Proof of God
If we can fully explain God, he ceases to exist.
Currently reading: Gilead. I quote, where my ideas are put into word i couldn't yet expect to achieve:
"In the matter of belief, i have always found that defenses have the same irrelevance about them as the criticisms they are menat to answer. I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, b/c there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things. We participate in Being without remainder. No breath, no thought, no wart or whisker, is not as sunk in Being as it could be. And yet no one can say what Being is. If you describe what a thought and a whisker have in common, and a typhoon and a rise in the stock market, excluding "existence," which merely restates the fact that they have a place on our list of known adn nameable things (and which woudl yield as insight: being equals existence!), you would have accomplished a wonderful thing, stilll too partial in an infinite degree to have any meaning, however.
"I've lost my point. It was to the effect that you can assert existence of something - Being - having not the slightest notion of what it is. Then God is at the greater remove altogether - if God is the Author of Existence, what can it mean to say God exists? There's a problem in vocabulary. He would have to have had a character before existence which the poverty of our understanding can only call existence. That is clearly a source of confusino. Another term would be needed to describe a state or quality of which we can ave no experience whatever, to which existence as we know it can bear only the slightest likeness or affinity. So creating proofs from experience of any sort is like building a ladder to the moon. It seems that it should be possible, until you stop to consider the nature of the problem.
"So my advice is this- don't look for proofs. Don't bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they're always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp. And they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them. That is very unsettling over the long term. "Let your works shine before men," etc. It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a octrine, words to that effect. I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, themustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion at any particular moment.
- "My heart is greatly disquieted. It is a strange thing to feel illness and grief in the same organ. there is no telling one from the other. My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find out its lurking places. that old weight in the chest, telling me there is something I must well on, b/c i know more than I know and must learn it from myself - that same good wieght worries me these days.
But the fact is, I have never found another way to be as honest with myself as I can be by consulting with these miseries of mine, these accusers and rebukers, God bless them all. So long as they do not kill me outright. I do hope to die with a quiet heart. I know that may not be realistic."
Currently reading: Gilead. I quote, where my ideas are put into word i couldn't yet expect to achieve:
"In the matter of belief, i have always found that defenses have the same irrelevance about them as the criticisms they are menat to answer. I think the attempt to defend belief can unsettle it, in fact, b/c there is always an inadequacy in argument about ultimate things. We participate in Being without remainder. No breath, no thought, no wart or whisker, is not as sunk in Being as it could be. And yet no one can say what Being is. If you describe what a thought and a whisker have in common, and a typhoon and a rise in the stock market, excluding "existence," which merely restates the fact that they have a place on our list of known adn nameable things (and which woudl yield as insight: being equals existence!), you would have accomplished a wonderful thing, stilll too partial in an infinite degree to have any meaning, however.
"I've lost my point. It was to the effect that you can assert existence of something - Being - having not the slightest notion of what it is. Then God is at the greater remove altogether - if God is the Author of Existence, what can it mean to say God exists? There's a problem in vocabulary. He would have to have had a character before existence which the poverty of our understanding can only call existence. That is clearly a source of confusino. Another term would be needed to describe a state or quality of which we can ave no experience whatever, to which existence as we know it can bear only the slightest likeness or affinity. So creating proofs from experience of any sort is like building a ladder to the moon. It seems that it should be possible, until you stop to consider the nature of the problem.
"So my advice is this- don't look for proofs. Don't bother with them at all. They are never sufficient to the question, and they're always a little impertinent, I think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp. And they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them. That is very unsettling over the long term. "Let your works shine before men," etc. It was Coleridge who said Christianity is a life, not a octrine, words to that effect. I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own, not, so to speak, themustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion at any particular moment.
- "My heart is greatly disquieted. It is a strange thing to feel illness and grief in the same organ. there is no telling one from the other. My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find out its lurking places. that old weight in the chest, telling me there is something I must well on, b/c i know more than I know and must learn it from myself - that same good wieght worries me these days.
But the fact is, I have never found another way to be as honest with myself as I can be by consulting with these miseries of mine, these accusers and rebukers, God bless them all. So long as they do not kill me outright. I do hope to die with a quiet heart. I know that may not be realistic."
posted by Anna's Abstract at 2:10 PM
1 Comments:
interesting.
-tiger
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