Although I don’t consider myself “spiritual” in any way; I am more appropriately defined as an agnostic (so yes you’re right). I’m willing to concede that some evidence exists, which leaves the door open for that sort of thing. However, I maintain an affirmative rejection of religion. In other words I do believe religion is false; and the bible is no more than a collection of ancient myths (notwithstanding whatever occasional correlation with real historical events might exist in some of the stories). In fact I’d probably go even further and say that religion is perhaps one of the worse influences on mankind; even though any effort to eradicate it would be equally tyranical.
Did my last post elucidate what exactly religion means to its believers? It is a source of spiritual healing and moral guidance, and few brought up in their faith can believe why someone would go without any sort of faith. That allegory should have cleared things up, I hope.
I can understand your skepticism of the fantastic events in the Bible. Some are allegory, for sure, but many are retained as specific doctrine, maintained on the personal level only through faith.
Don’t tell anyone — har har har — but like any believer, I have had my doubts and my faith has been challenged. What keeps me Catholic is the absolute strength of Her moral teachings.
In Her moral structure, exceptions are not made to any rule, unlike any overtly human philosophy, and yet there is a sense of rightness. Nobody falls through the cracks indefinitely — there is always the option of redemption, exercised as we are willing. Everyone is held accountable for his own actions.
I suppose this will put a period onto the end of this thread. I have a coda, and if you — not specifically bridgeforsale, but any reader — are half the rationalist you say you are, and if you coldly rationalize everything, I challenge you to read further. If I am wrong, it cannot hurt to read this, because this at least should provide a perspective into the personal nature of belief. If I am right, you have everything to gain. Ignoring what I write will only show I might write something you fear to read. If it is boring to read, at least try to struggle your way through it — would it not provide more ammunition to aim at institutions of belief?
In the Catholic Church, at least, everything has precedent, and there is a uniform, just morality applicable to any life. In this morality, I see a perfect balance of form and pattern. The moral structure holds strong, and unlike charismatic sects dependent on local preachers, as relevant and fleeting as the smallest waves on the beach, the Catholic Church, through Her moral teachings, is a great constant, stable as the ocean.
Mindboggling is the scope of the Church. We think in years or decades or generations, and throughout millenia has the Church taught the same morality. Dogma and doctrine may have been refined or. since I’ve not studied the matter, changed, but the moral teaching at the highest level, through encyclicals and the like, has only been further deduced, never reduced. She eschews ideology, and acts in compassion. Despite the imperfection of members of the Church Militant, the Church Triumphant exists in perfection.
I see something you, apparently, don’t. I don’t pity you, per se — I’d rather ignore such a distraction and share with you what I see. If you would only look at what religion, any religon, has to offer the individual believer on the personal level, you’d appreciate that such an institution does offer something to everyone in the innumerable small crises of our lives. Nothing changes but your perspective — you keep your willpower, your intelligence, your voting habits and your fall-back ideology, if you want. You’ll keep your material goods, though they’ll no longer seem so important.
I see, in flashes, that image of perfection. It all makes sense. Everything is accounted for. I have never seen this in any human construct, and so I am comfortable believing in God. If you say it is the collected polishing of morality through trial and error, or the biological instinct to behave morally in non-critical fashion, or the impressions from spectral meatballs flung from the Giant Spaghetti Monster, it is your right to do so, but it is hardly in your best interest. I don’t see you offering any better or equal alternatives, only dogged prideful individualism, determined to figure everything out for yourself, to ignore conventional wisdom in favor of starting everything all over. Nothing is new, remember, everything to say has been said before us ---- why begin again if, through the gradual polishing of beliefs over time to a glimmering sheen, what exists still is the result? If beliefs evolve over time, and there exists nothing more about which we should talk about because it has already been said, is what we have not the culmination, or at least an inevitable future, should we start all over again?
If I am a deluded fool, I am a fiercely confident, moral, compassionate and tolerant deluded fool. There exist worse things than a delusion in something greater; there exist delusions which say there is no such hope.
