tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post5124540508956312770..comments2023-10-31T12:10:39.067-04:00Comments on Ladder on Wheels: The Grand InquisitorMichial Farmerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10062071425935524922noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-53788186485593204502009-03-31T20:44:00.000-04:002009-03-31T20:44:00.000-04:00Sorry it took me sixty years to reply to these com...Sorry it took me sixty years to reply to these comments--between that and not posting for nearly a month, I am turning into a very bad blogger.<BR/><BR/>Stanford: And I hate to sound like a Creationist, but the fact of the matter is that atheism requires as much of a leap of faith as theism. As Pascal says, it's ridiculous that there would be a God, and it's ridiculous that there wouldn't be. We're all agnostics, but you've got to take the faith stand one direction or another.<BR/><BR/>Victoria: It was crazy fun to watch you pound your little fist in Sunday School.<BR/><BR/>Tim: I really think Job's answer is the best--You don't get to know. Dostoevsky takes the New Testament and adds to Job's solution: "...by the way, I love you." That's not intellectually satisfying, but none of the other options are all that tenable anyway.Michial Farmerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10062071425935524922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-18419566251007603572009-03-30T16:02:00.000-04:002009-03-30T16:02:00.000-04:00I'm kind of with Joel in the sense that i don't re...I'm kind of with Joel in the sense that i don't really have anything to add either, but I really enjoyed the post. I read "God's Problem" within the last few months (or maybe during the Fall). It definitely brought up many questions for me (many of which I had already been dealing with). I finally have to just place it in the "mystery of God" category. Sometimes it bothers me and feels like it's a cop-out (the part of me that feels like I have to know and understand everything), but some of the time it comforts me. If God can be fully understood then he's really not God at all.<BR/><BR/>It was great revisiting this post-- I had read it back when it was first posted and meant to comment then.Tim Rhodeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10253798211455734763noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-7308118782888977042009-03-06T13:40:00.000-05:002009-03-06T13:40:00.000-05:00You're so much more articulate about these issues ...You're so much more articulate about these issues than I can be. All I know is that Ehrman is a whiner who needs to realize that our inability to understand or quantify God is what makes him God. He makes me SO ANGRY.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-84673547346085527492009-03-06T11:29:00.000-05:002009-03-06T11:29:00.000-05:00This post is one of my favorites by you so far. I ...This post is one of my favorites by you so far. I think about this topic a lot, but I have nothing really illuminating or thought-provoking to add to the ongoing conversation, though I really dig what that last commenter said.Joelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11776846406152759939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4104012373258339565.post-41433396758446596962009-03-06T11:11:00.000-05:002009-03-06T11:11:00.000-05:00Tally me up under the column of "Brothers K is the...Tally me up under the column of "Brothers K is the greatest novel of all time." If I didn’t have a thing about naming women after men, our second daughter would be named Alyosha.<BR/><BR/>What I love about that chapter is that Ivan drones on for page after page and Alyosha responds with one sentence:<BR/><BR/>"But there is a Being and He can forgive everything, all and for all, because He gave His innocent blood for all and everything. You have forgotten Him, and on Him is built the edifice, and it is to Him they cry aloud, ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed!”<BR/><BR/>He essentially says, yeah, that is horrifying, and I can't answer it (Dostoevsky tells us that Ivan articulated an argument that the author himself had no answer for) but I think the answer has something to do with the divine co-sufferer. <BR/><BR/>RE Ehrman on Evil: Tim Keller talks about how sociologists think that all belief is intellectually conditioned, socially conditioned AND personally conditioned. So it is disingenuous for the neo-atheists to say ‘my belief is purely intellectual while yours is emotional, intuitive, and inherited from your community.” BOTH beliefs are intellectually, socially and personally conditioned. Ehrman seems to illustrate that no-where is that more true than in our explanations (or defenses in the Plantinga/Moltmann approach) of evil.stanfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07591716618038804118noreply@blogger.com