RE: A Quote For Atheist to consider :
July 24, 2011 at 12:50 am
(This post was last modified: July 24, 2011 at 12:56 am by Whateverist.)
I'm not sure why some folks don't think you have any business here. Without you .. what else is there to do here? Preach to the choir? Congratulate ourselves. Vent against institutions and individuals that tried to impose a medieval mindset on us when we were young and vulnerable. I'm no longer interested in the existence of magical beings but I am interested in why some very interesting and otherwise rational people are. I imagine you are younger and naive. (That's not a crime and I don't think it makes you a loser.) However there are very interesting people who are deeply religious but also quite rational and accomplished. Bill Moyers, the pbs tv journalist, comes to mind. I know why one would reject religion if it were thrust on you - been there, done that. What I don't know is why you would embrace it even conceding that the bible is a hodgepodge, that church doctrine is fallible, and that evolution and the rest of science represents our best understanding of the natural world.
While I don't think a 'god' has anything to do with it, I know there are dimensions of human experience more profound than rationality. That too is unprovable, and I wouldn't try. I suspect that, while hardly necessary, religious thought can tap into an experience of the deeper self. There is a sense of otherness about this deeper self in that it is what it is independent of what your would have it be. Sometimes I think this dimension of experience is merely our animal knowing, the intelligence and intentionality that all mammals at least possess but which we become alienated to by our reliance on language. I don't know but I do know that life without coherence between my rational self and deeper self isn't enough. To the degree that the religiously inclined use religion to seek and accomplish such coherence, I can't find fault. When someone like Bill Moyers talks about god you can tell that for him it really is something mysterious, that he isn't starting with a lot of doctrinal presuppositions. I would really enjoy talking to that sort of theist.
While I don't think a 'god' has anything to do with it, I know there are dimensions of human experience more profound than rationality. That too is unprovable, and I wouldn't try. I suspect that, while hardly necessary, religious thought can tap into an experience of the deeper self. There is a sense of otherness about this deeper self in that it is what it is independent of what your would have it be. Sometimes I think this dimension of experience is merely our animal knowing, the intelligence and intentionality that all mammals at least possess but which we become alienated to by our reliance on language. I don't know but I do know that life without coherence between my rational self and deeper self isn't enough. To the degree that the religiously inclined use religion to seek and accomplish such coherence, I can't find fault. When someone like Bill Moyers talks about god you can tell that for him it really is something mysterious, that he isn't starting with a lot of doctrinal presuppositions. I would really enjoy talking to that sort of theist.
