Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, light your candles!
Source: Antiochian.org
The Orthodox Christian Fellowship of UMBC, in collaboration with the Secular Student Association of UMBC, is excited to present to the campus community and the general public a debate entitled, “The Source of Human Morality: Interfaith Debate.” How do we define morality? Do people need God to be moral? If not, where do our morals come from? Are good works behavioral, biological, or biblical? What does it mean to be human? The Secular Student Alliance at UMBC and the Orthodox Christian Fellowship at UMBC have come together to present a debate on the topic of human morality– what is it, how do we know we have it, and where does it come from? Two presenters, with wildly different backgrounds and philosophies will face off on this topic, in the common interest of pursuing truth.
Our Speakers:
Matt Dillahunty is the president of the Atheist Community of Austin, and host of the popular public access television and internet show “The Atheist Experience.” He was raised as a fundamentalist Baptist, and was on track to become a minister until he started asking questions about the reasons for his belief. He rejected religion, and now serves as a public voice for rationality and secular morality.
Father Hans Jacobse is an Antiochian Orthodox Priest, who administers the website Orthodoxy Today and heads the American Orthodox Institute. Fr. Hans is convinced that Orthodox Christianity has an important part to play in American moral renewal. He views the current world as a battle between competing moral visions of the secular and the sacred, and hopes that Christianity can restore the moral tradition of the
gospels.
Event Information:
This event is at 7 PM on 11/16, in the UMBC ballroom. This event is fully free of charge, and open to the entire UMBC community and the public. There are limited seats available, so plan to arrive early. Come with an open-mind, and be prepared to challenge your conceptions about human morality and commonly seek the truth about what makes us human.
For more information contact: umbcocf@gmail.com
Bishop Nikolai Velimirovch The Prologue from Ohrid
HOMILY on how only the foolish deny God
I heard something like the short version of this from a fellow who is a recovered alcoholic. He indicated that his “crisis of faith” was self-inflicted; he said, “I knew I was in deep —- with God and so I decided to demand proof of His existence.” This, in turn, is right in line with an online conversation among pastors that i came across about a year or so ago. They agreed that most college apostasy is not a function of the intellect but the appetite: folks want to “sleep around” and God gets in their way. If I understand the Scripture correctly then, it is saying the same thing: the fool is a fool because he is catering to his own desires. He chooses delusion because it serves his purpose. And that IS foolish.
In Communist prisons people were tortured for years, yet many of the survivors have chosen to serve Christ till the end of their lives. I would like to have an atheist explain me how is this possible.
If a video is made, post a link!
Will do.
Yes, even if just a voiced recording, it would be good to hear. I think your event is being structured in such a way that you will be more pointed than I in mine and that will be interesting to see and/or hear, father.
I’ll check with the organizers to see if a recording is planned. And yes, I think mine might be more contentious.
Meanwhile, I am trying to lay out answers to possible objections.
For example, the secularist/atheist (properly, in many cases) eschews fundamentalism. At the same time they argue that the various readings of scripture that Christian come up with, such as one group using scripture to justify slavery while another uses scripture to oppose it, proves that the moral teaching of scripture is unreliable.
But in fact, that’s just a reading of the fundamentalist notion of infallibility back into the scripture. Having disputes about the meaning of scripture does not mean scripture has no meaning or that its instructions are unreliable. It may mean that some teaching (or modern application of it) is unclear, or even something as simple that not every person agrees. But name me anything else in life on which there is complete uniformity. Not even atheists agree on much — except of course about their unbelief in God.
You can’t decry the fundamentalism of some Christians on one hand, and then demand a fundamentalist reading of scripture on the other. It doesn’t work. That there will be disputes and debates over meaning is inevitable, even necessary and can sometimes lead to a better understanding of it.
“WHY AM I NOT AN ATHEIST”
By someone who was going to devote himself to atheistic propaganda
ANDREI KURAYEV is now a priest.
Well, I see the atheists was a former baptists, I think that among evangelical christians there is a tendency to drive some people away. These days the Evanglecial churches tend to be almost too Montanists. Like Montantus always predicting the heavnly Jerusalem coming down in Phyrgia or the US. Or trying to get members by being the most modern that has drove members away.
It would be dismissive to assert that all those who question or deny the existence (or goodness) of the Christian God do so because of some moral failing. The problem of evil and human suffering is sometimes an intellectual problem that is insurmountable for some who might otherwise embrace the notion of a Creator from the evidence gathered from the natural world.
That is, the presence of evils like Auschwitz and even natural evils like tsunamis, birth defects and disease might lead us to conclude that:
a) God is capable of alleviating these types of sufferings but is unwilling to do so (He is not all good)
b) God is incapable of alleviating these types of sufferings (meaning He is not omnipotent).
Scripture does not always resolve these questions. As in the book of Job, God’s ways are inscrutable and beyond questioning. He has his reasons, but they may or may not be revealed to us in this life or the next.
While I understand the Christian hope in the ultimate goodness of God, I sympathize to a degree with those who are unable to resolutely place their faith in One who cannot be understood.
Frankly, I question the “faith” of those who think they have God’s ways figured out in a nice, tight theological box. They have apparently not approached the God of the Bible.
There’s a lot of truth to this. Further, in talking to the event organizers, they aren’t looking for a “prove God exists” approach (something I would not do anyway) but desiring a deeper look at the ground and foundation of morality, which I take to mean human anthropology. It’s a pressing question particularly between the campus secularist society and the Orthodox Christian Fellowship on campus, and I take the event organizer’s word at face value that the question is taken seriously.
As for the atheist, I can’t help but wonder if the God he rejected is indeed the God of scripture. I have in mind here Alexander Kalomiros’ “The River Of Fire” (a bit overly-polemical, at least for American audiences, but still very good). If so, I’ll have to make a distinction between his conception of God, and the God of scripture.
I think the reconciliation between suffering and God comes when one recognizes that suffering is woven into the fabric of a broken creation and understands that the suffering is brought into God Himself through the cross. It’s that awareness, that tenuous hold of existential reality, where, in the Spirit, you can bear some measure of the suffering of others (often through prayer, materially if necessary) and bring them hope and maybe even healing. It’s a deep mystery, and the reconciliation is ongoing.
Or the God of Calvin? Maybe that’s the one he rejects? Cynthia, I wouldn’t say that it was Evangelicals who produce atheists as much as Fundamentalists who take a Calvinistic approach to Scripture and theology. Anyway, that’s my take.
I am afraid that it will be really difficult to bridge the secular and Christian way of thinking. Secularism is blinded by materialism and it can’t think new. It can’t see anything.
The “modern” man is accustomed to amusing himself to death and then looking for a moral justification for it. Living this way he is transformed. He cannot look for anything higher and forgets that he was meant to fly. The modern man is transformed much like the chickens in a poultry farm: they have been bred for excessive weight gain, especially in their breasts and thighs.
Elder Arsenie Papacioc explains the six kind of temptations. The modern man is mostly tempted from below and from above. He wants to ‘play’ as much as as possible and occasionally think of something higher. Then, he wants to know “otherwise than it’s been revealed” or ” as he wants to see it.” Only those who grow closer to Him become wise. Sometimes even children are leaving play behind and are moving on to something higher.
At the risk of talking way above my pay grade, it is my understanding that one’s Will and understanding (or at least perspective) are intertwined. Evil is often seen to discredit faith, though it may well serve that person’s view to do so. (The pastoral experience I noted before indicated a strong link, though no one claimed that this exhausted the reasons for doubt.) These same folks often fail to consider that the presence of Good – even the expectation of Good – offers a very different challenge. This has been commented on by many, including C.S. Lewis. Fr. Stephen recently posted on it as well.
At the same time, I think it is indeed true that many reject a distortion of God rather than God Himself. Fr. Hopko has spoken about this at length. Indeed, it may be considered a healthy sign to reject a “sick” understanding of God. There is an interesting and helpful letter from a nun to a layman which speaks well to this issue: Safely Home to Heaven.
RZ:
Well, same people would believe all sort of stories like the narrative telling that the evolution took place over millions of years. Many believe that the earth is hurling through space at incredible speeds, or that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. These are things that they won’t ever be able to check themselves, yet they believe it. They don’t even realize that these “truths” are a matter of faith for them.
The events of the 20th centuries (wars, holocaust, Communist Holocaust) were the “fruits” of the post-Christian Europe. I say post-Christian Europe because true Christian nations would not attack each other. The Communist ideology is the fruit of Europe.
“By their fruits you will easily recognize them. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from brambles?” How can we recognize them by their fruits if God would not allow evil? Natural evils like tsunamis and birth defects should lead us to be even more grateful to God just because they are rare occurrences.
So, I ask again, how come that there are those who suffered a great deal and did not deny God? Am I supposed to believe the words of fallen minds who, in their ignorance, are serving the devil? To be atheist means to be ignorant or blind. It is that simple! Now, why are they ignorant? Mainly because those in charge with their education rejected the Tradition of the Church and the apostolic succession ceased among them. They do not recognize the authority of saints and they are not capable to value the sacrifice of the martyrs. In saints we venerate God’s grace, which resides in them; we venerate God, Who is “wondrous in His saints.”
http://calindragan.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/frederica-mathews-green-remembering-fr-george-calciu/
In my experience, the folks who bring up the suffering dilemma are rarely serious. It is an excuse to remain blind. The question really is: If God exists, why isn’t everything perfect?
Unfortunately, any attempt to answer the question with truth is often rejected outright because they don’t accept the authority of the answer; they don’t want to struggle; they don’t want to change; they don’t want to be subject to authority in the first place.
I had a friend many years ago who refused to believe (or so he said) because if he did, he’d have to change and he didn’t want to. He was honest in his subborness.
As Eliot rightly points out, the ‘proof’ is in the lives of the saints, but since even they were not ‘perfect’ God still doesn’t exist.
Michael, you’ve got it pegged just right. Whenever I hear some atheist on TV prattle on about all the suffering in the world, Auschwitz, etc., I think about that little epigram of Elie Wiesel. Once, he was asked where God was at Auschwitz, to which he replied: “Where was man?”
George: Correct … “Where was man!?”
A Book to Read: Valeriu Gafencu The Saint of the Prisons
Saint Siouan the Athonite On the Knowledge of God
Well, I believe that a lot of what is discussed here causes problems for people about God. I’m honest sometimes it has for me. Anyway, unsual little circumstances in my life make me believe. Before the stock market fell in 2008 about two weeks prior to it, I open the bible and it fell to the scripture about the lillies of the field how God cares for them, not always easy in my own life to think this way. Also, once I was looking at catacomb art and saw the beardless Chirst as the good shephard and when I later turn open the bible it fell on that scripture about Christ being the good shephard.