Friday, December 10, 2010

The Future of Disbelief

I wonder why it seems that our culture is slower to believe. Is it because our lack of knowledge and learning, or because we are increasing our knowledge through mediums like the internet and access to formal education. You be the judge.

This statement was made during a recent exchange between friends on a social network, "There was NO Jesus, unless you believe in fairy tales that is." This could be a simple lack of precision, but I do think that it is more than that. It reminded me of this:
When I was in history class in high school, we were discussing the Middle East and its culture, its religions, etc. One student raised his hand and said (and it has been a long time so this isn't a perfect quotation) , "You can't teach me that Jesus lived, and I don't believe that he did." To this the teacher retorted, "Jesus was an historical figure, based on historical fact. But you do not have to believe his claims, that he was God and man, and the Savior of the world."
As an aside: " . . .unless you believe in fairy tales that is," is a very interesting idea tacked on to "There was NO Jesus." I say this because there is SO much nonsense that people believe that has no logical merit in their search for meaning. For instance, Nietzsche's idea of "Nothing matters, and so what if it does" nihilistic approach is almost swallowed whole by those with lofty desires to be seen as academic and mentally forward.

However, I've never thought it  lofty or academic to believe in an illogical assumption for the sake of sounding intelligent. If there is no objective morality, then it cannot matter what anyone does, whether it is Jesus claiming he's a god, or Timothy McVeigh killing 168 innocent people in domestic terrorism, or Hitler gassing six million Jews. If you think ANY one of these events is wrong, then you must concede that you believe in objective morality. Unless you want to believe that you alone set the boundaries of morality. Even in that case you must believe in objective morality and that you decide its objectivity.

So is, "There is NO Jesus . . ." simply an assertion of the desire to believe that Jesus is not our Savior, an assertion of poor education, or an assertion of the nonsense that our culture has been swallowing whole, gizzards included? Like I stated in my last post, I'm a skeptic. But I'm a skeptic for untruths and poor reasoning. I believe truth when, and if, I can ascertain it. And if an idea points to nowhere, and comes from the same, I cannot believe it.

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