October 25, 2010

Sam Harris Believes in God?

Newsweek has just come out with an article on the well-known militant "new atheist", Sam Harris and his belief in "God". The article explores how Sam Harris is not so willing to go by the label atheist because he "concedes he believes in something certain people call 'God'." While the article goes on to explain Sam Harris' belief in "spirituality" and that this belief is not in "God, but consciousness", the most troubling aspect I found was the statistic that "a quarter of Americans believe that God is 'an impersonal force'", and as Newsweek goes on to explain:
When polled about God, “people substitute in their own ideas,” says John Green, senior research adviser at Pew. “People have a vague, fuzzy notion of transcendence, and they substitute God for it...When you try to make the definition more specific, fewer people answer in the affirmative.” Or put another way, “If you let the concept of God float a little bit, almost everybody is a theist,” says Stephen Prothero, author of God Is Not One. What Sam Harris believes in—rationality, morality, transcendence, humility, awe, community, selflessness, and love—meets a fairly common definition of God.
My friends, this is the reality of living in a postmodern world. As time goes on, I believe that the real challenge to the Church will not be convincing people that there is a god, but showing people that the God of the Bible is the only true and living God.

2 comments:

Heather Brady said...

I agree with you. There is an internal debate constantly going on inside my head about this.

I believe there most certainly something greater than myself out there. The problem I'm debating is whether it is the god of Christianity, the god of other religions, or some other entity all together.

I've been unable to come to a decision on this matter. Being raised protestant, it's hard for me to break the family beliefs. But, having a scientific mind makes it very difficult to support the god of Christianity.

Daniel said...

Well, there's a lot that could be said here and I wouldn't mind talking about this some time, but for now I'll just say one thing. I believe that when the facts are laid out and the God of the Bible is seen as He rightly should be and science is seen as it rightly should be, then the two will not contradict.

Thanks for commenting, Heather. I'll see you in a few weeks.

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