Hi WT Deserter and welcome to the forum!
Can we look at FAITH in a more practical way?
by Terry 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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sabastious
Posting Guideline 8: Please avoid; Posting in a language other than English.
Hi nicolauo, I was posting in my native tongue of English.
The problem I see is that my government keeps secrets from me. I understand that logically there are situations that warrent this, but unfortunately I don't know the specifics of those scanarios. Because of this ignorance I am incapable of creating an informed opinion on whether or not a particular secret kept from me SHOULD be kept from me. This means that my government is forcing me into having faith in them. I actually do have that faith, but only because I put great value in faith, but I only give it to entities of which deserve it. One entity would be my country, but that country is UNDER God's authority. That's what I meant by the question "How do I know I shouldn't know the things I don't know?" The answer is: have faith.
-Sab
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Christ Alone
Unless of course you really do have some evidence . . . . ?
I do. But I'm not telling.
Much as it is rejected by those that haven't experienced it, and have a scientific explanation of why I shouldn't rely on it, personal experience is a proof to me. Yes it is MY proof, and it is subjective. It isn't a single event or feeling. It is a series of events, refelections, and responses that I have seen in my life. But they are mine. Nothing that I say in that regard is going to convince anyone. In fact they will say that scientifically one cannot rely on personal experience. And I accept that for you to not give my own life experiences any validation for God's existance. It would be strange if it did.
That isn't my only evidence that I rely on to formulate my views on God. Of course not. It's something I consider, but there is much more that causes me to believe in a higher intelligence. I've posted some of these here, and will do so in the future. But as has been brought out many times, I can't prove to you that God exists. You can't prove to me that God does not exist. So we are at an impass.
That being said, I know all the reasons that are given of why I can't trust my reasons for believing in God. And I can give you all the reasons that I have for why I don't think it's reasonable to reject belief in God.
Many times it is not until an important life event happens and a person can't explain it, that they start to entertain the idea of God. Of course every other person besides the experiencer will give them reasons as to why they are wrong and why it CAN be explained or that they are unreasonable.
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cofty
Hi WTDeserter welcome to the forum and thanks for that link. Its a sematic problem that seems to go round and round.
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nicolaou
Christ Alone, there was a poster here well known, respected and held in affection by many who went by the name of Little Toe. He made many of the points you've made about personal experience and subjective assessment. We clashed often and over the course of many years we NEVER reached agreement over some of these fundamentals.
You sound something like him and I say that as a compliment - he is the only former JWN member I have given my real identity to and who has access to my Facebook account. So please take this as a positive thing when I say;
"I look forward to sparring with you" -
Christ Alone
Thanks Nicolaou! I do take that as a HUGE compliment. Was little toe the guy that da'd during his public talk?
I'm ready for the sparring!
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Terry
Think of human interpersonal relationships; friendships. These relationships are based entirely on trust.
The logic of this statement is elusive unless you examine concrete deeds upon which friendship and trust are based. These deeds precede the trust.
Otherwise, we are merely demonstrating a benign open-door policy toward strangers. An honest person would revoke "provisional" friend status
once they are mistreated, abused, cheated or lied to.
Am I being clear enough?
When we RE-STATE another person's explanation a new way we change the dynamic and often damage the meaning.
Friendship and Trust are NOT the same as "faith" and "belief" in the religious sense. Why?
Our friends demonstrate the reality of our investment of trust by their words and deeds and history of treatment of us.
Stop for a moment and consider what a dysfunctional friendship would be. A "friend" who borrows and does not return what is borrowed, for example.
The betrayal of trust would turn to blind faith if we simply refused to "see" the disqualifying behavior.
The "blindness" would take the form of making excuses for them.
The impractical aspect of friendship (which is really one-sided) is similar to the blindness of the believer who refuses to consider, contemplate, examine or investigate the falsifying disproofs in his belief system. (i.e. JW's and false predictions).
Am I any clearer now?
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nicolaou
Yep, that's him. I'm just chilling out tonight - end of the week, bottle of wine, curled up with the Mrs and the dog on my sofa so I'll likely be offline soon but I'll see you around man!
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cofty
I can give you all the reasons that I have for why I don't think it's reasonable to reject belief in God.
That would be interesting to read.
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sabastious
Am I any clearer now?
Did the friend borrow your item with intent to steal? Because that's more disqualifying than just being really lazy about getting it back to you. You speak about excuses. We SHOULD give our friends the benefit of the doubt because even when we are wrong trust can always build up. If you allow logic to dictate trust you are basically asking your friends to never hurt you, which is not the nature of friendship. Human relationship both romantic and platonic is about dependency. Not codependency, mind you, but friends are supposed to be dependable, that's what makes them friends. However friends can ALWAYS let you down, that's the risk you take by having a friend. Trying to use logic to create qualifiers for friendship is a slippery slope. Love is not logical, that's not it's nature. Who we, as individuals, choose to attach to is not something you can put in a petri dish and examine it like a bacterium. You have to live it to learn it. It's dynamic, just like faith.
-Sab