Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
nathan1977 said:
But we all think that our starting point is the best....which is fundamentally arrogant, isn't it? Your starting point may be your starting point, which is fine for you, but that isn't the best starting point for someone else. Judging someone else's starting point seems to be a bit judgmental, and surprising for someone who is passionately against judgmentalism.
And even if your starting point were the best, a starting point is one thing -- a sticking point is quite another.
and i'd disagree here, if we're talking about understanding the blueprints of faith. if we were to talk about the experience of faith, then i'd be in agreement, and we could also agree that part of the experience of faith, as exemplified by MT, is doubt. and a believer's account of the experience f doubt would be a valuable one no question. but if we're going to understand faith as a belief system, as something that operates by a set of understandable and, ultimately, predictable rules, then i would argue that a position of dispassionate agnosticism is a more "honest" position because it's one of neutrality.
what i take from your posts is that the starting point is the indisputable existence of a Creator, and a Creator with a clear Christian standpoint. simple talk of a "relationship" with said Creator is a specific viewpoint coming from a specific cultural context, and is expressed in human terms (what's more human than a relationship?) and is called for by a specific text (the Bible). and i think that when regarding the experience of faith, i agree, a relationship, which is to say an emotional and intellectual interaction with articles of faith is an important part of the experience, in fact, that is much of the experience, i would guess. and this would stand in opposition to the fundamentalist automaton, the fundamentalist who has the single moment of active engagement and then spends the rest of the experience being the best student in class and being able to spit back the "best" answers to the questions with the appropriately cited Biblical verse. and i can think of a mutually respected former poster who, in my opinion, was a brilliant example of this. it didn't seem, to me, like a faith that was experienced, but that all experience was mediated through the rules of faith.
the other issue i have in regards to the "blueprint" analysis is the weight you give to the Bible. i doubt the very foundations of the text itself -- writings done decades after the assumed events -- as having any more authority than a history text. this has been bandied about in FYM before, and i remain suspicious on Bible-based faith. it just doesn't seem like a solid foundation upon which to begin a discussion of the operations of faith.
as for "bad things/good people" -- i suppose i'd understand this as a bit more universal than you. why did two happy-go-lucky teenaged girls die in a car accident when i was a sophomore in high school? why did Edge's daughter develop lukemia? why does a bridge collapse in Minnesota? why does a tsunami wipe out 250,000 people?
i suppose i find the random death of innocents at the hands of fate to be a "bad thing," and i think we can name innumerable "good people" who've had unexplainable things happen to them. i'm one of them, and i seem to be quite lucky as all's going well. which begs the question of why, if there's a god who loves us, and a God who wants a relationship with us, and a God who wants us to be good and to do good things, and a God who controls everything, that it's all in his hands, that it's all his doing, that it's all part of his plan, then why, oh why, do these things happen?
i'll paraphrase something that i remember Bono saying, but i believe it was an Old Testament story -- i've had two glasses of wine, so name escape me -- but it was (Abraham?) who was told by God to bring his son to a mountaintop and to kill him in order to demonstate his faith. and so, he did, and just before he killed his son, God intervened, said it was a test, and let them both go, and thus, this is the faith we should have.
and Bono's reaction, and my reaction, is: what a fucking asshole.
it doesn't matter if we understand God on his terms or not. what matters is that we have to understand life on its terms and deal with it using our very human faculties. and as supposed Creator of said faculties, it seems rather cruel.
this reminds me of an example that comes up in abortion threads. we're presented with various "would you have an abortion if ..." scenarios. one category is horrible, horrible birth defects. and one of the worst that i can think of is what's known as harlequin-type ichthyosis. it's a horrible disease, and while there are a handful of stories where children survive to hit double-digits, and even one "success" where the child has made it to adulthood, the vast, vast majority of victims of this disease live short, painful lives and then die.
and my very human response is that, yes, i would absolutely have an abortion to prevent my child from entering a world where all they will know is suffering. and if this is God's will, or God's plan, to have a baby born to only suffer and then die, so that all of his human experience is one of suffering, then the only moral thing i can do is to protect this child from what God, apparently, wants for it. it would seem to me that to accept what is might be the cruel thing to do, and that i should thwart the Will, the Plan, and protect my child from God, if we are to believe that God is the author of such birth defects.
this seems like a bad thing that has happened to a good person. and to take your earlier thought of "perhaps we're not as good as we think,' would this imply that i've done something so terrible so as to deserve a child who will suffer, and that my suffering will be through watching the child suffer?
again: what a fucking asshole.
and so it continues. all questions, just food for thought, just hypotheticals, and i'm not implying that this is representative if your particular experience of faith, but that it is representative of one particular blueprint of faith.
[q]But even perception is not all of reality[/q]
but, maybe it is. does it exist if we do not perceive it? if a tree falls in the forest ...