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Exploring Christianity
How to believe when reason don't want to let you believe?
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<blockquote data-quote="Silmarien" data-source="post: 75063727" data-attributes="member: 395596"><p>A couple of additional thoughts:</p><p></p><p>1) Theism doesn't quite claim that reality is ultimately knowable. A lot of people in this thread have been saying that reason cannot lead you to God, and while I think that this sort of irrationalism is misguided and that reason actually <em><strong>can</strong></em> at least lead you to the gates, if you actually stop and try to conceptualize what it means to say that God exists, you really are going to start feeling like an ant trying to understand neuroscience. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big Grin :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /> Theism actually is mind-breaking like that.</p><p></p><p>2) If you're looking specifically at Christianity rather than theism in general, you have to consider what it means for something to be a divine revelation. Christianity doesn't make the claim that humans can fully grasp God's nature by their own power, but rather that God chose to briefly live as a human so that he could show us what it really means to be God. This means that we can be the ant trying to understand something beyond its grasp, since what we know was given to us.</p><p></p><p>3) The idea that reality might be utterly alien and beyond our grasp does in a very real sense come from naturalism/materialism itself. We at some point kind of just decided that we lived in an unknowable, indifferent universe, in which everything was ultimately senseless. Theism, in contrast, says that reality is rationally ordered, and that our own rational minds are more than just an accident of history. Not to rehash a sort of Plantinga style Argument from Reason, but if theism is true, then it would make sense that our minds were capable of vaguely grasping at that truth, whereas if it's not true, we have much bigger problems to worry about. <img src="/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/old/kawaii.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt="^_^" title="Kawaii ^_^" data-shortname="^_^" /></p><p></p><p>If you already think that theism makes more sense than naturalism/materialism, my question would be precisely what more you need. I agree with what [USER=167101]@2PhiloVoid[/USER] said on the last page--you don't need anywhere near 100% certainty to have faith. I'm not saying to ignore whatever intellectual hurdles you might have, since I obviously didn't, but sometimes you have to keep in mind that emotional hurdles exist too. I obsessed over these questions for the longest time in part because treating God as something to be studied and considered was a lot easier than... whatever it is we're actually supposed to be doing. I still have only sort of started to figure things out, lol.</p><p></p><p>So I'm going to have to also give you some of the same sort of advice you've been getting elsewhere in this thread: have you been praying? Do you know how to? (I didn't until I was kind of compelled to.) If you specifically feel drawn towards Christianity, reading Scripture (and biblical scholarship) with an open mind can be useful also, even if you're skeptical of it. I think the intellectual path to faith is perfectly valid, but you're probably more likely to get results if you're conscious all the way through that it may well be that <em>you're</em> the one being studied here, rather than the reverse.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, any other questions, feel free to ask. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Silmarien, post: 75063727, member: 395596"] A couple of additional thoughts: 1) Theism doesn't quite claim that reality is ultimately knowable. A lot of people in this thread have been saying that reason cannot lead you to God, and while I think that this sort of irrationalism is misguided and that reason actually [I][B]can[/B][/I] at least lead you to the gates, if you actually stop and try to conceptualize what it means to say that God exists, you really are going to start feeling like an ant trying to understand neuroscience. :D Theism actually is mind-breaking like that. 2) If you're looking specifically at Christianity rather than theism in general, you have to consider what it means for something to be a divine revelation. Christianity doesn't make the claim that humans can fully grasp God's nature by their own power, but rather that God chose to briefly live as a human so that he could show us what it really means to be God. This means that we can be the ant trying to understand something beyond its grasp, since what we know was given to us. 3) The idea that reality might be utterly alien and beyond our grasp does in a very real sense come from naturalism/materialism itself. We at some point kind of just decided that we lived in an unknowable, indifferent universe, in which everything was ultimately senseless. Theism, in contrast, says that reality is rationally ordered, and that our own rational minds are more than just an accident of history. Not to rehash a sort of Plantinga style Argument from Reason, but if theism is true, then it would make sense that our minds were capable of vaguely grasping at that truth, whereas if it's not true, we have much bigger problems to worry about. ^_^ If you already think that theism makes more sense than naturalism/materialism, my question would be precisely what more you need. I agree with what [USER=167101]@2PhiloVoid[/USER] said on the last page--you don't need anywhere near 100% certainty to have faith. I'm not saying to ignore whatever intellectual hurdles you might have, since I obviously didn't, but sometimes you have to keep in mind that emotional hurdles exist too. I obsessed over these questions for the longest time in part because treating God as something to be studied and considered was a lot easier than... whatever it is we're actually supposed to be doing. I still have only sort of started to figure things out, lol. So I'm going to have to also give you some of the same sort of advice you've been getting elsewhere in this thread: have you been praying? Do you know how to? (I didn't until I was kind of compelled to.) If you specifically feel drawn towards Christianity, reading Scripture (and biblical scholarship) with an open mind can be useful also, even if you're skeptical of it. I think the intellectual path to faith is perfectly valid, but you're probably more likely to get results if you're conscious all the way through that it may well be that [I]you're[/I] the one being studied here, rather than the reverse. Anyway, any other questions, feel free to ask. :) [/QUOTE]
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