Re: Why do people believe there is a god?

Lee Jay writes:
> However, I think the fear of the unknown was a primary driver for the
> development of many of the world's religions.

-

That's a broader thing, of course, and an intriguing idea. Certainly
all religions acknowledge, at their best, that there is more out there
in this thing called Reality than we can possibly know. And they assure
us that this is okay.

Fear will rear its head with any belief system, of course. There will
always be timid souls, and nobody likes losing a favorite paradigm,
whatever it happens to be.

But what if the primary driver of religion is not *fear* of the unknown
but *curiosity* about it?

What if there are some kinds of knowledge, valid knowledge absorbed by
the mind as it learns, that can only be expressed in symbols and
paradoxes? Experiences that defy expression in numbers and rational
propositions but that still serve a being as it grows and develops?

It was a cliche of music theorists in nineteenth-century Europe to say
the 'meaning' of a symphony was 'too vague to explain in words.' Felix
Mendelssohn said the cliche didn't really catch it. He said that for
him music's meaning was too *precise* to say in words. Being musical
meaning, it required musical expression. To try to say the same thing
some other way was to lose so much in the translation as to falsify the
experience.

-
Taoshan
_

.

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