SOME FEEDBACK- FROM AN EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN READER
AT 47 : MAY 15th 2000
Anonymous letters are a part of the lives of those who address the public at large. Usually, one trashes such letters but it happens that a recent example is such a classic of its kind - and notably courteous and free from personal abuse - that I pass it on to readers with my comments interpolated in italics.
Dear Anonymous Correspondent,
Thank you for your concern for my spiritual wellbeing.
I have inserted a few comments where I think it useful to do so.
Dear Sir,
It seems to me you are fighting a lost cause for when you look deeply in yourself you will find a void (an emptiness, a vacuum) which no matter how hard you try to fill this up it is a bottomless abyss but not bottomless when you have JESUS (He says, whoever is thirsty let him come and drink, and out him shall flow spring of living water) . You say well I have no thirst that needs to be filled by HIM but there will come a time when you will feel this great thirst and all your atheistic ideas will not be able to satisfy it. As I look at your picture, you are old (hopefully not miserable)
I am in my seventy-sixth year and I am a very contented man surounded by family and friends and neighbours with whom I enjoy reciprocally good relations.
and the wisdom you earned by your years has enlighten (or rather darken) your mind. You want to believe that you know the TRUTH,
This last sentence is a false statement that arises either from my not expressing myself clearly enough or from your not reading my words with due care.
My positon is that indeed I do not claim to know the TRUTH but that I do attach high probability to notions that, on evidence, seem to me to be highly probable. The reasons (that people have given me or that have come to my notice as a result of careful study during the sixty or more years) for believing that there is such a being as God seem to me to be unconvincing. I therefore manage without that belief. I am literally an a-theist .... not so much anti-god as a godless one. I do NOT proclaim a negative faith that 'there is no god'.
But even if I believed in God I would still find both the claimed divinty of Jesus, and the claimed divine inspiration of the scriptures, to be implausible.
I do not claim to prove that Christianity is false; I claim merely that Christians have failed to convince me that it is true - and not for want of their trying and my preparedness to listen.
there is a way that seems right to a man but the end thereof is death. In fairness to your suppose unbelief, have you done all that is necessary to verify the nonexistent of God (Supreme Being)?
I am doing all that I consider neccessary but, obviously, I may have overlooked some considerations; I do not claim to KNOW the whole truth and anybody who does make such a claim - either as a believer or as a sceptic - is guilty, in my opinion, of the sin of presumption.
If not, your time is getting short. if you feel you have, then why have you devoted your life in denying something that you already know doesn't exist.
I have spent no time at all - let alone my life - "in denying something that you already know doesn't exist." I have spent much of my reflecting life questioning something that I suspect does not exist. I am a great admirer of the former Archbishop of York when he said that "the lust for certainty may be a sin"
Has your unbelief brought you a fulfilled life?
Yes, it has
Does your morals/ immorals proceed because your genes determine them?
Our genes are thought to determine our limits and our possibilities and, subject to that, my morality is determined by my (often fallible) attempts to abide by the Golden Rule - enunciated by most moralists, including Jesus, from ancient China (several centuries BC) onwards. We are social beings and society can, I think, flourish only if that rule is respected and applied generally.
With all your intelligence, you admit that you don't have all the answers. I don't have all the answers
"Admit" is the wrong word; my intelligence forces me to PROCLAIM that I do not know all the answers; I merely claim to have made an honest attempt to indentify some of the answers.
but one thing is certain when I will be with my creator in heaven
I suggest that your being admitted into heaven would be up to your creator at least as much as it may be up to you. Perhaps He is not prepared to be bounced into accepting you merely on your sayso? A god worthy of the name would, presumably, have the last say in all things. To coin a maxim ..... "the Creator's decison is final". Humility is a virtue that we all need to cultivate whether we are believes or sceptics or whatever.
you will be in the pits of eternal fire (of course you don't believe in hell) but I tell you it will be most believeable when the fire and worms will begin to eat your unbelieveing body soul and spirit.
I am surprised that a person of your intelligence and articulation should present scare stories (based upon things that you cannot actually KNOW to exist but which you merely BELIEVE, quite genuinely, to exist) to a person of my intelligence and articulation The "things" to which I refer include that most remarkable creature of a supposedly Just and Merciful Creator - the fireproof worm.
You remind me of the famous conversation, between Donald Soper and a sceptical friend, on the suject of 'life after death'. The sceptic said "Donald, if you are right you will be able to say I told you so while, if I am right, I shall have no such opportunity."
What do you think of the principle of Pascal's Wager?
Again, thank you for taking the trouble to write to me.
Regards, E.S.
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