Skeptical Faith

Google Image Back in the day when I was a priest, I preferred funerals to weddings. That may sound strange, but when asked to witness weddings, I often felt like I was being rented along with the wedding hall, tables and chairs. Often, I suspected, the bride and groom had a church wedding because their parents wanted it. The couple often had little interest in the religious aspect of the wedding. They seemed to be involved in a sort of mutual self-absorption, and many people attending seemed to be more interested in observing wedding clothes and other attendees than in any encounter with God. It was much easier to get the attention of people at funerals. They were having to deal directly with death, a subject they had spent much of their lives trying to avoid. Believers had to deal with their doubts about the hereafter. Non-believers had to confront the expected oblivion. Unlike those at a wedding, most were eager for anything you could say to relieve their discomfort, and ma...

Google Image I have a friend who is retired from a very successful career in a medical specialty. Years ago, I remember asking him, “With what you know now about science and medicine, are you more or less persuaded about the existence of God?” “Less,” he responded without hesitation. I was surprised, and judging by his current behavior, I believe he may have changed his mind. But I was surprised because the complexity and precision of human biology seems to cry out for a “designer.” It’s hard to imagine the evolutionary process as entirely random. Though I’ve lost the reference to this, I recall reading a quote that said something to the effect that believing that creation is entirely random is like believing that a press building explodes and a fully bound, up-to-date Encyclopedia Britannica blows out of the explosion and onto the street. For those of you unfamiliar with this classic work, the Encyclopedia in its various forms had from 12 to 17 volumes, each with at least...

Google Image Most of us, at one time or another, think about the “what ifs.” What if my father hadn't married my mother but somebody else? Would there be a me? What if my parents had moved to Atlanta instead of Kansas City before I was born? How much would my life be different? And what if I had been born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, instead of St. Joseph, Mo.? Would I be alive today? San Pedro Sula, which few Americans know exists, is said to be the most dangerous city in the world. With a metro area of 1.2 million, it has a murder rate of 159 per 100,000 people. By comparison, Detroit has a rate of 55/100,000 and New Orleans, 53/100,000. Many of the people, including children and young families, we saw on TV in July when thousands of immigrants were stranded on the border, were said to be from San Pedro Sula. Instead of living there, I live in a relatively safe place where crimes are generally solved and people can’t normally commit them with impunity. Compared to ma...

Google Image This blog tries to help skeptics connect with God and religion, and that’s no easy task. According to studies, many young people, and not-so-young people, are tepid about God and shun traditional religions. Though I know many people’s objections to religion go much deeper than language, I try not to be “churchy,” avoiding religious terms that may be “off” buttons. It’s hard to write about Christianity, or Judaism for that matter, without mentioning the Bible, however. Just about all of what we know about God is from the Bible or from people – modern or ancient, scholars or religious leaders – who have tried to gain insight into the Bible and share that insight with us. At some point in a search for God, however, you should read the Bible for yourself. And that could be a problem. It was written over a period of 1,500 years, the last contribution thought to have been written about 1,900 years ago. So it isn’t exactly like reading the newspaper, or even as “easy...

Google Image I recently saw the movie, Boyhood. The acting was superb and the plot, exhibiting the fragility of modern family life, mirrored reality. But the movie needed a good editor. It was, in my opinion, way too long. The length was somewhat understandable, however, when you consider that it took 12 years to make the movie, all in an attempt to chronicle the life of a boy from ages 6 to 18. It was fascinating to see the actors aging before your eyes. The boy went through lots of family crises, including his parents’ divorce, abuse at the hands of a stepfather, the end of his mother’s second marriage and the tentativeness of a third. As a maturing teen, the boy falls in, and out of, love. A scene with his biological father – conversing over beers in the loft of a recording studio – was, for me, the most poignant. “What’s the point?’’ asks the son. “Of what?” asks the father. “Of everything?” the boy responds. In another scene, reflecting on all she had been thro...

Google Image What words do so many people long to hear each week, even from colleagues considered a bit nerdy? “Happy Friday,” of course. Of about 100 million Americans who have full-time jobs, according to Gallup’s latest State of the Workplace study, only 30 percent are engaged and inspired at work. About half of American workers are not engaged. They show up at work but are “not inspired by their work managers,” the study says. About 20 percent are “actively disengaged,” and “these employees, who have bosses from hell that make them miserable, roam the halls spreading discontent.” In other words, millions of people hate their jobs or are bored out of their minds at work. These are the people who dread, or even get depressed on, Sunday nights and are ecstatic on Friday. I was so lucky that for most of my working life I loved my job. As a newspaper reporter, I often thought I should be paying the newspaper instead of the newspaper paying me for the interest...

Google Image I had a newspaper colleague who liked to refer to me as “the defrocked priest.” She thought it was funny, and I sort of did, too, and was never offended by it. Truth is, though, I seldom wore a “frock,” and I wasn’t de-anything’d. I freely sought a dispensation from my promises as a priest and was granted it. Although through the years I’ve had serious doubts about my faith, my leaving the priesthood was not a rebellion against the church. I was never treated with anything but respect by church members, including the dozens of priests and nuns with whom I studied and worked. And as I’ve mentioned before in this blog, once I accepted that the only way to determine the existence of a personal God is by faith, most of the rest of what the church teaches was a walk in the park. I simply couldn’t live a life of celibacy. Some ex-priests have left the church or become its enemy, and I’ve had my differences with how the church operates. But I could no more leave the ...