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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DLL who wrote (14915)	5/3/1998 12:59:00 PM
From: Gregory D. John	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 39621

Donald, It may be naive, but, yes, I think there's either a creator (or many creators - "Pity," said Slartibartfast, "that [Norway] was one of mine. Won an award, you know. Lovely crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear of its destruction.") or no creator. I don't know if it's accurate in the latter case to call the universe, self-creating... self-evolving perhaps. Creation implies a temporal beginning. There may be no such thing. A "Xeno's paradox"-type beginning might be a more appropriate idea. Perhaps the universe has gone through a countably infinite (even uncountably infinite? - in the mathematical sense) number of big bangs and big squeezes. Are time and entropy relevant only to this iteration? Who knows? Does it really matter what happens in the other iterations? Can it be known? It may well be the truth that life is actually designed... engineered, but not necessarily by an omnipotent, personal God. Maybe a deity archetype was programmed in, too. Do cats and dogs have a concept of a deity? I wouldn't think it foolish to ask God to give me a sign, so to speak. It seems to have been so much... easier... philosophically speaking... in the "old" days, when you could just ask any god for a sign... whether you believed in him/her/it or not. "Well," one could say to oneself, "those fellows seem pretty successful. Perhaps I'll pray to their gods and see how things turn out for me." It does not seem for nothing that the Christian/Jewish/Islamic god is called the God of Abraham. Is it religious arrogance to call this god by just: God? The psychology of TRVTH? Oh... I'll get to the Gospel of John near the end of "The Original New Testament"; I'm at Luke right now. I was talking with a friend of mine and my understanding of faith has changed (grown? - hopefully). Instead of "doubt", a much better word for what I was intending is "humility". Let me re-print the relevant paragraph with "humility" in place of "doubt", and some extra notes in square brackets. See what you think: "You asked how we can trust a mind that has been molded by evolution to just react like instinct. Bottom line... trust is faith. Faith, IMHO, is flawed if it isn't tempered by humility. By questioning [having the humility to believe that you could be wrong, either partially or completely], you strengthen your faith; sort of like: that which does not kill you faith, makes it stronger. But blind faith, faith without humility, is fanaticism or zealotry. Some might find strength in zealotry. Zealotry is not for me, though. [Note the lack of humility in how zealots view their own beliefs.] Do I trust my mind (which I believe I got via evolution and probably does just react like instinct)? Yes. Why? That's exactly what I meant when I said I believe in believing in free will. [I just picked up Augustine's "On Free Choice of the Will".] Does it really exist? I don't know if that question can ever really truly be answered. Will I take it as a working assumption that it does exist? Yes. Why? Eh... I take it on faith. :-)" Doesn't the first part about faith seem a little more... accurate? Greg