Challenges to Faith Journal
by Michael Mulligan
Summary:
The Key idea of this chapter is that Atheism (positive and practical), science, and Dehumanization all present powerful challenges to faith, but that these challenges can be met and surmounted. Atheists challenge God's existence through their actions and thoughts intentianally (positive atheists) or through inactivity and their personal life (practical Atheists). Science presents a challenge to faith through its claim on solid facts versus the inherent unprovability of faith. Finally, dehumanization challenges faith by emphasizing wants, consumerism, and twisted commercialism over the values of the Church.
Three Ideas:
1. Science has four major limitations that prevent it from having a monopoly on truth. These limitations are; Science presupposes the uniformity of nature, Science emphasizes empirical knowledge while ignoring spiritual realities,the scientific method does not give us certitude, and science can be influence by human error.
2. Nietzsche believed that the most pathetic, insidious, and downright disgusting morality a person could adopt is that of the dishonest lambs. Given a group of lambs and hawks, where the hawks pray on the lambs, this mentality is when the lambs say that they really don't want to be hawks, and in fact its good to be a "weak, oppressed, humble, obediant" lamb. Nietzsche says that this is patently dishonest, as he believes that lambs would trade places with the hawks in a minute. According to Nietzsche, this mentality is fit only for sheep and slaves.
3. Dehumanization is a combination of the association of values with products (and thus the need to buy these products in order to obtain the values), the determination of your social identity by what you buy, wear, listen to, and look like, and the dominance of the media and products in place of actual and healthy human relationships
Images of Key Ideas:
A Question
The Galileo case has been distorted and stretched to make the Church seem opposed to science and progress, why is that?
The Protestant nations of Europe, in order to build support for their cause and break down popular support for the Catholic Church in their territories (especially Britian) propogated the myth of a cruel, backward, and dictating church. This was especially true in Anglican Britian, where a large portion of the population remained Catholic. It was also designed as the stock argument against Church opinions on science. If the Church got it wrong with Galileo, how can it be trusted?
