Forum: Does Faith In G-d Bring Common Sense?

Every Monday, the WoW! community and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: Does Faith In 
G-d Bring Common Sense?

Doug Hagin:Maybe it takes a healthy amount of common sense to have faith in God? Common sense often requires not over-thinking things, and accepting simple truths. many Atheists have that problem it seems. So, does faith bring common sense? Or is it required before faith? Hmmmmm


Patrick O'Hannigan:I do think that faith in G-d brings common sense, and although I haven't heard Dennis Prager's argument for that, he's a man who does his homework. The question reminded me of an old book by Catholic apologist Frank Sheed. After 50 years of streetcorner preaching (among other endeavors), he wrote "Theology and Sanity," which was first published in 1946, and is luckily still in print. If I remember his thesis correctly, Sheed said that it took sanity (for our purposes here, common sense) to recognize a higher power.

Mainline Christian theology teaches that the Holy Spirit is one of three divine persons in the trinity that is G-d, and ascribes to that generous personage (often described as "the love between the Father and the Son") seven gifts. Those gifts (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord) read like common sense writ large.



Rob Miller: I have to say, I like Laura's approach a great deal as always. Before you can say whether faith in G-d brings common sense, you need to define what common sense is, n'est pah? Her definition of it as rational thought or right reason is excellent but it seems it works only so far. After all, look at what passed for common sense even a short time ago and how that has changed 180 degrees now to the point that many of us might find it ludicrous. How many times have you heard people of a certain political persuasion use the words 'everybody knows' as a serious argument or a means of ridiculing or demeaning others they disagree with? As someone whose name I can't recall once said(Cal Coolidge? Will Rogers?) the thing about common sense is that's it's very uncommon. My point is that common sense is a loaded term that means different things to different people. Just as everybody imagines they have a sense of humor, they also imagine they have common sense, no matter how inane their opinions and actions are. Bookworm's erudite example of 'Gaia Worship' in our universities is a fine example of how 'common sense' ain't what it's cracked up to be.

So in trying to peel this particular orange, my first thought is that belief in G-d can give you a kind of common sense, but that depends on how you approach it. Some hideous things have been done and continue to be done in the name of faith. The adherents of belief systems that that tolerate and even promote such behavior as showing 'faith' certainly consider what they're doing to be common sense. The proof that it isn't common sense can be seen in the retribution and end results of such behavior. There are numerous examples.

On the other hand, if you have faith in G-d and it means that you adopt a moral code that demands you respect and attempt to act with decency towards all people and even the animals G-d created, not just the members of your particular denomination, that is very different. If you also acquire a desire to live in accordance with His Divine Plan and do so to the best of your ability out of respect and gratitude for His blessings, then I'd say you're truly on the way to...yes,right reason and common sense! But the moral code I spoke of is imperative. It gives us a roadmap towards successful and happy living, which of course, is the ultimate in common sense, yeah?


Bookworm Room:What an interesting question. I'll try to avoid simply repeating Dennis Prager, whose marvelous exegesis of Exodus I just read.

The Bible spells out an ordered world, with a single ordered intelligence behind it. This differs radically from all other faiths (at least the ones of which I'm aware), which are predicated on chaos. Think of the Greek, Roman, Druid, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian pantheons, all of which have irascible, child-like, selfish, divine beings randomly creating and destroying their way across the universe. Likewise, all animist faiths are predicated upon assigning little chunks of meaning to everything and, again, endowing their many divinities with some of humanity's worst traits, including a striking lack of logic.

The same lack of logic applies to the Gaia worship that now controls so much of the Left. At its worst, it's simply animism and paganism all over again, with an angry Mother Nature continuously punishing humans. In that vein, while I though Disney's Moana was a visually gorgeous movie and Lin-Manuel Miranda's music lovely, it too preached the most primitive, unscientific Gaiaism to children.

Even when Gaia worship purports to be scientifically based, it lacks any common sense or logic. The fact that the whole climate change theory functions only by falsifying data bothers no one, because the data is merely a prop for the faith, in much the same way chicken or goat entrails would be for the pagan seer. Understanding that also explains why, no matter how often the data is proven false, the faithful are undeterred. "Global warming" doesn't work? Then "climate change" will? With that kind of divinity in charge, every thing -- heat, cold, wet, dry, etc. -- proves that the climate change divinity is firmly in control. That kind of thinking is downright hostile to common sense.

Today's hard science also defies logic, at least when it comes to our universe. I believe in evolution and the Big Bang to the extent that hard facts, and intelligent inferences, indicate that they are reasonable theories. I don't believe in them as matters of faith. And most importantly, I don't believe that the Big Bang is truly the beginning, because common sense says that something had to precede the Big Bang. For a long time, though, science insisted, against all common sense, that nothing preceded the Big Bang.

That lack of common sense has become too painful, however, so scientists are now positing all sorts of things such as endlessly repeating universes, black holes reborn, etc. Occam's Razor says that the simplest answer is the best and, ironically enough, common sense seems to say that, given the vastness and complexity of the universe, and given that humans are hardwired for God, may God is the answer.

I've sort of wandered around here, but I do believe that a book (that is, the Bible) with a completely coherent vision about the universe, about man's place in the universe, and about man's relationship to God and to other men, is a necessary foundation for logical thinking -- and common sense, after all, is nothing more than baseline logic. All other theories of the world are predicated upon the random and the magical, both of which are the antithesis of common sense.


David Schuler: G. K. Chesterton said that the first effect of not believing in God is to lose your common sense but I'm not sure that's quite right. He also called tradition "the democracy of the dead". We are not the only people to have lived, indeed, our little lifespans are only a tiny slice of the entirety of human experience. When you don't believe in God you cut yourself off from the vast trove of traditional wisdom, the distillation of that experience.



Laura Rambeau Lee:Let’s define common sense as rational thought; or right reason. Humankind existed thousands of years before the written word allowed us to communicate with one another beyond our families or tribes. If one believes in the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they lived in a paradise where everything was provided for them. They wanted for nothing. But they did the one thing G-d told them not to do. Eve was tempted by the serpent (Satan) and she ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Becoming fully aware and conscious she convinced Adam to partake of the fruit so he too would become aware. This consciousness is the spark of divinity we have all been endowed with by our Creator. This was the true beginning of mankind’s relationship with G-d. Whether one believes in the story or not, at some point we became sentient beings. And so in our conscious state we innately understand right from wrong and good from evil. Over time and out of trial and error and experience arose common sense. By the time G-d gave his commandments to Moses and his people they were already understood even if they were not commonly practiced. Common sense is right reason and is how we bring order out of chaos. It is how we structure our lives and our societies. But taking the next step, if we know right from wrong and good from evil, we have to question what makes us choose to be a moral and honest person and live our lives seeking a path of virtue, honesty, and goodness. Of what benefit is it to us? The answer is G-d. Our better selves strive to please our Creator. Perhaps the question should be does common sense bring faith in G-d? I believe it does.



Well, there it is!

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Life, Death And Faith

 

Recently, a young man of my acquaintance passed away. He was one of those people who seemed to have everything going for him...a great, successful career doing what he loved, a loving wife and family, and wonderful friendships. I never met him personally, but based on what I know of his courageous struggle with his disease and the sincere outpouring of sorrow not just from his family but those he knew and worked with, he was a good, decent and loving human being who seems to have left this earth far too soon. He had yet to have his 40th birthday.

In Israel just a few days before that, one of the Arabs whom call themselves Palestinians broke into the bedroom of a 13-year-old Israeli girl who never did harm to him or anyone else and happily murdered her. He was shot down after he attacked another human being, but in his mind and the mind of the Palestinian Authority, its schools, mosques and media, he was a hero, a jihad warrior and a martyr doing Allah's will. Not only that, but to his family, he represented a handsome financial stipend.




I can't get her mother's anguished cry at her funeral out of my mind..."How do you say goodbye to your 13-year-old child?"

Is there any way to answer that?

If G-d exists, why does He allow such things to happen? Or to use the old cliche,why do bad things happen to good people? And it's even more interesting to turn that one around...why do good things seem to happen to those whom do evil, if a truly just G-d exists? Is it all just random? Does G-d exist at all or is He just a convenient fable man thought up with many names and guises to explain the inexplicable? Karl Marx referred to religion as 'the opiate of the masses.' Is G-d simply a fairy tale, just a ploy by the ruling classes to keep people in line?

As a reasonably observant Jew, one example that's always thrown at me by people when this sort of thing comes up is the Holocaust. Millions of Jews, many of them quite religious were murdered in the most brutal fashion imaginable. Whole Rabbinic dynasties going back centuries were wiped out. Even the most predatory beasts do not engage in such behavior at their worst. And in the end, only a handful of the perpetrators and their many enablers were ever punished in any way. If a loving, just G-d truly exists, how could he possibly allow that?

I can't say I know all the answers, nor frankly, would I really wish to. One of my favorite spiritual quotes comes from Ramakrishna, who wrote that a G-d who can be explained is no G-d at all. Or as one of the pithier Jewish sages once said, "If I understood G-d, I'd be G-d."

There's a great deal of insight there, I think. Given the nature of G-d as defined by every major faith, how could we possibly judge Him by our human standards?

Another thing I've realized over time and with study is that G-d simply plays on a much bigger field than we do. By nature, our perceptions are limited. We simply don't see the big universal picture, the Divine Plan and the reasons certain things might need to happen that seem random good or evil to us. And our view of such things is limited to what happens in this physical world. We have no view as to what happens in the next world, its judgements and designs.

Take the Holocaust, for instance.

I would not remotely represent that I of all people have the answer, but here are a couple of things to consider.

The Nazis considered the extermination of the Jews a government policy and a war aim. They spent millions of reichmarks, tons of badly needed building materials like concrete, valuable fuel, hours upon hours of manpower and sizeable amounts of numerous other resources pursuing this goal. There are number of documented instances where trains bearing badly needed munitions, tanks, medical supplies and even Wehrmacht troops were delayed, sometimes for days to allow trains headed to the extermination camps to go before them. In some cases, even hospital trains containing German wounded were sidelined by shipments to places like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belson. Those took priority.

Imagine if Hitler had simply left the Jews alone? General Rommel, the German commander in Normandy complained constantly about the lack of concrete and other materials to build up his defenses. With the concrete, fuel, production capacity, metal and manpower that would have been available if the Holocaust had not occurred, what would the Atlantic Wall the Allies attacked on D-Day have been like? How much stronger might it have been? How many more tanks, planes and U-boats might have been constructed? How effective,perhaps even successful would the campaign against the Russians or Hitler's Afrika Corps and their efforts to capture Suez and link up with Nazi forces in the Caucasus have been?

The allies didn't fight WWII to save the Jews, but if there hadn't been some knowledge of the Nazi's atrocities and what that presaged for Britain, would they have come to an agreement with Hitler instead of going to war, as Stalin did? Would America, with its strong isolationist movement been motivated to do Lend-Lease and supply Britain with so much aid, let alone get into a de facto war with the Nazis in the North Atlantic well before Pearl Harbor?

And after the war was over, when the world saw the results of the Holocaust with their own eyes and much of it finally was confronted its own guilt for at best turning their back on the Jews..without that, would the world have defied Britain's wishes and recognized Israel at the UN in 1948?

Both the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible accept the messianic prophecies in Isaiah and Ezekiel, that say clearly that the Jews returning to the land G-d gave them is part of the Divine Plan. Was the Holocaust G-d's way of ensuring Hitler's defeat and the Jew's return to Israel after 2000 years of exile, something unheard of ever before in history? Did those Nazis and their many enablers escape judgement in this world only to face far harsher judgement in the next? Did their victims receive comfort,justice and great rewards there for their unspeakable suffering? We have no way of knowing, only faith in G-d's ultimate promise of justice.

Does G-d give us warnings because we're slow learners and need tragedy to awaken us to danger and the need to take action? With the murder of 13-year-old Hallel Yaffe Ariel, the government of Israel defied the Obama Administration and the EU's disapproval by announcing major building projects in Jerusalem as well as Judea and Samaria. And the Knesset has also decided that Israel will now confiscate out of the tax monies Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority a sum equivalent to the amount Mahmoud Abbas and the PA pay out as stipends to convicted murderers in Israeli jails, as well as other measures that show that Israelis are finally getting the message about the 'Palestinians' and those whom condemn each atrocity but continue to fund the PA kleptocracy.

For that matter,since Hallel Yaffe Ariel had dual U.S. citizenship, congress is already on the verge of passing legislation that will reduce American funding to the PA by a similar amount...and with enough votes hopefully to override an Obama veto.

And speaking of Obama and Mrs. Clinton, is their ascendancy a warning to us to change our ways and our direction in an election year? Have the eight years of President Obama's term been designed to push us in the direction to make that change?

I honestly don't know if Hallel Yaffe Ariel's tragic murder was a message. But as I said, it's obvious G-d simply plays on a much bigger field than we do, and that good and evil may have very different meanings and even different purposes in the Divine context then the ones we think they do.

Does G-d sometimes take souls into the next world for purposes we have no understanding of? I have no doubt of that. Why is a different question,although I have a few thoughts on that as well I'd just as soon not go into here.

Nor do I have any doubt at all that that next world beyond our own exists, simply because I received, without going into details, a very clear glimpse of that existence at a very young age when I least expected it. That world's exact nature en toto is beyond my knowledge, but it definitely is as real as the one we perceive. The ancient Hindus referred to what we see in the physical world as maya, illusion. Many figures in history have recorded their own perception of that world beyond the one we see.

In the end, we're left with speculation, and I think that's as it should be.

Having been fortunate to experience G-d's mercy and intervention in my own life at various times (including some times when I didn't realize it or appreciate it properly until much later), I believe in His ultimate goodness and His Divine purpose. The alternative would be to depend on man's goodness or to believe in random chaos, and both seem flawed to me and contradict my own experience in the matter.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe  Menachem Schneerson once wrote in one of his scintillating commentaries that G-d is only as interested in us as we are in Him. I've been interested in G-d for years, and all I can say is I recommend making His acquaintance. He always answers, and you never get put on hold or sent to voicemail. But sometimes the answer is different than the one you wanted. Or maybe it's the one you need whether you know it or not.

This long, rambling essay is something recent events brought out of me, and I apologize for its length but I have a feeling you weren't bored. As for the old problem of good and evil, again they may very well be quite different than we perceive them as....necessary tools suited for us and our level of understanding.

And death? A send off to a different plane entirely. A new beginning rather than an end...

 


"Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,

       He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;

       'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep

       With phantoms an unprofitable strife,

       And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife

       Invulnerable nothings. We decay

       Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief

       Convulse us and consume us day by day,

And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

    He has outsoar'd the shadow of our night;

       Envy and calumny and hate and pain,

       And that unrest which men miscall delight,

       Can touch him not and torture not again;

       From the contagion of the world's slow stain

       He is secure, and now can never mourn

       A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;

       Nor, when the spirit's self has ceas'd to burn,

With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

He lives, he wakes—'tis Death is dead, not he;

       Mourn not for Adonais. Thou young Dawn,

       Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee

       The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;

       Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!

       Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,

       Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown

       O'er the abandon'd Earth, now leave it bare

Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!" *

-Selah-



* From Percy Bysshe And Marry Shelly's Adonaïs