QUESTIONS for THEOLOGIANS

QUESTIONS for THEOLOGIANS

With great interest, I read your article: WE NEED TO STUDY THEOLOGY published in BusinessWorld ( May 11, 2005 ). You mentioned and I quite agree that there are lots of people who are real giants in the fields of modern technology and other sciences. Regrettably however, I am unable to agree that such scientists and philosophers are ‘like babies or pygmies with clearly stunted growth’ in matters of faith and religion. For my part, I am neither a scientist nor a philosopher; in fact, I am a high-school dropout. Perhaps, as you are an expert in theology, you might be of great help in answering for my own enlightenment, the following theological questions:

If God were the Designer of nature, how come He had to design 23,000 different kinds of beetles? What went wrong with the first beetle design? Or, if the human body were God’s design, how come there exist about 2 billion kinds of virus, germs, and bacteria living inside our human body that will eventually kill us all whether we have free will or not?

If God created everything, including space and time, where was God located before he created space, and when was it before he created time?

The sun is such a giant that it can take one million ( 1,000,000 ) planets the size of earth and fit them all inside it. The sun, however, may be large but it is not the largest star in the sky. According to the science of astronomy, there is an even bigger star called Betelgeuse. It is 500 times larger than our sun. Comparatively, therefore, on this grain of sand called “planet earth” we humans are like the size of tiny parasites or the size of atoms. In this connection, what was God’s size when he created man in His own image and likeness?

Where did darkness come from? Wasn’t God shining bright enough to have lighted up everything even before he created the sun and the stars?

How could Adam and Eve be guilty of the Original Sin since before everything else there was, first and foremost, - the Original Creator?

God’s first Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” Can you explain where those “other Gods” came from? Who created them?

If moral values were universally planted by God, then all people would believe the same things. There could never be disagreements over right and wrong. There would be no need for laws, courts, and battlefields. Can you explain why the history of the world has been a history of conflicts between moral values in God’s name?

According to the National Catholic Almanac, God is “almighty, eternal. Holy, immortal, immense, immutable, incomprehensible, ineffable, infinite, invisible, just, loving, merciful, most high, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, patient, perfect, provident, supreme, true.” Can you explain: how was it possible for theologians to declare God’s incomprehensibility and simultaneously list twenty-two additional attributes? If God cannot be comprehended, how can anybody get to know or even to love God?

If God were immutable and therefore cannot change the past, the present, and the future as God saw it, doesn’t that make our prayers utterly worthless because when we pray, we are asking God to change his mind?

If God so loved the world, why does he tolerate the devil to inspire the believers of one religion hate the believers of another religion? Indeed, why does he inspire as well the believers of the same religion to hate each other as we all do in this only Christian country in Asia?

Christ said that if someone smite thee on the right cheek, turn the left cheek also. Can you explain what is so noble about turning the other cheek, if one knows that each time he does so, he piling up greater rewards in heaven, while the one who strikes is earning his rewards in hell?

If Christ died on the cross to destroy the devil, how come the devil is still alive? How come he’s doing quite well inspiring the Filipino to embrace not the growth of human civilization but only to be involved in the rat-race for eternal salvation?

Philosophy of science is committed to the discovery of truth; it is not obliged, as a discipline, to defend any particular set of beliefs at any cost. Such is not the case with theology. Theology, as a discipline, is concerned with the defense of a particular set of beliefs. As theology is still at the foundation of our system of education, is it any wonder that in our schools, colleges, and universities, we all come out not as useful thinkers for humanity, but only as useless believers for divinity? by Poch Suzara