Re: How to use SRQ effectively
- From: ijdavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ian Davis)
- Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 01:53:03 +0000 (UTC)
In article <1179176651.379353.77970@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Carl <pchristainsen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I actually read your entire post; what caught my eye is your statement
that you were misunderstood; I feel intuitively that this is true.
Thank you for those words. It is easy to distrust oneself when all
that one had to go on is ones own perceptions of reality.
By all means, be libertarian and find a new freedom; I wish you well.
Well I am libertarian on social issues.. most definitely not on financial
issues. As far as I am concerned as long as the taxes I pay are put to
the betterment of society as a whole, I have no objection whatsoever to
paying taxes.
And, at one point you waxed philosophical - "the Christian notion of
sin, of some future judgement day, of some future heaven and some future
hell".
I both agree and disagree with you -
IMHO there is no future judgment day because that scheme of prophecy
unravelled 1900 years ago.
It is hard to combine a notion of prophecy with the notion of free will.
It seems to me that either one or other must give.
Yet, the underlying idea that the stars rotate like clockwork shows
order in the
universe from an ineffable cause I call God. Does Dear God have a
plan for
human beings that ultimately good will win over evil? This I believe.
I am very conscious that each of us chooses a belief, which once chosen
becomes the rational for the thing believed. I think we choose the cloak
that best fits us, and best reinforces our view of reality, and having
done so are inclined to forget that what we wear is a consequence of choice
and not necessarily rightness. I think the greater truth is the one that
says not that there is one truth, but that there are many truths.
Long ago now I made the mistake of seeking to reduce my own belief system to
axioms from which I hoped that a sensible belief system might then be
reconstructed. I did this because I wished to be absolutely certain that my
beliefs were without flaw, for I knew even then that a belief system that
was not capable of surviving a lifetime a pretty poor one.
Having discovered that all my beliefs rested on the single axiom that there
was some significant absolute (more than man/woman made) difference
between the qualative merit of actions that I might take, I found this
axiom sufficient to serve as my own belief system. From it I came to see
that we shaped our universe even as it shaped us, and should thus have a care
for how we shape it. I found all that I had formerly believed neither right
or wrong but merely superflous. It did not add to the weight of my belief
system but rather cluttered it up with a lot of non-essential unknowables
that actually distracted me from the essential.
It may be that mine is a self serving philosophy for in denying not the
existance but the relevance of God, I free myself from being troubled by the
degree to which I depart from the perfection such a God might be imagined to
demand of each of us, and thus absolved myself of my own sin. But were I such
a God I do not imagine that what I would demand of my subjects was faith in
my being, and worship in my presence. What I imagine is most required of us
is to be good stewards of the universe we find ourselves placed in, and to
be good boy scouts, (or if you prefer good girl guides) always leaving things
just a little better than we find them, rather than a little worse than we
find them. It is not the owner of the field that should be our concern but
the field itself. Fundamentally it is not I and my sin that matter, or where
my action gets me that matter, but rather the caring for the field. For the
field was here before me, and will be here after I am long gone, and I am
but a small part of that field. And while this would clearly be blasphemy
to some, I suspect that were you to itemise all the wonderous things about
your God David, my list of wonderous things about the universe would easily
be the richer and the more complete. Your God absent my universe would be
a very impoverished being -- my universe absent your God seems to me in no
way impoverished.
OTOH, the only heaven and hell that counts is right now in the present
moment...
I would agree with you here, but with a caveat. While I am just as conscious
of the present moment as you, I am inclined to believe the present moment
more a human concept than an absolute reality. Discover magazine has an
interesting article this month exploring why some physicists believe time
more human concept than physical reality, and Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt
Vonnegut articulates well my own belief system, albeit as explained by
one considered by others mad.
But, what can sin be except that we all miss the mark set by God?
I don't believe that God sets marks so much as has hopes and expectations.
For I don't set marks for my own son that he must meet or else. Rather
I have hopes and expectations, the greatest of which is that he value the
life I voluntarily decided to give him.
God is in control, all the time, just that.
How can you reconcile that belief with the slaughter of 500,000 people in
Iraq. Were I such a God the one thing I would not wish to be accused of
was being in control of this universe. My own belief is that it is we
and not some imagined God who are in control of past, present and future.
BTW, I do not hear enough that any SRQer write of love; let's start...
I Corinthians 13.
Ian
.
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- Re: How to use SRQ effectively
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