Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Coming to believe: One man's account

This article in The Philosophy Magazine caught my attention because of its arresting title and because, like its author, I've also in the course of my life been something of a wanderer adrift among the competing truth claims of this pluralistic world. Also, the author is a fellow Rice Owl.
The penultimate sentence, though, is the real reason for its being here this morning: its succinctness is something I wish I had had available to me back in my days at my previous institution of higher learning.
Enjoy, and comment if you feel compelled to do so.

1 comment:

Alex said...

I think you are right!!! All I can do is plead stupidity. I also am enjoying your Blogs. I will officially start the ball rolling in my next Blog. Since Jaquilin is of like mind and you built your comments on hers here is my reply to her:

Here’s my attempt to answer your question which I think you asked. If I guessed wrong then just let me know. In my Blog "How Was The Universe Designed" I was working on the premise that although God is powerful, he / she isn’t really interested in doing a lot of work beyond setting up a self sustaining system, looking after maintenance issues if things go sour, and a self evolving feature with a dose of randomness thrown in for interest’s sake. I agree with you that intuition and logical thinking go a long way towards dealing with unfavorable circumstances. Intuition and logical thinking only work in a system that is reasonably predictable. I also agree with you that these things may work beyond our capacity to consciously calculate due primarily to the fact that God works on a need to know basis and most of the time you don’t need to know. God also works long term which could exceed our lifetime. If we could look into our descendant’s life and then look back on what happened in that context we could see how we played a part beyond the obvious such as procreation. My blog " Just Deal With The Top" was my attempt at explaining that God is willing to listen and is not unreasonable. I have been enjoying your Blogs especially the one "Spirituality Within". Your Blog is one that makes my day. John B. dinged me for not responding in a follow up Blog to the discussion points received under "Comments". Since you and I as well as John B. seem to be on the same wavelength and are generally interested in the same general topics I will send this to him. John B. read your comment and then built his comments on your observations. I will try harder!!