Skeptical Theism

Found this article while browsing some of the pages under my blog's segment "Guru's pages"

As I read the first paragraph, it seemed to be describing the kind of "theism" I believe in.

This is the URL: http://www.iep.utm.edu/skept-th/

This is the excerpt from it...

"Skeptical theism is the view that God exists but that we should be skeptical of our ability to discern God’s reasons for acting or refraining from acting in any particular instance. In particular, says the skeptical theist, we should not grant that our inability to think of a good reason for doing or allowing something is indicative of whether or not God might have a good reason for doing or allowing something. If there is a God, he knows much more than we do about the relevant facts, and thus it would not be surprising at all if he has reasons for doing or allowing something that we cannot fathom.

If skeptical theism is true, it appears to undercut the primary argument for atheism, namely the argument from evil. This is because skeptical theism provides a reason to be skeptical of a crucial premise in the argument from evil, namely the premise that asserts that at least some of the evils in our world are gratuitous. If we are not in a position to tell whether God has a reason for allowing any particular instance of evil, then we are not in a position to judge whether any of the evils in our world are gratuitous. And if we cannot tell whether any of the evils in our world are gratuitous, then we cannot appeal to the existence of gratuitous evil to conclude that God does not exist. The remainder of this article explains skeptical theism more fully, applies it to the argument from evil, and surveys the reasons for and against being a skeptical theist."

I fully agree with the statements in bold. We can fabricate reasons and try to explain why God allows things to happen this way and that way...but this does not mean that we are right. And we may not be wrong either. This is called anthropomorphizing. Which means we try to ascribe human form or attributes to God (in this context).

We try to understand God from our realm of understanding. However, God transcends our realm of understanding. In fact, He created and structured truth and reality and the way we perceive it. So to put it blatantly, to anthropomorphize is to try to "judge" God...And this usually leads to wrong conclusions when we don't understand who God is.

This is what the atheists are guilty of (which we theists sometimes are too). They interpret God's actions and decisions of allowing things to happen through their finite, human lenses and derive at the conclusion that God is evil and stuff like that...

The ramifications of this wrong conclusion will result in a erroneous worldview and this will result in people making wrong decisions such as Hitler...who was fiercely atheist. (His actions and decisions derived from the atheist belief, since morals - right and wrong - are undefined in this worldview...I'd take another post to justify this...till next time)

I don't know how much of this stuff whets your appetite, but it does whet mine :) Haha.

Yup, when I have the time, I'll go and read up the rest of this article.