Undone & Divine

I agree concerning tradition, but I don’t like the last three items.

Authority:
Some things addressed in holy books or the documents of thousands of years ago have nothing to do with the progress of science and the facts of physicality, so to speak. Sure, we know that the sun is a ball of gas and not a god in a chariot. On the other hand, people thousands of years ago had just as much opportunity to observe human nature as we do, and the wisdom that arises from that sort of activity doesn’t fade with time.

Faith:
Excuse me? There is no escape from faith; we all have faith in something. It needs to be noted that in the Bible at least (I can’t speak for other holy texts), the Greek word for “faith” denotes something very near “trust” or “confidence,” and that it has since then acquired the word associations that lend it aspects of the vague and the ethereal. And we must also recognize that by referring to “faith” we may have in mind something related to any one of the main organized religions - or not. There are different kinds of faith both religious and secular, and they vary in their degree of provability and reliance on the empirical. In a sense, isn’t the acknowledgement of this depth of variety one of the main thrusts of post-modernism?

Revelation:
The two lines under this heading don’t really address what is most likely the traditional idea of revelation, which has connotations of visions and prophecies - so I won’t either. It does however deal with the experience of sudden realization, which everyone has felt at one point or another. One might argue such a feeling is the end result of an integration of formerly aggregated facts and empirical experiences, but many times it doesn’t seem that way. The feeling of instantaneous knowledge is overwhelming and real. It is a poem that arrives in the night, fully formed and perfect. It is the tears that flow at the height of a musical masterpiece, when the heart of a composer - who probably lived hundreds of years ago - enters your own. In those moments, revelation is in itself a kind of fact.

Finally, the rhetorical tone of the entire post is rather trashy. Just saying.

Oh, and while bad spelling is no reason to disbelieve a statement, it certain doesn’t help. Cough. ”Naval” is for boats. “Navel” is for bellies.

(Source: atheistsatlarge, via skeptic-tank)

4 months ago 47 notes

Tagged with: #religion #faith #logic #belief #art #revelation #richard dawkins #revelation