individual uses that word to mean of themself. As Dafyd points out, if we are going to talk to others about their religion or ours or lack thereof, we all have to accept what the others say about their own inner states, without projection or Procrustean adjustments.
As an experiment, do you question the existence of Cthulu or Ra?
My own thoughts on the main question is that apparent coincidence can be miracle, Providence (God transcends time, after all, so events from the past can be in response to a prayer prayed tomorrow), God nudging our awareness of things, and of course we can be mistaken, too.
This is that obscure mysterious zone I've been circling around since the thread began, because the whole point of any miracle is its impossibility and the lack of any definite proof, or definite anything. So many small peripheral things, symbols or dreams can give us comfort or seem well-timed: a feather tumbling out of the sky as if sending a message, remembered pieces of music, dream conversations, unexpected healing, passages from a gospel that jump out at us as if we have never read them before. It may be synchronicity, it may be metaphor, it may be a glimpse into the beyond.
Sure. I can live - or am learning to live - with the ambiguity of that but that doesn't mean it's easy.
My late wife had a crisis of faith towards the end of her life. She wondered whether there was really anything in it and wanted 'proof'.
I can understand that.
She met with an Anglican priest in a kind of spiritual guide/director call it what you will way and they had no-holds barred discussions about life, death and faith.
I have no idea what they discussed as strict confidence was part of the deal. I do know that it helped.
Towards the end and before she became too ill we developed a pattern where I would read her a chapter from a book I'd recently ghost-written and some prayers from various prayer books and liturgies until we found some she was comfortable with.
Sometimes that felt like heaven on earth. At others as though the heavens were as brass.
I'd love to be able to report angelic choirs and radiant light and so on and so forth. But no.
Glimpses into the beyond?
Confirmation bias?
Did my wife ever find the 'proof' she wanted? Was she happy not to? She did 'respond' to certain verses I read but does a response or lack of one indicate anything substantial?
We have to learn to live between the now and the not yet, with paradox and ambiguity.
As an experiment, do you question the existence of Cthulu or Ra?
Cthulhu, not really, as he was explicitly a literary creation.
Ra and other beings from historic mythology could be misunderstood unfallen angels (I believe Uriel is traditionally the archangel associated with the sun, for instance), fallen angels seeking worship, misunderstood beings that are part of God’s creation and perhaps connected to nature or the like, but none to be worshipped of course, in my view. Or none of the above, of course.
(Of course with (unfallen) angelic beings, as with saints, there’s a difference between dulia and latria, too, one kind of reference just for God Himself, and one appropriate to saints and good angels.)
I suppose we’ll find out the details in the afterlife.
My own thoughts on the main question is that apparent coincidence can be miracle, Providence (God transcends time, after all, so events from the past can be in response to a prayer prayed tomorrow), God nudging our awareness of things, and of course we can be mistaken, too.
This is that obscure mysterious zone I've been circling around since the thread began, because the whole point of any miracle is its impossibility and the lack of any definite proof, or definite anything.
That gave me pause.
I've always found considering the "impossibility" a rather self-negating aspect of miracles, invariably eliminating any sense of wonder or mystery by virtue of leading me to an intellectual exercise in speculation (about possible explanations). As this is a bit of a communal dead-end, I've tried to shift my perspective to a more sustaining point of view.
Nowadays I'd say that the point of a miracle is that it demonstrates that providence itself, divine or otherwise, occasionally concerns itself with the well-being of human beings. Miracles tell us, or confirm to us, that God (or the universe) thinks we matter.
And so I try to simply accept and appreciate the wonder and mystery and maybe even give thanks.
So many small peripheral things, symbols or dreams can give us comfort or seem well-timed: a feather tumbling out of the sky as if sending a message, remembered pieces of music, dream conversations, unexpected healing, passages from a gospel that jump out at us as if we have never read them before. It may be synchronicity, it may be metaphor, it may be a glimpse into the beyond.
@pease that simply staying open to not-knowing might be key. Often, for those of us coming from a predominantly Western faith experience, there is this grasping after significance or achievement in prayer or meditation. It's hard to sit and be present without evaluating the experience or setting goals, to become more peaceful or kinder or more insightful, more conscious of God's presence, more able to extract significance out of the quiet time.
When I went on a silent retreat for the second time or so, I had a difficult eight days. I couldn't concentrate, was bored and sleepy most of the time. And I couldn't stop worrying that I wouldn't know what to say to the group at the end of the retreat, that nothing had happened to me? That it had been a waste of time because I hadn't 'noticed' God around me? I had to make it mean something. That's the anxious grasping after meaning I'm talking about.
@pease that simply staying open to not-knowing might be key. Often, for those of us coming from a predominantly Western faith experience, there is this grasping after significance or achievement in prayer or meditation. It's hard to sit and be present without evaluating the experience or setting goals, to become more peaceful or kinder or more insightful, more conscious of God's presence, more able to extract significance out of the quiet time.
When I went on a silent retreat for the second time or so, I had a difficult eight days. I couldn't concentrate, was bored and sleepy most of the time. And I couldn't stop worrying that I wouldn't know what to say to the group at the end of the retreat, that nothing had happened to me? That it had been a waste of time because I hadn't 'noticed' God around me? I had to make it mean something. That's the anxious grasping after meaning I'm talking about.
My apologies. I failed to convey in my previous post that my concern is more community-centred (than self). I am considering a conceptual framework that also enables me to be more positive in response to other people's accounts of miracles.
In relation to your post, I think I come from a different place. I'm pretty comfortable with going for whole days or longer without talking to anybody. And on dwelling on the world immediately around me on its own terms for extended periods of time with no other aim in mind.
And, unsurprisingly, I'm comfortable with telling a group of people about my take on the meaning (or otherwise) of a shared experience. And of them not having the faintest idea of what I'm talking about. And of them trying to reframe what I say in ways that they find more normative.
I ceased being anxious about grasping after meaning years ago. I enjoy looking for meaning and not looking for meaning.
What makes you think atheists and agnostics question the existence of God?
After some reflection, the short answer to that question would be "people such as C S Lewis", and a longer answer would speculate on the possible meanings of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic".
Lewis had a rather unfortunate habit of normalizing his own experience.
Does that mean you're discounting it? What about this guy then? (Or anyone else who walks in Lewis' shoes.)
As for the meanings of those two words, it doesn't really matter what the possible meanings are, except as an exercise in lexicography. It matters what an individual uses that word to mean of themself. As Dafyd points out, if we are going to talk to others about their religion or ours or lack thereof, we all have to accept what the others say about their own inner states, without projection or Procrustean adjustments.
In that case, C S Lewis or, for that matter, the majority of people describing themselves as an atheist who came to believe in the existence of God, would seem to address your question.
As an experiment, do you question the existence of Cthulu or Ra?
It would be quite difficult to answer that question without doing so. Belief is a many-splendoured thing.
.......
Often, for those of us coming from a predominantly Western faith experience, there is this grasping after significance or achievement in prayer or meditation. It's hard to sit and be present without evaluating the experience or setting goals, to become more peaceful or kinder or more insightful, more conscious of God's presence, more able to extract significance out of the quiet time.
.....
And I couldn't stop worrying that I wouldn't know what to say to the group at the end of the retreat, that nothing had happened to me? That it had been a waste of time because I hadn't 'noticed' God around me? I had to make it mean something. That's the anxious grasping after meaning I'm talking about.
Bolded emphases and elipses are mine -- K
@MaryLouise it sounds [to me] like you were less concerned about your own response to the retreat (that it didn't do anything for you) than you were about other people's expectations that it should have value, would have to be worth it to justify the costs: money, time, time away from other more valuable duties, the discomfort to you, etc.; and that it served some purpose by meeting a goal: greater closeness to God, improved focus on prayer or whatever.
I've felt that kind of pressure, too. Not only is one expected immediately to have some sort of evaluation ready to spit out, but is to provide a report of the full, justificatory integration of the experience into the fabric of one's life. No one is prepared for: "Well, the experience really didn't do what I had hoped. Actually, I'm rather disappointed with it. I will need time to process, if it had any significance to me at all. Sorry."
No one at church had hoped to hear me say, "I see no reason after this year overseas in an MK school to believe God is calling me to be a missionary." But there it was.
We are so enculturated to chrish things, experiences, even people, by their "value" as well as to be able to demonstrate to others the value of the cherishing. I think because of this, we often feel great pressure to create and assign "value" we didn't really see; it's what's expected. People generally aren't open to not knowing.
.......
Often, for those of us coming from a predominantly Western faith experience, there is this grasping after significance or achievement in prayer or meditation. It's hard to sit and be present without evaluating the experience or setting goals, to become more peaceful or kinder or more insightful, more conscious of God's presence, more able to extract significance out of the quiet time.
.....
And I couldn't stop worrying that I wouldn't know what to say to the group at the end of the retreat, that nothing had happened to me? That it had been a waste of time because I hadn't 'noticed' God around me? I had to make it mean something. That's the anxious grasping after meaning I'm talking about.
Bolded emphases and elipses are mine -- K
@MaryLouise it sounds [to me] like you were less concerned about your own response to the retreat (that it didn't do anything for you) than you were about other people's expectations that it should have value, would have to be worth it to justify the costs: money, time, time away from other more valuable duties, the discomfort to you, etc.; and that it served some purpose by meeting a goal: greater closeness to God, improved focus on prayer or whatever.
I've felt that kind of pressure, too. Not only is one expected immediately to have some sort of evaluation ready to spit out, but is to provide a report of the full, justificatory integration of the experience into the fabric of one's life. No one is prepared for: "Well, the experience really didn't do what I had hoped. Actually, I'm rather disappointed with it. I will need time to process, if it had any significance to me at all. Sorry."
No one at church had hoped to hear me say, "I see no reason after this year overseas in an MK school to believe God is calling me to be a missionary." But there it was.
We are so enculturated to chrish things, experiences, even people, by their "value" as well as to be able to demonstrate to others the value of the cherishing. I think because of this, we often feel great pressure to create and assign "value" we didn't really see; it's what's expected. People generally aren't open to not knowing.
Yes,@Kendel it was about being new at doing something structured and the fear of being judged or not getting it right. But it was also to do with something else, the 'seeking signs and wonders' that is such a large aspect of what we are encouraged to do in Western faith traditions. Which is why we rush to read meaning into coincidences rather than trust not-knowing.
I'm a big fan of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
Sure, he wasn't perfect and made mistakes but a top bloke in my opinion.
His apparent reticence got him into hot water a number of times. His more 'apophatic' approach was mistaken for a kind of vagueness.
His admission of doubts and questions in the face of tragedies like Beslan and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami had sections of the media trumpeting that the Archbishop had declared the impossibility of faith.
The thing is that any form of contemplative or reflective spirituality can easily be misconstrued as vague whishty-whishty bibble-babble. Equally, definite and dogmatic statements of belief can also be caricatured as brittle and unyielding pronouncements intended to brow-beat people into submission.
There has to be some kind of equilibrium somewhere.
Or perhaps not ... 😉
I once went on a 6-day silent retreat and got an awful lot out of it. I'm sure if I did so again I may find myself experiencing what @MaryLouise describes, some kind of pressure to find or attribute meaning or value to it.
These pressures can be very subtle and I doubt we'll ever be entirely free of them. I suppose the key thing is to acknowledge or be aware of that. It may not resolve everything but it's a good place to start.
What makes you think atheists and agnostics question the existence of God?
After some reflection, the short answer to that question would be "people such as C S Lewis", and a longer answer would speculate on the possible meanings of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic".
Lewis had a rather unfortunate habit of normalizing his own experience.
Does that mean you're discounting it? What about this guy then? (Or anyone else who walks in Lewis' shoes.)
No, I'm saying it's not universal and may not even be the majority experience. Piling the plate with anecdotes does not create actual data.
As for the meanings of those two words, it doesn't really matter what the possible meanings are, except as an exercise in lexicography. It matters what an individual uses that word to mean of themself. As Dafyd points out, if we are going to talk to others about their religion or ours or lack thereof, we all have to accept what the others say about their own inner states, without projection or Procrustean adjustments.
In that case, C S Lewis or, for that matter, the majority of people describing themselves as an atheist who came to believe in the existence of God, would seem to address your question.
Only if there is nobody else who uses the words of themselves. See previous question.
As an experiment, do you question the existence of Cthulu or Ra?
It would be quite difficult to answer that question without doing so. Belief is a many-splendoured thing.
So, you're not willing to engage on that question.
What makes you think atheists and agnostics question the existence of God?
After some reflection, the short answer to that question would be "people such as C S Lewis", and a longer answer would speculate on the possible meanings of the terms "atheist" and "agnostic".
Lewis had a rather unfortunate habit of normalizing his own experience.
Does that mean you're discounting it? What about this guy then? (Or anyone else who walks in Lewis' shoes.)
No, I'm saying it's not universal and may not even be the majority experience. Piling the plate with anecdotes does not create actual data.
Ah.
I'm not saying it's universal or a majority experience. I was referring to those people identifying as atheists and agnostics who have the particular experience of questioning their beliefs at particular points in their lives. I'm not saying that all atheists or agnostics live in a perpetual state of questioning. It seems uncontroversial that many would be comfortable with their belief or absence of belief, the majority of the time.
This is a similar sense to my original post (that you quoted), which addressed just those individuals questioning the existence of God, not all individuals.
As for the meanings of those two words, it doesn't really matter what the possible meanings are, except as an exercise in lexicography. It matters what an individual uses that word to mean of themself. As Dafyd points out, if we are going to talk to others about their religion or ours or lack thereof, we all have to accept what the others say about their own inner states, without projection or Procrustean adjustments.
In that case, C S Lewis or, for that matter, the majority of people describing themselves as an atheist who came to believe in the existence of God, would seem to address your question.
Only if there is nobody else who uses the words of themselves. See previous question.
With respect to your meaning of the words "atheist" and "agnostic", the only aspect about which I currently have any confidence is that you think
The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
As an experiment, do you question the existence of Cthulu or Ra?
It would be quite difficult to answer that question without doing so. Belief is a many-splendoured thing.
So, you're not willing to engage on that question.
I just did. I was pointing out the difficulty of engaging with a question about the existence of anything without considering the existence of that thing. It might not have been what you had in mind with the question, but that's the thing about questions and the way people understand them.
I take away a couple of things from this. Firstly, that up until that era, for individuals, doubts about the existence of God were mostly internalised. These days, the tendency of individuals questioning the existence of God (in contrast to believing in God, or knowing God) is to externalise the problem. Secondly, that the past isn't just a place where they do things differently - the inhabitants of the past also think differently from us. They have different worldviews.
(emphasis added)
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
Why would atheists and agnostics questioning the existence (or non-existence) of God not be concerned about it?
Most of the ones I know have very little concern about it at all.
So how many atheists and agnostics do you know who are questioning the existence of God? And of those individuals, how many are concerned about it?
Perhaps depends a little on your definition of "questioning"
Initially, it was "doubting". But since the question expanded to include atheists and agnostics, I reckon the definition of "questioning" also broadened - to the sense of examining or reconsidering.
The converse of doubt being certainty, one question that occurs to me is why does certainty matter so much? Does it matter if we doubt? More specifically, does it matter if we don't have certainty about the existence (or non-existence) of God?
Putting it another way, how much certainty about the existence (or non-existence) of God do we need not to be concerned?
Comments
Edwards was a product of his milieu and society just as we all are. As an evangelical Christian I had an interest in Edwards to some extent, as indeed I had in other 18th century figures such as the Wesleys and Whitefield - although the Wesleys were on the Arminian side of things, of course.
Now I'm Orthodox then 'The Fathers' (and Mothers!) are the expected reference point. That throws up other issues, of course, such as the pronounced anti-Semitism of some of these guys.
We all have to steer a way through these things whatever tradition we are affiliated with.
Yes, so I'm making an obvious point I suppose. But it's all easier said than done.
A few things I’ll note, for clarity: There are (at least) two Union Seminaries in the US: Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York and Union Presbyterian Seminary, which is in Richmond, Virginia. The latter is actually the older of the two, and until 2009 its name was Union Theological Seminary.
Cannon had a master’s and a Ph.D from Union in New York, but she was on the faculty of Union in Richmond. There, she taught, as well as led the Squaring the Womanist Circle Project and established The Center For Womanist Leadership.
And Cannon was ordained in the United (not Uniting) Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (sometimes called “the Northern church”), one of the predecessor bodies of the PC(USA). Prior to the formation of the PC(USA), most African American Presbyterians in the American South were members of congregations of the UPCUSA, not of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (sometimes called “the Southern church”). Cannon was the first African American woman to be ordained a minister of Word and Sacrament in the UPCUSA.
Going back to faith and coincidences, I’ve mentioned on the prayer thread that my mother-in-law died Saturday morning. Our church generally sends out an email when someone dies, and for various reasons (including giving us time to contact family), that email did not come out until Sunday morning. So while some at church were aware before the email came out, many weren’t.
My wife did say yesterday morning that, while she “knew” her mom is now okay, she sort of wished there could be something that confirmed that for her.
Then, after church, a friend came over to find my wife. She said “Your mother is okay. I rarely have dreams that I remember vividly, but I dreamed about her last night.” She had dreamed that people at the church kept asking her how my mother-in-law was, because they hadn’t heard from her in a few days. She was becoming really worried, and was feeling bad for not checking in on her, because everyone wanted to know how she was.
She continued, “but then the scene changed and I was outside in front of a movie theater and I spotted her in a red top or coat going into the movie theater with a few people. And I felt very relieved to see that she was okay. I wondered what she was going to see. I began telling all her friends that she was okay.”
When she woke up, she wrote down the dream so she’d remember it, and then made a note to write my mother-in-law a card to let her know she was thinking of her. It wasn’t long after that she got the email that my mother-in-law had died. She printed what she’d written down about the dream so she could give it to my wife.
Coincidence or not, my wife definitely was comforted.
Thank you for more information on Katie Cannon. I will look into her work.
Yes. We have to deal with the real failings of people whose intellectual work we otherwise value. (Like our great grand-children will have to do with ours.)
@Gamma Gamaliel, my experience has taught me that it's important to steer right out past those things, too, and become acquainted with thought that is "out there", even critical of what I accept. Which is even harder.
I don't do the "change is good" mantra. A lot of change is horrendous, arbitrary. But some change is good.
In the context of the idea that we each, at least potentially, have some degree of intentional control over our own worldview, I'm intrigued about the role played by our religious traditions in forming and maintaining those worldviews.
Two particular aspects that strike me are: the varying degree of authority of different Christian traditions; and how much of their adherents' worldview different traditions seek to influence or dictate. Which leads me to think about the extent to which Christian traditions can, in effect, be worldviews in their own right.
It's hard, but my experience is that becoming acquainted with thought and writing that's critical of our own positions is just the starting point.
In the context of our own worldviews, and some of the prejudices they contain, I would say some change is not just good, it's essential.
What problem? The atheist/agnostic does not feel he/she has a problem.
Most of the ones I know have very little concern about it at all. They're more exercised by the question of why some otherwise rational people do believe in gods.
All the best to you in your pursuit, @pease.
"Change is good" is an idiotic thing to say in the aftermath of bad leadership decisions at work, for example. Thus, I don't use it as a mantra. But I hear it all the time.
Whether a change in world view is essential and for whom depends on one's goals, values and power relationships I think.
She retrieves details about Edwards that made me see him afresh.
As Jonathan Edwards rode from parish to parish across Massachusetts, he would compose sermons but had no time to write drafts while on horseback crossing rivers, great distances with only rough tracks for roads. He would use a mnemonic device and pin pieces of paper to parts of his clothes – a buttonhole, a sleeve or pocket flap – that he associated with his thoughts. Edwards would arrive home with fluttering scraps of paper all over his jacket or coat, an eccentric but practical man of great purpose and vision.
Because Susan Howe is looking to retrieve fragments rather than the systematic over-determined aspects of Calvinist belief in early New England, she looks to scraps of paper, letters, jottings and archived memories. Edwards was deeply loved, she notes. Working in the archives of the Edwards family, Howe takes a few lines from letters written by the widow Sarah Pierpont Edwards to her daughter after Jonathan Edwards has suddenly died, in Princeton, 1758. Because Susan Howe has recently lost her own husband, she focuses on the tensions and contradictions --belief and unbelief, comfort and devastation -- around distraught grief and acceptance of God’s will in a new widow’s words.
Sarah writes: “O My Very Dear Child. What shall I say? A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud.”
“Oh that we may kiss the rod, and lay our hands on our mouths! The Lord has done it. He has made me adore his goodness, that we had him so long. But my God lives; and he has my heart. . . . We are all given to God: and there I am, and love to be.”
And Howe, secular and a principled agnostic, responds “Maybe there is some not yet understood return to people we have loved and lost. I need to imagine the possibility even if I don’t believe it.”
I don't know how many here who say or believe it. Maybe half or less.
And it's coming from the lead, affected by bad leadership decisions, not the affected leaders.
Thank you, @MaryLouise and @Nick Tamen
What makes you think atheists and agnostics question the existence of God?
What, please, is a Womanist?
@mousethief as I understand it, many US-based Black women in the 1980s chose the term 'Womanist' to describe Black women's experiences in androcentric or patriarchal churches and society in preference to the term 'feminist' used by white women, since feminism did not take into account the impact of race on Black lives. The development of intersectional thinking brought many other factors into the debates.
MaryLouise gave a good nutshell explanation. Wikipedia's article is fairly detailed, if you want more information.
This has been a good review for me after so many years. I'm glad you asked.
And there's the Wikipedia article on Womanist Theology, which is also worth reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womanist_theology
There are some posts on this thread that aren't evangelical but nevertheless have an air that they're responding to what the poster thinks the other poster should have said if the addressee were coming from where the first poster thinks they ought to be coming from.
To be more concrete, saying, "if you believe that you must be a positivist", allows the poster to address their posts to the ideal positivist in their head rather than listen to the actual poster they're ostensibly replying to.
These days, if all the world's a stage, I'm more aware of the extent to which people *aren't* deviating from their scripts. Or maybe it's an abiding concern for those individuals still suffering the slings and arrows.
Scripts aren't the only device keeping us from acting as reliable narrators of our own fortune.
Perhaps depends a little on your definition of "questioning" - col
The other version of the evangelistic phenomenon to which you refer whereby the "in" speaker or book du jour reports giving an answer to a question which dumbfounded the atheist interlocutor and so convinced them that they converted on the spot.
Strangely when they give the same answer to a real life person, they get their arse handed to them on a plate.
I see, thank you!
Lewis had a rather unfortunate habit of normalizing his own experience.
As for the meanings of those two words, it doesn't really matter what the possible meanings are, except as an exercise in lexicography. It matters what an individual uses that word to mean of themself. As Dafyd points out, if we are going to talk to others about their religion or ours or lack thereof, we all have to accept what the others say about their own inner states, without projection or Procrustean adjustments.
As an experiment, do you question the existence of Cthulu or Ra?
This is that obscure mysterious zone I've been circling around since the thread began, because the whole point of any miracle is its impossibility and the lack of any definite proof, or definite anything. So many small peripheral things, symbols or dreams can give us comfort or seem well-timed: a feather tumbling out of the sky as if sending a message, remembered pieces of music, dream conversations, unexpected healing, passages from a gospel that jump out at us as if we have never read them before. It may be synchronicity, it may be metaphor, it may be a glimpse into the beyond.
My late wife had a crisis of faith towards the end of her life. She wondered whether there was really anything in it and wanted 'proof'.
I can understand that.
She met with an Anglican priest in a kind of spiritual guide/director call it what you will way and they had no-holds barred discussions about life, death and faith.
I have no idea what they discussed as strict confidence was part of the deal. I do know that it helped.
Towards the end and before she became too ill we developed a pattern where I would read her a chapter from a book I'd recently ghost-written and some prayers from various prayer books and liturgies until we found some she was comfortable with.
Sometimes that felt like heaven on earth. At others as though the heavens were as brass.
I'd love to be able to report angelic choirs and radiant light and so on and so forth. But no.
Glimpses into the beyond?
Confirmation bias?
Did my wife ever find the 'proof' she wanted? Was she happy not to? She did 'respond' to certain verses I read but does a response or lack of one indicate anything substantial?
We have to learn to live between the now and the not yet, with paradox and ambiguity.
I don't see any way around that.
Cthulhu, not really, as he was explicitly a literary creation.
Ra and other beings from historic mythology could be misunderstood unfallen angels (I believe Uriel is traditionally the archangel associated with the sun, for instance), fallen angels seeking worship, misunderstood beings that are part of God’s creation and perhaps connected to nature or the like, but none to be worshipped of course, in my view. Or none of the above, of course.
(Of course with (unfallen) angelic beings, as with saints, there’s a difference between dulia and latria, too, one kind of reference just for God Himself, and one appropriate to saints and good angels.)
I suppose we’ll find out the details in the afterlife.
I've always found considering the "impossibility" a rather self-negating aspect of miracles, invariably eliminating any sense of wonder or mystery by virtue of leading me to an intellectual exercise in speculation (about possible explanations). As this is a bit of a communal dead-end, I've tried to shift my perspective to a more sustaining point of view.
Nowadays I'd say that the point of a miracle is that it demonstrates that providence itself, divine or otherwise, occasionally concerns itself with the well-being of human beings. Miracles tell us, or confirm to us, that God (or the universe) thinks we matter.
And so I try to simply accept and appreciate the wonder and mystery and maybe even give thanks.
@pease that simply staying open to not-knowing might be key. Often, for those of us coming from a predominantly Western faith experience, there is this grasping after significance or achievement in prayer or meditation. It's hard to sit and be present without evaluating the experience or setting goals, to become more peaceful or kinder or more insightful, more conscious of God's presence, more able to extract significance out of the quiet time.
When I went on a silent retreat for the second time or so, I had a difficult eight days. I couldn't concentrate, was bored and sleepy most of the time. And I couldn't stop worrying that I wouldn't know what to say to the group at the end of the retreat, that nothing had happened to me? That it had been a waste of time because I hadn't 'noticed' God around me? I had to make it mean something. That's the anxious grasping after meaning I'm talking about.
In relation to your post, I think I come from a different place. I'm pretty comfortable with going for whole days or longer without talking to anybody. And on dwelling on the world immediately around me on its own terms for extended periods of time with no other aim in mind.
And, unsurprisingly, I'm comfortable with telling a group of people about my take on the meaning (or otherwise) of a shared experience. And of them not having the faintest idea of what I'm talking about. And of them trying to reframe what I say in ways that they find more normative.
I ceased being anxious about grasping after meaning years ago. I enjoy looking for meaning and not looking for meaning.
In that case, C S Lewis or, for that matter, the majority of people describing themselves as an atheist who came to believe in the existence of God, would seem to address your question.
It would be quite difficult to answer that question without doing so. Belief is a many-splendoured thing.
@MaryLouise it sounds [to me] like you were less concerned about your own response to the retreat (that it didn't do anything for you) than you were about other people's expectations that it should have value, would have to be worth it to justify the costs: money, time, time away from other more valuable duties, the discomfort to you, etc.; and that it served some purpose by meeting a goal: greater closeness to God, improved focus on prayer or whatever.
I've felt that kind of pressure, too. Not only is one expected immediately to have some sort of evaluation ready to spit out, but is to provide a report of the full, justificatory integration of the experience into the fabric of one's life. No one is prepared for: "Well, the experience really didn't do what I had hoped. Actually, I'm rather disappointed with it. I will need time to process, if it had any significance to me at all. Sorry."
No one at church had hoped to hear me say, "I see no reason after this year overseas in an MK school to believe God is calling me to be a missionary." But there it was.
We are so enculturated to chrish things, experiences, even people, by their "value" as well as to be able to demonstrate to others the value of the cherishing. I think because of this, we often feel great pressure to create and assign "value" we didn't really see; it's what's expected. People generally aren't open to not knowing.
Yes,@Kendel it was about being new at doing something structured and the fear of being judged or not getting it right. But it was also to do with something else, the 'seeking signs and wonders' that is such a large aspect of what we are encouraged to do in Western faith traditions. Which is why we rush to read meaning into coincidences rather than trust not-knowing.
I'm a big fan of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
Sure, he wasn't perfect and made mistakes but a top bloke in my opinion.
His apparent reticence got him into hot water a number of times. His more 'apophatic' approach was mistaken for a kind of vagueness.
His admission of doubts and questions in the face of tragedies like Beslan and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami had sections of the media trumpeting that the Archbishop had declared the impossibility of faith.
The thing is that any form of contemplative or reflective spirituality can easily be misconstrued as vague whishty-whishty bibble-babble. Equally, definite and dogmatic statements of belief can also be caricatured as brittle and unyielding pronouncements intended to brow-beat people into submission.
There has to be some kind of equilibrium somewhere.
Or perhaps not ... 😉
I once went on a 6-day silent retreat and got an awful lot out of it. I'm sure if I did so again I may find myself experiencing what @MaryLouise describes, some kind of pressure to find or attribute meaning or value to it.
These pressures can be very subtle and I doubt we'll ever be entirely free of them. I suppose the key thing is to acknowledge or be aware of that. It may not resolve everything but it's a good place to start.
No, I'm saying it's not universal and may not even be the majority experience. Piling the plate with anecdotes does not create actual data.
Only if there is nobody else who uses the words of themselves. See previous question.
So, you're not willing to engage on that question.
I'm not saying it's universal or a majority experience. I was referring to those people identifying as atheists and agnostics who have the particular experience of questioning their beliefs at particular points in their lives. I'm not saying that all atheists or agnostics live in a perpetual state of questioning. It seems uncontroversial that many would be comfortable with their belief or absence of belief, the majority of the time.
This is a similar sense to my original post (that you quoted), which addressed just those individuals questioning the existence of God, not all individuals.
With respect to your meaning of the words "atheist" and "agnostic", the only aspect about which I currently have any confidence is that you think I just did. I was pointing out the difficulty of engaging with a question about the existence of anything without considering the existence of that thing. It might not have been what you had in mind with the question, but that's the thing about questions and the way people understand them.
Initially, it was "doubting". But since the question expanded to include atheists and agnostics, I reckon the definition of "questioning" also broadened - to the sense of examining or reconsidering.
The converse of doubt being certainty, one question that occurs to me is why does certainty matter so much? Does it matter if we doubt? More specifically, does it matter if we don't have certainty about the existence (or non-existence) of God?
Putting it another way, how much certainty about the existence (or non-existence) of God do we need not to be concerned?
"Crying out loud"?