Ray Kreienkamp
7/1/05
Assignment 4
What are the major challenges to your faith? You’ve seen many from the Readings and video and I’m sure you have heard many from teachers over your first two years at St. Louis U. High. This could be about faith (your ability to have faith in others, yourself, life) or Faith (your ability to have faith in God).
Although I have Faith most of the time, I often am presented with obstacles to my Faith that sometimes cause me to doubt. These obstacles that cause me to doubt come from many places. The main two places are atheism and scientism. The first, atheism, challenges my Faith because it makes me really wonder whether the atheists' logic is valid that there is no God. One atheist in particular who has challenged my beliefs is Nietzsche. When I look at Nietzsche's ideas sometimes, I sometimes wonder if they are true. For example, when I face his argument that God would not want to land on Earth in a remote part of the Roman Empire, I sometimes think that he might have a legitimate point. Similarly, I also sometimes doubt when I think about Nietzsche's idea that weak people have weak moralities and strong people have strong moralities. This seems like a legitimate idea to me because I can see that the Romans had strong moralities, whereas the Jews had weak moralities. As a result, I can see how Nietzsche concludes that the Jews made up a God and a "weak morality" so they could believe their suffering had a point. The other challenge to my Faith besides atheism is scientism. Scientism, or the belief that truth can be discovered by science alone, can challenge my Faith because I cannot prove God exists through science. When I end up trying to reason to God, I usually end up doubting because reasoning does not lead to a God. Also, scientism can cause me to doubt because of some of the theories of science. One in particular that sometimes causes me to doubt is evolution. If evolution happened, I wonder if God really exists because if evolution happened, he did not create humans but had us evolve from animals. Thus, Nietzsche and Hobbes’ ideas might be true. These are just a few of the things that cause me to doubt. Despite these many challenges, however, my Faith can grow from being challenged by these other ideas and by responding to questions from opposing viewpoints.
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