Frank Schaeffer's book,
Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God, is available right now free on Kindle. But be quick, it's a special offer that expires tomorrow.
Caught between the beauty of his grandchildren and grief over a friend’s death, Frank Schaeffer finds himself simultaneously believing and not believing in God—an atheist who prays. Schaeffer wrestles with faith and disbelief, sharing his innermost thoughts with a lyricism that only great writers of literary nonfiction achieve. Schaeffer writes as an imperfect son, husband and grandfather whose love for his family, art and life trumps the ugly theologies of an angry God and the atheist vision of a cold, meaningless universe. Schaeffer writes that only when we abandon our hunt for certainty do we become free to create beauty, give love and find peace.
Schaeffer is the son of the late Calvinist guru Francis Schaeffer, much hyped author of the awful
How Should We Then Live, which did the rounds when I was still in short pants. He initially followed in his dad's footsteps... until he wised up. You can find an interview with Schaeffer
over on the Sojourners site.
That kinda describes a lot of people and you can't be atheist and theist at the same time without a certain amount of cognitive dissonance. It would seem that the path to the insanity of fideism lies in that direction. But, that's what usually happens when someone is afraid to say, "I don't know". Not knowing everything is better than pretending to know all the answers any old day of the week.
ReplyDeletewell, he puts the "moron" in oxymoron...
ReplyDeleteThe double minded are unstable in all their ways?
ReplyDeleteAre we sure he's not deeply involved in United States politics at the moment? Same thing.
I read his book entitled "Patience with God.:For People who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism)". It is a little hard to describe what he is. I did agree with him on most issues. He is a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He believes in apophatic theology. It is simplification to say it is atheism and theism at the same time. An example of the apophatic approach is the statement: "We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being." The idea is not that God does not exist but that his existence is inexpressible.
ReplyDelete-- Neo
...and other such gobbledegook, which only proves that theists have no idea what they're talking about.
DeleteWhat they are saying is really quite understandable. They are saying that traditional theology understands that many references to God are anthropomorphic. (Not understanding this point is was led HWA to believe that God was kind of a Superman who lived under the constraint of spacetime like the rest of us.) Apophatics believe that maybe any reference to God that comes out of this created reality is in error. So you can't call God a Being because a being is something that exists in this reality and God transcends that. In calling God a being, one has not committed the error of anthropomorphism but the error of ontologism, ascribing features of this reality to something that it does not apply to. (I made up onotologism and its definition. I don't know actually what terminology apophatics use to describe this error in classification.)
DeleteChristian Theists claim that God has existed forever. In a logically similar fashion, atheists claim that the universe has existed forever. (Christopher Hitchens said on BookTV that he could not believe in God because of the sillly notion that God has existed forever. But apparently he could believe that the universe could exist forever. Logically, they are the same silly notion.) Apophatics would claim that the syntax and meaning used in these statements are bounded by our reality and do not tell us anything about the transcendant God.
-- Neo
In my debates with Christians, I've noticed one amazing phenomenon: They are all uncomfortable - vexed - by Wikipedia! Not surprising as Wikipedia has bought accessibility to what the scholars know. So try this little test sometime: broach a subject and quote Wiki to a quasi or hard core fundamentalist and you will get the same reaction! Have they been warned about the internet from the pulpit?
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