Skeptical Faith

Google Image Some people don’t believe there was a Jesus. Others believe he was merely one of the many revolutionaries of his time, fomenting rebellion against the Roman occupiers of Israel. Others believe there was an historical Jesus, but he certainly wasn’t God. So, just to address these issues before moving on to the main topic of this blog, the existence of the historical Jesus is more certain than that of any person of his era, according to many scholars. Besides the gospels and Acts of the Apostles, which the vast majority of scholars – religious or not – believe are historical, there are non-biblical sources that attest to his existence. As for his being just another revolutionary of his time, some authors have tried to demonstrate that idea but the books I’ve read on this subject failed miserably. Jesus’ message and actions were overwhelmingly religious; that is, efforts to bring God to his people. More Complicated The third claim, about Jesus being God, is more complica...

CNN In a recent article, Sam Sawyer, editor of America Magazine, quoted Pope Francis describing politics as “a lofty vocation,   and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good.” This, writes Sawyer, who like the Pope, is a Jesuit priest, “would be considered catastrophically stupid from the standpoint of political tactics.” It’s true, Pope Francis would make a terrible candidate for the job of political adviser. Sawyer writes these thoughts in a column about Jimmy Carter, Nobel Prize winner and the 39 th U.S. president who died at age 100 two days before the end of 2024. Impossible? By no means does Sawyer imply that either Carter or Pope Francis are “catastrophically stupid.” His point is that, in case you haven’t noticed, American politics is far from alignment with genuine Christian values. Personally, I believe that it would be impossible for a genuinely committed Christian to win an American presidential election today. “(Carter) is prob...

Google Image (Part of this blog includes material from Skeptical Faith blogs from 2014 and 2024.) According to an old maxim, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” As you may recall, much of World War I and some of World War II was fought in foxholes – holes dug by soldiers to protect themselves from incoming fire. The idea of the maxim is that, when in a situation so horrifying like that of a soldier in a foxhole, non-believers are so overcome with fear they may lose or suspend doubt in the desperate hope that God exits and will save them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer commented on this idea in his Letters from Prison , a book I highly recommend. A Lutheran minister and theologian executed by the Nazis in 1945, he lamented the quality of conversions among his fellow prisoners who feared punishment and execution. Bonhoeffer worried that those kinds of conversions lacked the conviction and sincerity necessary to sustain faith. Cheap Grace Bonhoeffer also wrote a book called The Cost of Disc...

Google Image I like traditional Irish music, and one of my favorite songs is “The Rambling Irishman,” made popular in 1976 by a group called The Wolfe Tones. One of the reasons it appeals to me is that it is about an Irish emigrant from Ulster, the northern part of Ireland where many of my Irish ancestors lived. This is the song’s first verse. I am a rambling Irishman In Ulster I was born in And many the pleasant days I spent Round the shores of sweet Lough Erne But to be poor I could not endure Like others of my station To Americay I sailed away And left this Irish nation   My own family members who emigrated to the U.S. could relate to the line, “but to be poor I could not endure.” From all that I know about them, they were at least as poor as many of the immigrants to the U.S. from Latin America, Africa and Asia.   Owen McNulty When I first visited Ireland in 1960, I experienced that poverty first-hand. A cousin of my grandmother, Owen McNulty, had a 40-acre farm,...

Google Image I’m participating in a program at our parish called “Alpha.” Its aim is to discuss basic questions about God – including God’s existence – about who Jesus is, or was, about the nature of faith and a half dozen other such questions. The program is mainly aimed at the “un-churched,” including the “nones,” the people who answer “none” when asked in survey questions what religion they profess. First, a word about such a program. Some believers, including many Christians, may see little value in them, saying that people who are interested in a religion can go to any church on any street corner in America – or many other places in the world – and join up. We believers should do our own thing and leave others to theirs. Evidently, people with this view have little interest in or knowledge of what is prescribed in the Christian Bible, in passages such as this one toward the end of Mark’s gospel: “And he said to them, ‘Go out to all the world; proclaim the good news to all crea...

Google Image I’m a big fan of wildlife and outdoor videos, mostly on YouTube. I recently watched a video showing half a dozen toddler bears exiting their den among boulders, seeing the outside for the first time. They were hesitant, afraid, but obviously eager to explore the world outside their birthplace. They were the model of cuteness but seemed to be confused about everything they saw and heard, darting here and there, trying to make sense of everything. They would often stand at the entrance to the den to try to absorb what they were seeing, then dash into the den again, apparently seeing the world as too scary. I couldn’t help but think about how many humans are confused and fearful in a similar way. In many countries and neighborhoods, fear is a way of life. And, in many western countries, including the U.S., this seems to be the age of confusion - in politics, religion, sexuality, human relations, business and the marketplace. Like Sheep Without a Shepherd It brings to ...

Google Image My wife, Amparo, and I recently bought a car, not a new one but a late model. It seemed to make the most economic sense. What didn’t make sense as we were looking at cars, is the baffling number of choices confronting the buyer. “There are over 6,000 car models (generations) sold worldwide, according to Carbrands.org, "with more than 100 car brands producing vehicles. In the U.S. market, there were 257 existing care models in 2009, and this is expected to increase to around 285 by 2023." These are the latest figures I could find. There are undoubtedly more models now. The brand of vehicle we bought offers four crossovers and SUVs, three pickup models, two sport-car models and three “commercial models.” Within the model we bought, there are five price levels, from the S to the Platinum, depending mostly on the “trim.” Huge Variety of Products Although that number of choices doesn’t make sense to me, it obviously does to the majority of car buyers, or the car m...

Google Image I’ve often quoted New York Times columnist David Brooks in these blogs because I find his columns unusually insightful. And, unlike many columnists in that publication and others, he doesn’t come off as arrogant or all knowing. And I often have gotten the impression that he is sincerely seeking God. So, I was especially interested in one of his recent columns entitled, “The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be.” It indicates that he has taken another step – or maybe many more steps – on his long road to God. “When I was an agnostic,” he writes, “I thought faith was primarily about belief. Being religious was about having a settled conviction that God existed and knowing that the stories in the Bible were true. I looked for books and arguments that would convince me that God was either real or not real.” Not a "Believer" Brooks’ religious background was a mixture of occasional Jewish and Christian connections. He sometimes engaged in the f...