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Talk To Me About Believing

I thought about this for a new poll question but realised the possible answers people offered would need space to breathe, and be seen. Recently, at least here in the UK, there has been a wave of media on both sides of the debate surrounding the idea of “atheism” – from Dawkin’s book The God Delusion to McGrath’s rebuttal The Dawkins Delusion and the many reviews, essays, and reports on their positions. I must confess I’ve not read either book. I have viewed some of the TV series that accompanied Dawkins’ book – and frankly found his argument to be whiney, childish, and near to the point of hysteria. There are very compelling, thoughtful, arguments for atheism – obviously I have not appropriated any of them, but they do exist, and they are valuable for those of us with faith as a means of better understanding why we do believe, and why we believe according to the particular tradition that we claim as our own.

Interestingly enough – I don’t think I’ve ever been able to my satisfaction, to explain or describe why I believe – what compells me to believe, and why in believing I’ve chosen to be a Christian. How about you?

Why do you believe? What is it about belief that makes it work for you?

06/08/2007 | Filed under OC/IC Theology - Ways of Doing Theology, Why Believe - Atheism and Christianity.

  • R. Elena Tabachnick

    I actually want to answer this question, but first:

    I’ve always found Dawkins to be “whiney, childish, and near to the point of hysteria” as a biologist, so I’m not surprised.

    OTOH, one of my closet friends is what I call “a true atheist”: he has no perception of anything other than bare empirical existence and so “knows” nothing else exists. (He doesn’t just reject the old-man-with-a-beard-running-things -from-the-sky theory. ) He is a respectful, gentle, thoughtful and very moral guy. Occasionally I talk about my experience with visions, non-ordinary sight, etc., and he doesn’t get all hysterical.

    So, as you note, judgmental, narrow-minded nastiness of the Dawkins kind is not a requisite of atheism, or arguments for it.

    My friend and I pretty much share the same belief criteria: I “believe” in what I have experienced and he believes in what he has experienced. Since our experiences have been so different, our beliefs are different. (More on my interfaith belief criteria here
    here.)

  • Alexis Tančibok

    It is so easy to get caught out by the idea that “belief” is about an intellectual assent to a set of statements, and to forget that “belief” is a complex set of experiences that shape our understanding of, or acceptence of those statements.

    We can look at the early church and find that the body of intellectual statements describing belief, actually describe the experience of the believer.

    The woman at the well (often called St. Photia), Zaccheus, Martha & Mary, believed because they experienced Christ, and found his teaching compelling. Likewise in the Old Testament the demand for a sign often expressed a desire to experience the divine presence and be confirmed in belief.

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