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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ron who wrote (245923)	2/28/2014 5:47:04 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 542937

I am going out to dinner and comedy :-) I doubt there will be many religious there. And there will be none at the table with me and my friends. We have one friend who is Quaker (who isn't going), and a couple of unitarians- who are nothing, but who like the social aspects of church- and that's about it among our close friends. Amongst our less close friends we've got a few Catholics- but not the hard ass kind, and a protestant or two (of the weak variety). We have friends who are all in the sciences (or at least the husband is)- and those guys just aren't religious. None of them are. Interestingly, my students are getting less religious, and more vocal about being less religious. We read a lot of religious literature in American lit (after all- the textbook starts with Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God)- so we've worked our way up to the Transcendentalists, and we're reading Thoreau and Emerson, and one of my kids turns on another kid to tell him how ridiculous religion in- which puts me in the position of protect the religious kid (interesting). So I gave the speech I always give- usually to protect the little atheist, but works just as well for the religious - Religion is religion because it requires faith. If it were logical, and like 2 plus 2, you wouldn't need faith, and everyone would "get" it, and come to the same conclusion. So there's no point trying to join an argument when one side is standing on faith, and the other side is relying on logic- there is NO common ground, and there never will be. Faith is the currency you "pay" to show your worthiness to your deity. It's a test. It's a leap (as Kirkegaard said). So there is no debating faith in my class. ............ Now what I don't tell my students is... Don't expect the logical to respect illogical leaps. When you take an illogical leap you can believe in sea monsters, fairies, little green men from outer space, or an invisible friend who watches out for you. I certainly have met decent people who were mad leapers- but I find it impossible to sympathize with that kind of leapiness. It makes no sense to me, because it isn't sensible, and I am not a faith based being.