Debating the Importance of Faith & God

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Slide 1

Title: Belief & Scepticism

Text:
"Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches."
-- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1274

Ours is a world divided between those who believe in God & those who don't. Theists pursue their belief system according to the religion & faiths they have embraced pointing at various evidences and a system of reason to defend their stand. In the Western World, Christianity is rooted in the history of nations & a source of much of today's particular set of belief systems affecting heavily much of the moral & ethical systems measuring the validity or wrongness of an act or belief. In the Muslim World, the Shari'ah Law becomes that which governs not just the moral & religious aspects of life but is the legal basis for judgements. To radicalized fervent Muslims (much as to their radicalized Christian equivalents), their faith has influenced them to see the rest of the world who do not share their beliefs as infidels, resulting in a clash of faith & non-faith leading to religious-political conflicts that is still being fought.

Atheism is a particular position that does not affirm or reject the existence of Gods. The popular belief that Atheists do not believe in the existence of the divine is not entirely true, Atheists are non-theists, meaning that they do not believe in the worship of deities particularly as their existence has not been proven as truth. Supernatural claims do not bear weight on atheists as they are sceptical about it. Despite this they do not share a singular philosophy or ideology but delve into humanist philosophies to back up their claims about anti-deism. Atheism as a term began as a term referencing people who find conflict between faith & scientific logic more so after the Age of enlightenment when those who wish to understand the ways of the world without the dictates of a religious system they cannot fully understand or make sense of took a neutral & sceptical position against religious claims.

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Slide 2

Title: Significance of God

Text:

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."
- Aristotle, Politics, 322 B.C.

In Antiquity, our ancestors & forefathers looked for an explanation for existence and they find these by establishing belief systems that helped them make sense of things. In many ancient civilizations religion became a political, social & economic magnet of power establishing Empires. Central to the ancient Chinese Dynasties for instance was Ancestral Worship while a Pantheon of Gods gave power to the Egyptian Pharaohs. The Romans had their Greek-adopted deities while the Middle East gave birth to Judaism that was the root of two of the world's biggest (and most contested) belief system today: Christianity & Islam.

Civilizations, empires, nations & cultures from antiquity who built the foundations of our present reality took comfort in the manner by which they conducted their lives according to the belief system that their Deities dictate; historically we can argue that 'God' has become an important social agency for societies in this manner. I shall try to back up this claim by viewing at the manner by which faith has established civilizations & practices that contributed to the world we know today. I will then present Atheistic debates against the authenticity of God and present my views on the question.

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Slide 3

Title: God in Antiquity/Prehistory

Text: Evidence presented by archaeology that go back 130,000 years show Homo Sapiens in present day Balkans practicing burial rites that are aimed at transcending daily life. Animal worship & nature worship were practiced even by the Neanderthals as they sought to make sense of the wonder & misery of living. During the Neolithic & the Bronze Age the ancient tribes of Europe: Celts, Teutons, Saxons, Norse, Minoans have established their own forms of animal or nature worship, reaching for the Divine in a world that they haven't yet fully comprehended or quantified.

The sun and the moon became central to their worship (which was adopted later on & elevated through the exploits of Hellenistic Warrior-Emperor Alexander the Great as well as the Pharaoh Akhenaton of Egypt); harvest became synonymous to female fertility while every other important aspect in their reality (home, love, travel, trade, the arts, the hearth, etc.) created a polytheistic belief system as the Ancients sought explanation of their reality by reaching for what they can't fathom as the will of the Divine. Divine symbolism became central to their lives. These drew peoples & communities together establishing the massive gatherings & groupings of people organized & governed by a belief system. The conflicts they participated, the expansions of their 'kingdoms' & the establishment of their traditions were deeply rooted in the importance of their deities in their lives.

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Slide 4

Title: God in the Axial Age of Man

Text:
"The spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently... And these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today."
- Karl Jaspers, 1953

Here, German philosopher Karl Jaspers was pointing out that the period 800-200 B.C. is that particular era that laid the foundations of much of the world's most powerful religious philosophies through a period of thinking, debate, conflict & dialogue by the ancients when they questioned reality & the reason for existence, a revolution by all means. It is in this timeframe that Taoism & Confucianism was established in China & the Far East giving birth to a powerful Chinese Empire steeped in Confucian ideology. In India, Hinduism & Buddhism was born, a belief system that made India the heart of Buddhist beliefs that in turn created the Khmer Empire in Cambodia, the Srivijaya in Indonesia & the subsequent Thai & Burmese Buddhist Kingdoms.

Judaism at this point has lived through various conflicts & changes; while it established the ...