Challenges to Faith

1. summary of ideas

This section in our reading is about the challenges to Faith a person may face in every day life in today’s society. The challenges it lists are ,Atheism, ,Scientism, and ,Consumerism. When it explains Atheism it gives us two examples of atheists,Nietzsche and Hobbes, and one believer, St. Ignatius Loyola. When it explains Scientism, the book talks about the complicated history of the church and science, and when explaining Consumerism, the book tells us how our lives are constantly bombarded with messages from the media that tell us buying this product will make us truly happy, and this distracts us from God, our family and the true happiness found in personal connectedness.

2. Two Ideas to remember

One of the most important ideas I found was the idea that there are limits to the ,Scientific method. The limits are-1 Science presupposes uniformity in nature. 2 Science emphasizes empirical knowledge. . And 3 the scientific method does not give us certitude. This means that science cannot prove anything for certain. It can tell us what is likely, such as gravity, we assume it acted the same one hundred thousand years ago as it does today, because we have no evidence otherwise but we have no way of knowing for sure. This idea to me was important because it was very enlightening; I had never thought about science in that light before, to me it had always been certain.

The second idea I found important was the relationship between science and religion. I had always heard that science and religion contradict each other and that they are opposites, however the book suggests that they shouldn’t contradict each other but should rather compliment each other, and work together to explain our world. Also in this idea was the relationship of the church and the scientific community. I thought it was very interesting and clever how the book described how science has grown up under the Church and is now an adult, and how now the Church and science are both in need of each other.

3. This Picture of Joe Camel reminds me of how consumerism can make our idea about things change just by changing the marketing and not changing the product.

4. The greatest challenges to my faith in people here and now are lying and past experiences. It is hard to trust people when we are so prone to lie, in the past I have had people lie to me and have lied to other people and that makes it hard for me to trust them at times today. Also my past experiences of putting faith in a person to do something for me and having them disappoint me has crushed me and made it very hard for me to trust and believe in my friends today, and often times I have a very cynical outlook and expect the worst so I am not disappointed as I have been in the past.

The greatest challenges to my Faith in God are the Church and he Problem of Evil. I often disagree with the Church and am even angry with hem for the decisions they make such as excommunicating the priests at St. Stanislaus, closing my grade school, claiming that men and women are equal and not letting women become Priests in the Church, and not supporting a charity event just because someone singing at the charity event goes against some of its teachings. To me I find those things stubborn and childish of the Church, they seem scared to admit they might be wrong and that to me makes it hard to have Faith in the Catholic Church’s God. The problem of evil also makes it hard for me to trust and believe in a loving God. I know all of the rational sayings and arguments that can be made if someone dies, and they all seem logical until someone close to you dies or a tragic accident happens and you hear about parents that have to bury their children. That makes it hard for me to believe sometimes.

back to home page