Skip to main content

Proof

By


With the Shroud of Turin once again in the news, I couldn't resist looking into the ongoing Biblical Archeological efforts that have consumed some of the most devout Christians for years.  Ever on the search of proof of the events depicted in the Bible, these sleuths have tried to leave no stone unturned in their efforts to expose everything from Noah's ark to Jesus's tomb.  Sometimes these journeys bring peril with them, as was the case for this filmmaker, but usually these stories fade as quickly as they pop up on the news, as they either turn out to be false leads or simply hoaxes.

I have been reading Rowan William's book on Dostoevsky and faith, and he points out quite early in his narrative that if you are looking for quantifiable "truth," don't look in the Bible.  He noted that Dostoevsky once said that if he was to choose between faith and truth, he would choose faith despite many reading his novels as that of a "Doubting Thomas," or in his case Fyodor.

The more you search for proof the more doubts arise.  This was certainly the case with Mormon efforts to discover the lost city of Nephi.  Hampton Sides offers an amusing essay in This is Not the Place.  It ultimately led one Bibilical archeologist to question his faith after being unable to find anything to bolster Joseph Smith's world view in the Book of Mormon.  But, it seems this elusive truth is simply too hard to resist, because Mormon efforts continue to this day to find something in the highlands of Chiapas.

Holbein's dead Christ

What is it about Christians that lead them to continually search for proof to the Biblical stories?  Is it  not enough to view these stories as allegories and accept God as a matter of faith, as Dostoevsky apparently did.  But, it seems humans are all too mortal and need to find some piece of evidence to bolster their faith, just as to achieve sainthood in the church it has to be proven that a person performed some kind of miracle, verified by eyewitnesses.  Dostoevsky had great fun with this in The Brothers Karamazov.  It seems like society itself, religion has become all too literal.

Comments

  1. TripplerApril 3, 2013 at 6:16 PM

    I'm amazed that the matter of the "shroud" is still an issue with church apologists. Historically, it is well established that Jews mummified their dead as they learned to do in Egypt. Even the New Testament clearly indicates that Jesus was wrapped in bandages. Therefore this shroud story cannot possibly have any merit. But that's been settled a long, long time ago.

    ReplyDelete
  2. avrdsApril 4, 2013 at 1:08 AM

    And then we have this from the Washington Post:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/five-reasons-to-believe-that-jesus-christ-rose-from-the-dead/2013/03/31/59dc712a-9a05-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_story.html

    And while looking for the link, I found this:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/liberty-firearms-policy-loosened-permitted-concealed-guns-allowed-in-all-facilities-but-dorms/2013/04/03/efc3279c-9c53-11e2-9219-51eb8387e8f1_story.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. James FergusonApril 4, 2013 at 7:58 AM

    It is hard to reconcile this evangelical Christianity with this fascination for guns. As I remember one pastor telling me long ago, he was an "Old Testament Christian," seeming to skip over the teachings of Jesus and accept only his birth and resurrection. This seems to describe a great number of so-called Christians today.

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonApril 6, 2013 at 8:30 AM

    Well, you see, you can find God in a goldfish cracker,

    http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/florida-woman-finds-sign-god-her-goldfish-cracker-191857159.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
229 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more