I consider myself a religious agnostic, on epistemological grounds. Frankly I resent the implications of your post. I have no objections to a thread about Bible software, and even find it mildly interesting. I never thought of disrupting it. In order to preserve that thread for its original purpose, I'm starting a new thread in order to respond to your provocation. If you think that I'm "slipping", I'll be happy to mix it up with you. I would positively love to discuss the foundations of religious belief with an educated group that includes clergymen and theologians. Here's my question: There are many religious traditions out there in the world. All of them claim to reveal some kind of transcendent reality, often (but not always) personified in the form of god(s). So how can true religions be distinguished from false? How can an individual who wasn't born and raised in one of the traditions, who doesn't belong to it by default in other words, decide which one(s) is/are true (if any of them are) and which ones aren't? Or is truth even the issue in religion, as opposed to some more pragmatic criterion? How can mortal human beings even recognize the divine, should such a thing exist? How can various grades of transcendence (space-aliens, ghosts, daemons, demons, angels, gods, God...to say nothing of an uncountable number of additional possibilities that we have never even imagined) be distinguished from one another if they all exceed man's understanding simply by definition?
Bill: I didn't intend to fire a shot across your bow, I had no idea of your religious inclinations. I was commenting wryly upon a phenomenon I've noticed here: someone starts an innocuous thread dealing with this or that DL seminary or Bible college and voila--an unsolicited poster jumps into the discussion with some artless stereotype about Christianity, along the lines of snake handling and the like. These comments might be warranted were the threads about the merits of liberal v. conservative theology or metaphysics generally, but invariably, they're not--and the whole thing smacks of bigotry to me; it wouldn't be tolerated in civilized society were any other group the target. That's all I'm talking about, and it wasn't directed at you. Now, as to your challenge, I'm far from a theologian, I'm a small town lawyer and college instructor, I'm sure there are others more up to the task at apologetics. I'd argue though, that to toss out all religions because you might not be able to readily identify which is true or false is to throw the baby the way of the bathwater. I'll tell you how one who wasn't raised in a particular tradition can attempt to discern truth from lies, because I'm one of those who wasn't raised in any tradition: my parents were essentially agnostic; they attended church perhaps five times as I was growing up--every third or fourth Easter I think--I still can't fathom why, perhaps for the cultural experience; they never once to my knowledge wasted a single breath on prayer, not even a rote table blessing; they never cared about faith--it wasn't discussed--and this was enforced by my father who to this day remains committed to "I don't discuss religion"--his unofficial motto, even in the face of the cancer that could take his life. I was a blank religious slate, knew nothing of Jesus other than the vague notion that he was some ectomorph of European extraction who wanted to curtail my fun. Coming to faith in anything was rebellion in my family, and I was made to feel the sting of it when I did. When I first confronted the notion that God might be real, I looked to two things: evidence and the lives of those who professed to follow Him. I was confronted by a couple Christians at a secular university on my dorm floor my freshman year, and I thought they were crackpots. In time they invited me to their Bible study--I set out to make them look foolish and superstitious. As I learned more, I was honestly impressed with the person of Jesus, astonished that if the story were true, God had cared enough about a world that had largely foresaken Him to enter it humbly and redeem it at an unimaginable cost. But being impressed with a story did not immediately translate into faith; after a few months, I still wasn't convinced. When given the opportunity to pray to God to accept this Hebrew carpenter "in my heart", I told my Bible friends that I had no notion of whether their God existed or was a construct of their imaginations, but I was willing to pray so as to hedge my bets. I prayed: "Jesus, if you do exist, I'll follow you, and I'm sorry for the crummy things I've done." Something like that--at most a mustard seed of faith. I noticed nothing at first, went about my life, not even much contact with the Bible study guys. But about two weeks later, I was sitting alone in my dorm when it hit me--my paradigm had shifted--I was starting to love those around me. I know that makes me sound like a perfect idiot, but that's what happened. I had an entirely different view of humanity--people weren't just a means to my ends anymore, I was viewing them differently. I searched my mind for a reason as to this change, then it hit me--the prayer! I picked up my Bible and it started to take on meaning that it had never before, this was another change. I realized then that this stuff was real, it was such a dramatic shift inside me, I can't explain it any other way. I know what you're saying, this is an easily-explained psychological phenomenon; every other religion describes a similar thing--but do they? I really haven't heard anything of this nature in any major world religion save a few mind control cults. For the most part, religion around the world is more like what the Muslims describe: "A way of life"--what you do. I also don't believe this change was a matter of peer pressure a la Elmer Gantry-- there was precious little opportunity for me to be influenced by much of anything, I wasn't even attending a church at the time, and I don't think I spoke more than a passing thing or two to those Bible study boys in the couple weeks after that prayer--something happened, something I can't reason away. I don't expect my little testimony to convince you, and I know I haven't discussed much other than vague metaphysics and subjective experience with little hard proof, but God does not reside in your test tube, you wouldn't expect Him to. There are many other pieces of solid and intriguing evidence for the veracity of the Bible and the truth of my faith. I've probably taken up too much space anyway, so my first post will be nothing but my testimony--that's generally not a bad place to start. We can get into "hard proof" later as you wish. Seldom is the burden of proof met with one element, but I'll try to build more with succeeding posts, and of course, I know there are others who can build a much more cogent case than me. All the best to you, Bill.
My reply will be in two posts. The first will address context, the second substance. I don't think that's accurate. Threads about religion on Degreeinfo are almost never willfully disrupted by non-Christians. When religion threads get hot, as they occasionally do, it almost invariably involves obscure Bible quotations and who is the better Bible scholar. Apparently you were angry at Carl and started firing wildly in all directions. I returned your fire. Ironically, Carl's objection doesn't seem to have been religious at all. He doesn't like Falwell's politics and being a bit of an ideologue, Carl overstates his positions and treats his political opponents as caricatures. But as soon as talk turned to religion, he cooled down, allowed as how he wasn't an atheist, and started talking reasonably about his Lutheranism. I don't have a clue what you are talking about. What smacks of bigotry? What wouldn't be tolerated? If you want to paint the Degreeinfo Christians as victims, you need to present some evidence that they are. In reality, there have been literally hundreds of religion threads on this board in which evangelical Christians discuss their faith. There have only been a handful of threads where non-evangelicals (whether Protestant liberals, Catholics, non-Christians or atheists and agnostics) have discussed their own religions (or lack of them). And I have trouble thinking of any occasions when the various factions have actually gone to war.
Bill: I wish you no ill will. I wasn't angry at Carl or anybody, I've come to terms with Carl and I think he with me. I've seen a handful of religious discussions here--just a few--and in two of them I've experienced the phenomenon I cited--people posting primarily with the intention of taking a shot or two at a belief system or religious leader with whom they disagree, appropos of nothing in the thread. The comment by Carl is not the only one to which I refer, I also had a skirmish with Greg D. (but I think that he and I have moved beyond that as well). The two came so closely one after another, I thought I'd identified a pattern, but I haven't been a member here long, so it's a small sampling; if the great majority of religious postings over the years have not been similarly treated, then you would likely know more about that than I, and I stand corrected. One of the difficulties about this medium is you can't see me, hear my tone of voice--I want you to know that at most I was being sarcastic in that post that offended you, I had no intention of firing indiscriminately, and certainly not at you! I'm sorry if I came across as possessing a martyr complex--I don't. I was trying to be cute--obviously failed miserably.
Unfortunately, nobody on Degreeinfo with a theological education will talk to me. I strongly agree. That's why my challenge (a challenge to me, not to you) is to get from here to there, wherever there is. But my problem is this: If a religious path requires that I accept propositional beliefs as true, then the truth of those beliefs has to fall within the boundaries of what a mortal human being can know. I agree that if a religious path has heart, that fact should be reflected in the hearts of those who follow it. But my own experience has been that this kind of spirituality (if that's the right word) can be found in individuals distributed across all the religious traditions, but it is never universal among the followers of any tradition. An anecdotal story: I once met a guy, a welder by trade, in the Santa Cruz mountains. There was something fascinating about him, a feeling of peace. His every gesture, act and word was an art form. Even the trees and the stones around him seemed to reflect some indescribable but obvious beauty. I still remember him in real amazement, 30 years later. You hear stories about such people, but this guy was my proof. I sometimes wonder if he was what the Buddhists call a Pratyekabuddha, a private, isolated or silent Buddha. He didn't have any teachings and he didn't have any followers. His path was for him alone, just as my fleeting experience of him is for me alone. But the interesting thing in this thread's context is that it was all non-verbal and entirely non-cognitive. There's absolutely no doctrine there to believe. It could be everything... or perhaps it's nothing at all. Who knows? And more subtly... does it even matter? If music is beautiful, why ask what it means or whether it's true? It made me wonder what religion is supposed to be accomplishing in the first place. But isn't that what you are describing? You haven't really given us any convincing reason to believe in the truth of propositional Christian doctrines. Instead you described how you set out on your own religious path. You described what you did. You met and were impressed by Christians. You studied their beliefs. You prayed. You started experiencing changes in your life. I respect that. I'd just observe that the experiences that you relate sound like what those who embrace many different religions describe. They take up a practice, gradually become more committed to it, and then start to notice effects. The pattern seems similar whether it's Bible study and prayer, or zen meditation. That's one reason why I'm increasingly inclined to interpret religious truth in pragmatic terms. The point may not be to hold factually correct beliefs about Jesus or God or Brahman or Tathagatagarbha. It might be to do somethingwith one's beliefs/tradition/path, whatever they happen to be, to use them as a vehicle of some kind. What's true may well be whatever works. Of course, that still doesn't really answer my original question. How can we really know what's working and what isn't, if we don't know the final goal? Or... maybe we do know... like music and art. I place a lot of credence in my heart. I may be misled for a time, but I trust that my heart will smell it out eventually. I'm less interested in having you convince me (or me convince you) than in getting a feeling for what's happening and how the process works. Thanks for telling me your story.
Bill: Thanks for your kind response, let me think about it, I'll get you a response along in a day or so. One thing I do want you to know, I really did very little to nil "practice" prior to that prayer, unless you count scoffing at what was said in a handful of Bible studies "practice". And to my knowledge, that prayer was the first sincere one I'd experienced in my life, not much repetition. I certainly didn't change my lifestyle, I thought the lives those Bible boys led were restrictive and depressing; I continued pursuing my active sex life--as active as an awkward 18 year old could make it--throughout these Bible studies, I continued drinking, imbibing in controlled substances on occasion, the life change--the practice--came only later, after the prayer. Words fail me here trying to describe what occurred in me; I was a hard-bitten skpetic, sneered at these people, had softened up a bit prior to the prayer, but absolutely no real change inside. I pray one stinking half-baked prayer and my life--what's inside me--changes in a manner that I'm still coming to terms with--I wish I could make you understand this the way that I now know. I'm not a font of wisdom or spiritual understanding, I'm just a small, and sometimes rather dirty little thing that was touched by One far greater than me, and I don't know why other than love on His part that's often not reciprocal on my part--I still pinch myself from time-to-time and say: "My lands, I can't believe it's true, can it really be that God would invade this earth and die a sickening death for my sins?"--seems absurd! A better expositor of this than me is C.S. Lewis--have you read "Mere Christianity"? Book less boring than the title; you might relate to Jack Lewis, an agnostic veering towards athiesm--not that I believe you fit that category--who sought to dismantle my faith and ended up coming to it himself. Again, thanks for the interchange, I'm enjoying it, trust the feelings are mutual. Best to you, Bill! Mike
Whatever you say. One of the reasons why I brought up the idea of practice, is that it helps open up a possible answer to my original question: How is it that human beings can have knowledge of transcendent things? That's not a question that can easily be dodged by intelligent religious believers, much as our Degreeinfo theologians would like to. Anyone that's going to assert the truth of doctrines such as the Bible's inspiration, Christ's divinity or the trinity, is presupposing that a satisfactory answer exists. My suggestion was that perhaps religious doctrines needn't be interpreted as propositions that describe some transcendent reality, but might be better understood as tools whose use helps us to progress towards some end that we may or may not see. In which case their truth could be treated as a function of their effects here and now, rather than by their correspondence to things that probably can't be even be known by finite human minds. How is it possible to sincerely pray to something that you don't believe in? I'm not denying that people can will themselves to believe. I'm not suggesting that people can't perform that little inner movement of letting go. I think that many people can do it. I think that I could. That's precisely what scares me to death. The problem is that kind of inner movement, performed as an act of will and devoid of reason, seems indistinguishable from madness. The problem isn't that I can't will myself to believe, but that I could will myself to believe anything, including that space aliens are beaming thoughts into my head. Soren Kierkegaard was one who perceived the same thing, in his book 'Fear and Trembling'. He used Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac as his example. Abraham knew that killing his own son was the worst of crimes. Abraham knew that killing Isaac would contradict all the promises. Abraham knew that the voices in his head were most likely the gibberings of madness.... and he lifted the knife. Kierkegaard was willing to go to that inner place, to become what he termed a "Knight of Faith". But I'm not. I'm not willing to throw away my sanity. And frankly, I don't think that's how most Christians, certainly not our intellectual theologians, got where they are either. And this gets me back to the beginning of this post. Even if I adopt a pragmatic understanding of religious truth, wouldn't I still be faced with having to will myself to believe some doctrine or other, in order to feel the effects of holding such a belief? If I have bought a solution to the problem of knowing unknowable things at the cost of my sanity, the price is much too high. But perhaps the point isn't to believe something without any reason why it should be believed. Instead, the point might be to do something and then see what the results of that behavior are. One would probably have to have enough hope about the ultimate possibilities to give it a shot, but needn't believe in the literal cognitive truth of any doctrinal propositions. And that finally gets me back to my interest in religious practice. And my question not only to you, but to all religious believers is: How do you know? How do you know that anything touched you at all? How do you know that it was the appropriate object of worship and not some deceitful demon? And what relationship does this feeling of being touched have to the whole set of beliefs and practices that constitute a particular religious tradition? I don't know the answers. I don't think that our clergymen and theologians know the answers either. But I do think that the questions are important.
Bill: Your points are fair--I'll answer some now, some later. I do think you need to accept the limits of two things upon which you've placed too much trust: the power of human reason and the ability of humans to, through experimentation, arrive at metaphysical truth. Also recognize the inherent contradiction in your modes of thinking: I don't see much validity in exalting human reason--a la Aristotle and the Ancients--and experimentation--a la Voltaire and the Enlightenment--simultaneously. Not to say that we can't through reason conduct our experiments, but ultimately, you're going to have to--in the words of Dylan--"serve somebody", be it your own intellect or the scientific method or something entirely different from the two--which is my path. I believe you've limited yourself to too few choices; you're not likely to understand or comprehend whatever may transcend us on the power of your intellect and reason or through what you can measure in a test tube in our closed little system; why would you expect to? We are at this moment moving at almost unimaginable speed through space on a veritable speck of dust orbiting within an utterly unimpressive bit of roughly circular matter arranged about a tiny hot dot in an insignificant galaxy in a universe that's about 10-20 billion light years from end to end. And this universe may itself be a speck in an even larger system--read "The Man Who Saw through Heaven" by W.D. Steele. How could we--who can't even begin to comprehend the breadth of our own tiny solar system--understand a Deity who could create the whole magnificent everything with a wave of His/Hers/Its hand? Your reason and your test tube will only get you so far. I don't think it makes me insane to recognize the limitations of the puny mass of matter within my skull; actually, I think it's a perfectly reasonable (ha!) choice to recognize my limitations and understand that transcendent truth can only be understood via transcendent means--that's the way a human begins to comprehend a bit about God; and He reaches down because they have just a moment of faith and humility. I believe God reached down and touched me, I can't prove with certitude that it wasn't a demon or my own wishful thinking, but certitude is an illusion, such is not the repose of man. Of course, you don't have certainty on your side, either. This may seem to contradict what I said earlier, but we can--while recognizing its limits--look to evidence. You can't prove your wife loves you--she may poison your coffee tomorrow. But you believe she won't because you have years of evidence to support it. In the same way, I can't prove God, but I can look to a string of extraordinary things that defy all probability and logic--and yes, I'm well aware of the phenomenon of confirmation bias, and always on guard against it. There are various pieces of evidence in the Bible; there's evidence in the extraordinary beauty and order of nature; there's evidence in the millions--billions?--of lives changed; and I am one tiny bit of evidence, I can't prove this to you, of course, but I know of the almost unimaginable change that went on within me that has no relationship to religious "practice" or upbringing. I'll write more later. In the meantime, all the best to you!
If a religion requires that one accept certain propositional beliefs as true, then it seems to me that the truth of those beliefs would have to fall within the limits of what mortal humans can know. In other words, how can finite beings have knowledge of transcendent things? The reason why that presents a problem to me is because I don't place too much trust in human reason. The problem is precisely that I don't understand how human beings can obtain cognitive understanding of things that by definition transcend human understanding. Any religion that's going to insist upon the literal truth of doctrines such as the Bible's inspiration, Christ's incarnation or the Trinity, is going to have to have some kind of answer to that question. That's going to raise some problems when individual revelations are universalized. In another thread, you wrote: If God's law is supposed to be universal and normative for all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, then justifying it by appealing to the private revelations supposedly enjoyed by Christian believers is obviously going to be very problematic on a number of levels. It seems to me that this enlightenment by other-power idea, combined with a doctrine of divine law revealed in propositional form and with an a-rationalism in religious epistemology such as you describe, is probably most appropriate when applied to individual religious choice and personal ethics within a generalized and rationally justifiable secular context. It seems far less successful in justifying a return to a universal normative religious/social system. That's going to be more and more true in an increasingly diverse social environment like our own. This, BTW, is not a problem that's unique to the Christian religious-right. It's a problem faced by all religions in one form or another. It's particularly acute right now in the case of Islam.
Bill: Thanks for your kind response. If your credo is going to be that certainty is a prerequisite before you agree to seek out the God whom I profess, then you must apply the same standards to other areas of your life for consistency--and of course, like the rest of the us, you don't: one cannot be certain that they even exist, yet we go on about our lives as if we do; one cannot be certain that the next time they take a step the ground will not open up and swallow them, but of course, we take those steps. We don't have certainty on our side, everything could be clouded by the limits of our reason; Paul of Tarsus, one of the primary writers of the New Testament and generally acknowledged--even by his enemies--to be one of the most brilliant thinkers of his day, pointed this out in the Bible: "We see through a glass, darkly." There's no particular reason written in the sky that a God who created us--however transcendent He may be--would not also create us with the ability to be infused with a little something of Him and thus through those means--not human reason--be able to comprehend Him on some level; I'm speaking of spiritual matters here and words fail me somewhat. But ultimately what I'm trying to say is if you want to know if God exists and want to know Him, you must humble yourself and--however foolish it makes you feel--speak to Him and ask Him to reveal Himself to you. You also, in my opinion, should read about Jesus, read the first four books of the New Testament; tell me if this individual--what you actually read of Him, not what you may have heard second-hand (I know I'm presuming a lot, you may be a biblical scholar)--intrigues you, seems to be coming from some perspective decidedly unearthly--dare I say divine? As for much of the rest of your post, I must admit that it's a bit over my head, you obviously have a lot more philosophy under your belt than I; you'll need to bring it down to my feeble layman's level before I can converse with some stab at intelligence. I wish you the best, Bill, thanks again!
I think that you are arguing with a straw man. My own general epistemological attitude is one of mitigated skepticism. I don't really think that absolute certainty is available in any endeavor, even formal logic and mathematics (error remains possible). But that fallibilism doesn't imply that public assertions of truth require no argument in order to be convincing, or that some beliefs aren't better founded than others. If there is no real distinction between true and false religious claims, then that's a very important conclusion with significant ramifications. If there is a difference between true and false religious claims, then what is it? But how do we get from these inchaoate a-rational feelings to the propositional truth of particular religious doctrines? How are disagreements resolved when different people's hearts seemingly tell them very different things? Members of all religions have subjective feelings that seem to validate their faith. I admit my ignorance in matters where others believe that they possess the divine truth. I think that I'm already pretty humble in that regard. If you are suggesting that I make a leap of faith, I addressed some problems with that in earlier remarks on his thread. How it is possible to sincerely address an entity that you don't already believe in? Isn't it necessary to make a seemingly insignificant little inner movement first? But how one can know beforehand that the little inner movement leads into religious truth and not into psychosis? Those people in San Diego who committed suicide in order to live eternally on comet Hal Bopp took the leap of faith, just as those ancient Christians who willingly sought martyrdom took it. It's not immediately clear to me what the difference is.
Yes, Godel showed us that any consistent system will have true statements that can't be proven true. Interesting thread fellas.
