Skeptical Faith

Google Image I recall reading that during the Cold War, at a time when the Soviet Union was officially atheist and religious practice was forbidden, Russians – even Communist party members - continued to use references to God in their daily conversations. They would say things like, “God protect us!” and “I swear to God.” After nearly 70 years of living in a God-forbidden state, the Soviets still had these vestiges of religious belief in their vocabulary, unable or unwilling to get rid of them. Interesting that Julie Drizin, a journalism teacher at the University of Maryland and professed atheist, describes a similar experience in an online article entitled, “I’m raising my kids atheist in a God-obsessed culture: How I learned to parent godless children.” She finds herself using such terms as “God bless you!” “For God’s sake!” and “God forbid!” They’re part of her vernacular, she writes, even though “…God is not exactly welcome in our home.” Most Americans, according to...

Google Image   Recently, I attended a reception for the new pastor of our little parish in Granger, IA. I was sitting at a table with fellow parishioners when the priest, who is from Ghana in West Africa and recently received a graduate degree in psychology from a Minnesota university, joined us. Someone asked him whether he liked it in the U.S. As expected, he said he did, and to the relief of the people at the table, he said he felt welcomed and at home in his new parish. “What I don’t like,” he added, “is American individualism. Many people have told me they don’t even know their neighbors. In Ghana, we are all very friendly with our neighbors and depend on them.” Most of us haven’t given much thought to this “ism.” We may be concerned about consumerism, and some are concerned about socialism and even communism, but individualism? Many don’t even know what it means. Oppose interference “Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, or social outlook th...

Google Image  Among my earlier blogs were two I posted in the summer of 2013 about “God and sex.” I feel the need to write about it again because I believe it can be a major help or obstacle in the search for God and because it is pretty much a taboo subject in any treatment of faith. Some may ask what sex has to do with the search for God, and the short answer is that everything does. Nothing human, including sex, is outside the context of faith and the search for God because faith is about our collective and individual relationship with God. First, a few ideas from those earlier blogs. I’m obviously no expert in sex, and at my age, I know little about contemporary sexual mores except for what I see and hear in the media and from reading. But who is an expert? People who have sex most often? That would make a typist an expert writer. Are they the physicians, psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers? They may know about the mechanics and psychology of sex but...

Google Image NASA recently said its Kepler spacecraft spotted "earth's bigger, older cousin," the first nearly earth-size planet to be found in the habitable zone of a star similar to our own. The agency can't say for sure whether the planet, which is 1,400 light years from earth and 60 percent bigger, has water and air, but it's the closest match yet found. "That's substantial opportunity for life to arise,” a NASA spokesman said.   These kinds of discoveries always make me think about what finding life on other planets would mean to belief in God and the practice of religion. I understand that it may make some people question their faith, but I don’t see a problem and others don’t, either.   Opens the Heart and Mind "Astronomy has a profound human value,” said Jose Gabriel Funes, an Argentinian astronomer and director of the Vatican Observatory. “It is a science that opens the heart and the mind. It helps us ...