Doubt

Tim Robbins

Hello Christians.
I have a simple question:
Do you ever experience doubt with respect to your Christrian faith?

If not, do you ever experience doubt or uncertainty about anything else and can you tell me how deal with doubt and uncertainty. For example, suppose you doubt a friend is telling you the truth. How do you deal with that?

Kind Regards
Tim
PS I am an atheist for those who don't know me.

Tar.Aldarion

Dubito ergo cogito; cogito ergo sum.
(I doubt, therefore I think; I think therefore I am)

Also, is there anything in particular that would have shaken your faith in the past, an event. Why?

BrianCalgary

Yep. It usually comeswhen I think of death. What will it be like when I die? What if....?

In dealing with it, I just see all that God has done in touching me personally. In th eblessings my family has received, amongst other things.

At which point I can actually look forward to death as through it I gain life.

PDN

I find that there are many things that can produce doubt. The presence of evil in the world, particularly when viewed up close, always troubles me.

There is a passage in Dosteyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov where Ivan asks Alyosha:

Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.

Nevertheless, faith is a choice. A choice to believe that there is wisdom and purpose at work even when I personally can't see it.

Sapien

PDN wrote:

Nevertheless, faith is a choice. A choice to believe that there is wisdom and purpose at work even when I personally can't see it.

That is an understandable choice. But to become religious, a large number of further choices are required - none of them so understandable.

Tim Robbins

PDN wrote:

I find that there are many things that can produce doubt. The presence of evil in the world, particularly when viewed up close, always troubles me.

There is a passage in Dosteyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov where Ivan asks Alyosha:

Nevertheless, faith is a choice. A choice to believe that there is wisdom and purpose at work even when I personally can't see it.

Have you read Lee Strobel's 'A case for faith' where he tries to argue out "The Problem of evil", by using an analogy where sometimes a human will put an animal in a cage. The animal might think "why is he putting me in the cage?", but the human knows that it because he is moving the animal to a better place but just can't communicate
that with the animal.
He then says is the difference between an animal and a human the same as the difference between a human and God. He says, no of course the difference between God and Human is bigger. So the implication is if we can accept us doing this to animals surely we should God doing pain to us.

I can't remember it exactly but it is along those lines. To me, that is a very good piece of sophistry it sounds like a reasonable argument and I can see most people thinking yeah this makes sense, but when you look at it closer the holes appear in it.

Excelsior

My doubts are not based on the contemporary obsession with the problem of evil. My background in philosophy maybe has vaccinated me against that conundrum.

My doubts however are based more on lifestyle issues, what old schoolers would call temptation. I do what I don't want to do and don't do what I want to do, as St. Paul would say. Then I'd add, sometimes I really don't even want to do what I should want to do.

Tim Robbins

Excelsior wrote:

My doubts are not based on the contemporary obsession with the problem of evil. My background in philosophy maybe has vaccinated me against that conundrum.

My doubts however are based more on lifestyle issues, what old schoolers would call temptation. I do what I don't want to do and don't do what I want to do, as St. Paul would say. Then I'd add, sometimes I really don't even want to do what I should want to do.

Well how do you see the problem of evil?

Premise:
Kids get cancer or some genetic disease

Conclusion
There is no all caring, all loving, all know God.

Do you think God just knows better?
But then you are also saying you know better than logic.