Is Christian faith a crutch?
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, smoking cigar. Español: Sigmund Freud, fundador del psicoanálisis, fumando. Česky: Zakladatel psychoanalýzy Sigmund Freud kouří doutník. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) But He said to them, “Why are you so fearful ? How is it that you have no faith?” And they feared exceedingly …(Mark 4:40–41a). “I don’t need your religion,” hearers of the Christian message sometimes reply. “That’s just a crutch for those who are too weak to cope with life on their own.” So goes one of the most frequently heard objections to the faith. How should we respond? The roots of this response go back to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Many of the leading thinkers of that period were skeptical as to the existence of God . But as means of travel improved and Westerners began to move about the world, an undeniable truth began to make itself clear—there was religious activity everywhere. Man, it seemed, was incurably religious. This presented a problem for...