Subject: Re: atheism
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Tue Jan 18 2000 - 19:03:37 EST
In a message dated 1/18/00 4:24:20 PM Eastern Standard Time,
jjv@caesun.msd.ray.com writes:
> There is no leap of faith, no
> belief involved here. If you're going to doubt your senses then read
> Decarte and see how far he got.
I'll only reply to this one Point because we've already argued it. The point
is that, whoever we are, we proceed from assumptions we cannot prove. I
listed several earlier -- the idea that language is adequate to convey the
ideas we're speaking about, the idea that the future is going to be like the
past, the idea that we can trust our physical senses, etc. None of this can
be "proven" rationally, but is simply accepted. No problem with that, these
all work most of the time :) But the point is that everyone's working on
some sort of unproven assumption. There's simply no use pointing fingers
here :)
I even have a beautiful article describing how this is even More true with
quantum physics than with other disciplines :)
Orthodox(ies) make theology a bit less arbitrary than you make it out to be.
I'm limiting myself to Christian theology.
When I said that Robbie and I were standing back to back describing different
things, I wasn't arguing theology vs. science. I was arguing his experince
(which did not include God in the horizon of his vision) vs. mine (which
did). Reading his post, I get the impression that I'm dealing with someone
who's being honest with me, so I trust him when he says he has no reason
(that he's willing to consider, that is :) ).
I think you deserve a description of my experience. It's hard, really. See,
we don't have a language unique to the experience, like we have a language
for tastes, colors, and sounds. I would say that the experience is ongoing
(more or less, definitely since I was 13, but in retrospect it went back
further), that it attains to different levels of intensity, and that at its
most intense its very similar, at times, to sensory data apart from a
physical referent.
I understand, say, Donne's use of erotic language for it (as well as
Herbert's). Sometimes it's like pure joy. Other times it's just a quiet
sense of presence. I think in another post I said it's like sitting in a
room and someone walks in behind you, quietly. They don't make a sound but
you know someone is there. I suppose it would be something like that.
Sometimes God speaks through people -- maybe just a few words, maybe a
sentence, maybe just three words out of a sentence. It's like just that
little bit takes on the characteristics of a megaphone. The person's
speaking voice is like the megaphone, but God is talking into the aperture.
The knowledge communicated goes deeper than the words being spoken, usually,
and the person has no idea how they are being used at the moment. Doesn't
matter, they don't need to.
But all this is nonsense unless I'm speaking to someone who has shared the
experience. It would be like describing the color blue to a person born
blind. He would keep thinking in terms of touch, smell and sound without
ever understanding sight, so the language would be nonsense. It's like
describing how you know you're in love to someone who's never been there.
Jim
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Feb 28 2000 - 08:38:04 EST