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Say you have a problem and want to solve it. You pray to God because you have received the promise that God will do it in a way that suits your particular needs. If you can count on anything, you can count on God, is not it?
But you rarely get what someone calls a remarkable solution to your problem, and that's where hope comes in. Hope maintains your trust will provide the best possible resolutions for this and all other problems.
The problem is that hope is always the best. You would like prayer to work like a vending machine – you put a dollar, and that gives you your snack. It works every time, without surprises. But when God looks like a no-show, hope fills the void. Despite the evidence, you keep alive the spark that will work for the better.
Let's continue our list of reasons why Christian hope is not a good thing.
2. Do not see reality clearly
Suppose you cross the street, learn to hit a baseball, put a broken bone, or learn to swim. You would need to see the reality clearly to perform these tasks. How could you avoid to see the reality clearly in any other area of life?
If I go to the oncologist, I can hope but what I need is the truth. , or I have cancer with a good chance of healing after treatment, or I have two months to put order in my business and say goodbye. A pat on the doctor's head would make me feel better (at that time, anyway), but the truth would help me live better. Likewise, belief in heaven could make me feel better, but I want the truth. I want a life in harmony with reality.
Hope often shines with faith. The Children's Crusade of 1212 was a popular crusade (not sponsored and encouraged by the church), and it is a good example of faith that crushes into reality.
Historians discuss what has actually happened, but there appears to be a combination of
- charismatic preachers children raising a military force of perhaps 30,000 children,
- the promise that once arrived in Italy, the Mediterranean would separate to allow them to march to Palestine,
- the promise that the battle would be useless because God would simply convert the Muslim occupants of the Holy Land to Christianity, and that most of the participants would die of exhaustion or famine or would be sold into slavery and the rest would struggle to return home.
Consequences
The disadvantage of hope is also the disadvantage of Pascal's Wager. This bet says that there is no inconvenience to being a believer – hide your bets by acting as a Christian and you can not lose. There are a lot of problems with this thought, but highlight one, the disadvantage of being deceived. Participating in an absurd religion means spending time, money, and energy for that religion instead of focusing on what is real.
We see a desperate hope in the field of alternative medicine, which is worth $ 30 billion a year in the United States. There is not enough evidence to improve these alternative medications, but they give hope where science does not offer any. Likewise, religion gives hope when reality does not offer it, but that hope is also dear. Religion consumes $ 115 billion every year in the United States.
For someone who is content to not see the reality clearly, I wonder what argument they might have against being continually drunk or stoned.
A popular apologetic argument (and I still can not get my around the idea of an adult making this argument) is that atheism is discouraging or unpleasant, as if it was an argument against atheism . I did this first on the list of my stupid 25 arguments that Christians should avoid. I've answered several articles that use this argument (here, here, here).
Do these professional Christian apologists think that they are talking to children? I wonder if they read C. S. Lewis, who said, "If Christianity is false, then no honest man will want to believe it, as useful as it is; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it does not help him. "
Here is the tragedy of theology in its distilled essence:
The use of human intellect,
of genius, profoundly rigorous logical deduction –
student anything
– Andrew Bernstein
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Image via Cicely Miller, CC License
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