The `Problem` of Evil! PPSIMMONS answers Michael Krasny on agnosticism and the longing for spiritual certainty

Via CBC

Consider the agnostic: someone whose spiritual approach to the afterlife is marked by one big question mark. For some, it's the only conceivable way to approach the big questions, the phrase "I don't know" the only possible answer to life's mysteries. Agnostics don't enjoy any of the certainty given to religious believers or atheists.
Author Michael Krasny writes about both his own personal history with agnosticism, as well the general history of agnosticism in the world, in his book Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic's Quest. He spoke about his book and his agnosticism on Tapestry in a recent interview. Krasny is familiar with both sides of the religious coin: as a child, he believed in God and found comfort in the feeling that He was always near. But as he grew up, this consolation evaporated as Krasny's agnosticism grew. And though he lives a full and productive life — university professor, award-winning public radio host, author — there remains a void inside.

By Mike Shoesmith

I have determined to, rather than throw angry comments at my radio when the only available signal comes from CBC, a tax-payer funded clearing house for all things hyper-liberal and anti-Christian, begin using the might of PPSIMMONS to push back the frontiers of ignorance being force-fed to the unwitting populace.

I listened to this author describe his fall from faith. I don't blame him really. It all came down to a dynamic I have been discussing for many years, which is, if someone is able to talk you into your religion then someone smarter will be able to talk you out of it. Krasny explains:

 "I think I lost it through cerebrality," he said. "Around senior year in high school I read omnivorously and I read Schoepenhauer and Spengler and Nietzsche and all those writers, and they really eroded my faith, made it very rocky...I had to face the fact that I didn't know what I believed." Krasny was concerned this made him "wishy-washy."
"Studs Terkel once said to me in an interview, 'I'm an agnostic and that means I'm a cowardly atheist,' but it was a little more complicated than that," Krasny said. "Intellectually, I was just kind of battered by what I was reading and what I was thinking. I began to face what this was in the writing of this book, because if there's one article of faith that I have it's that writing brings illumination."
In the sixth grade, Krasny was beaten badly by his teacher, an incident he rarely dwelled on, as he disliked thinking of himself as a victim. "But even in an unconscious way, I assimilated ideas out of, say, The Brothers Karamazov, where Ivan Karamazov says 'if a child can be beaten and God doesn't interfere...then how can we permit this, how can we allow belief to be as strong as it is?'" Still, it was really Krasny's intellectual pursuits that formed the crux of his spiritual uncertainty, he said. "I was reckoning with that as well, but it was mainly what I was reading that was getting to me."

Essentially, Krasny grew up with a religious belief and was talked out of it by atheist philosophers. At the end of the day he was never really a Christian as far as a Christian is defined by Jesus Himself.

I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.
John 10:14

And...

 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
John 10:27

So, if Jesus says His people know Him, and they follow Him, and hear His voice (Jesus' own definition of a Christian), then how is it that a Christian could ever become an atheist or agnostic (someone who 'does not know'). Truth: they cannot. Imagine someone denying the existence of Walmart after shopping there! Seems rather silly when you look at it like that eh!

Finally, Krasny admits that at the end of the day it all boils down to the problem of evil. The real problem here, I would suggest, is that Krasny has failed to properly educate himself on who is really responsible for all this evil. And I would also like to suggest, if I may, that this man and many, many others like him are victims of poor leadership in the church, a leadership which has, for far too long, put the blame for the atrocities in this world on YHWH when we clearly have someone else to blame... the `god of this world.`

2 Corinthians 4:3  But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:4  In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

Whom Jesus also referred to as the `Prince` of this world (Jn 14:30)

The `problem` of evil has been solved. Our souls have an unrepentant enemy. Satan is the `god of this world` and he is responsible for the blindness and evil and atrocities. And since man actually gave that authority to Satan we are equally to blame and will join him in the afterlife... unless we repent and take part in the adoption process, an agency which was opened for business when Jesus rose from the dead.

Galatians 4:4  But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,5  To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.6  And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.7  Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.