Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese
...As we move along in life we either fully accept this choice, using one or more of Daniel Dennett's eight plausible reasons <see previous post #208>, or we simply begin to question the theories and toss out anything that doesn't make sense...
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Except that Dennett missed perhaps the most important one: Religious experience, or the revelatory nature of faith. I have had my fair share, and whilst I am well aware of the
rational arguments leveled against religious experiences, they are meaningful enough in my own life for me to maintain a commitment to "faith."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheese
...I think that after awhile you begin to understand that the faith we put into any religion/spirituality is misdirected, and you begin to transfer that faith into yourself first, then your fellow human. You see others for what they are, not for their beliefs. Its clarity in its simplest forms.
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Isn't this a form of "spirituality"? You know, a couple of weeks ago a guy in the spiritual support group from my Church that I am involved in shared an experience he had had that week. He's a contractor and has been hit hard by the economic slow down. He's in rough shape and he is running out of money. He was invited out for coffee by another friend who gave him a sizable cheque that just happened to cover his most immediate and pressing expenses because "the Lord told him he needed it." No strings attached. No thanks neccessary. Just because it is what he was convinced was the right thing to do. How does one explain that as simply putting faith in his "fellow human"? Try telling that to either of these two men who sincerely believe that God cared enough about the situation to—dare I say it—intervene.
I'm not impressed by "miracles" simply because no one has ever seen anything that is really and truly "not explicable by natural or scientific laws." But it is usually those small, inexplicable coincidences of amazing good fortune that press home the point for me: that "God" may not be knowable, but some of the time he is actually believable.