The Fun In Faith

Faith is no fun unless it is chal­lenged. Unless you put all of your chips on the line there is no rush to the game. For this rea­son, I read var­i­ous attacks on Chris­tian­ity. I want to hear the best argu­ments against it. Doubt keeps faith hon­est. Surely there are other just as valid ways of look­ing at the world. When I find an arti­cle despis­ing my faith I say to it, “Come on! Show me what you’ve got!”

I am always dis­ap­pointed by what I find given as argu­ments against God. For the most part they are angry dia­tribes that are more rant than rea­son. They are filled with straw men approaches or grounded in uni­formed car­i­ca­tures of arm­chair lev­els of an hon­est under­stand­ing of Chris­tian­ity. Their “evi­dence” is inevitably more wish than facts. Worse yet is their inabil­ity to come up with any “why” to the uni­verse at all (some­thing even Ein­stein could not muster).

All fac­tors being equal, the amount of faith it takes to dis­be­lieve is more than it takes to believe. Hid­ing in terms like “nat­ural order of things” or even just “nature” sim­ply begs the ques­tion. Why are we here? Is this all the result of an almost infi­nite series of grand acci­dents? How is it we can even ask these ques­tions at all? Why is it that the brain is “hard-wired” for religion?

I have spent half a cen­tury look­ing for a bet­ter deal. I would like to think that there is no rea­son to be respon­si­ble. It would be even more of a per­sonal indul­gence if I could say that all of this is just an illu­sion — but both of these approaches crum­ble by log­i­cal exten­sion. Show me the bones of Jesus and I am out of here!

Then again, where would I go? I have never found a true athe­ist hav­ing any real fun.