I have to regard the resurrection of Jesus as a special case because I also believe that Paul makes sense when he says that our spirits will be resurrected and not our bodies.
1. Corinthians 15.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
Keep reading what he said until you get it. And there is no mention of our spirits. Only our bodies.
It's all in there
Only to you. Although @Lamb Chopped is on the way. Substituting nature for body doesn't work either,
1. Corinthians 15.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The nature that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural nature, it is raised a spiritual nature.
Although the nature of the body that has the human nature will be transcended too.
I do not recognise your quotation.
It isn't a quotation that's why. Except by me. I have amended yours to align with @Lamb Chopped's post.
What would it take to make you change your mind re: your religious belief, or your disbelief? Answers to this often surprise.
What say you, Shipmates?
I veer between doubt and faith. During the worst moments in life my faith deepens and I feel the Living Light of Christ strongly. When life is easy my faith trembles and crumbles, sometimes to almost nothing.
I've never missed Church 'tho, because I have always very much enjoyed it as a community.
Belief is harder to define for me because it's a logical/intellectual matter and I don't have a logical or intellectual mind.
I put my 2p worth here because @The_Riv asked it as a personal question rather than a debating point.
I have to regard the resurrection of Jesus as a special case because I also believe that Paul makes sense when he says that our spirits will be resurrected and not our bodies.
1. Corinthians 15.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
Keep reading what he said until you get it. And there is no mention of our spirits. Only our bodies.
It's all in there
Only to you. Although @Lamb Chopped is on the way. Substituting nature for body doesn't work either,
1. Corinthians 15.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The nature that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural nature, it is raised a spiritual nature.
Although the nature of the body that has the human nature will be transcended too.
I do not recognise your quotation.
It isn't a quotation that's why. Except by me. I have amended yours to align with @Lamb Chopped's post.
I've not got time to go into it now but the Orthodox have always put a strong emphasis on the material and bodily. It's to do with the Incarnation of course.
The idea that we become disembodied spirits floating around on clouds is a relatively new and 'Western' development.
I don't read Paul to be saying what @Telford seems to suggest. But sure, he's not talking about fluffy clouds, I get that.
That'd be a matter for a Kerygmania thread I think.
When I've more time I may start one.
Meanwhile @Lamb Chopped I can understand your objection to my suppose they found Christ's bones illustration.
Put simply, all I meant was suppose somebody could provide proof positive that the Resurrection hadn't taken place. If so, our faith would be futile as Paul puts it.
Interesting thread and thanks to everyone for their comments.
I'll post again when I get a chance.
Peace to all.
I came across recently some words about faith from a person making the Muslim Hajj pilgrimage.
The writer asked ,why in the Hajj pilgrimage do we remember the painful situation of Hajar/Hagar abandoned by Ibrahim/Abraham in the desert ? Did her faith in God waver ?
Why does God want us to remember these painful stories ?
The writer then decides that faith is more than just believing ; it is about living with fear and self doubt and working through those feelings until they bring some sort of answer.
I have to regard the resurrection of Jesus as a special case because I also believe that Paul makes sense when he says that our spirits will be resurrected and not our bodies.
1. Corinthians 15.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
The questions I have are: exactly how does Paul know these things? How did Paul gain this information? Does he really know? No. He does not. No one does.
I veer between doubt and faith. During the worst moments in life my faith deepens and I feel the Living Light of Christ strongly. When life is easy my faith trembles and crumbles, sometimes to almost nothing.
I've never missed Church 'tho, because I have always very much enjoyed it as a community.
Belief is harder to define for me because it's a logical/intellectual matter and I don't have a logical or intellectual mind.
I put my 2p worth here because @The_Riv asked it as a personal question rather than a debating point.
Thank you, @Boogie. It's refreshing to read a straightforward answer *to* a question instead of the usual issues raised *about* a question, even if we're in Purgatory where the latter is the norm, and it takes a full page to set the table. I say that having been as guilty as anyone here on that score. Your mind and your answer are most welcome!
It’s an invalid question, that’s why I at least don’t answer the question. It is, again, like asking what would make you no longer love your spouse, as if that is a kind of propositional mental content that can be switched off given a new line of information. Not how it works.
It’s an invalid question, that’s why I at least don’t answer the question. It is, again, like asking what would make you no longer love your spouse, as if that is a kind of propositional mental content that can be switched off given a new line of information. Not how it works.
It’s an invalid question, that’s why I at least don’t answer the question. It is, again, like asking what would make you no longer love your spouse, as if that is a kind of propositional mental content that can be switched off given a new line of information. Not how it works.
Thanks for stopping by.
I know, much easier to dismiss those who don’t conform to the arbitrary structures you set out rather than engage with their ideas.
It’s an invalid question, that’s why I at least don’t answer the question. It is, again, like asking what would make you no longer love your spouse, as if that is a kind of propositional mental content that can be switched off given a new line of information. Not how it works.
The existence or otherwise of God absolutely is a propositional statement. I don't see why it can't be subject to the same questions as one might ask about the existence of aliens, ghosts or alternate universes.
It’s an invalid question, that’s why I at least don’t answer the question.
Some here have deigned to answer, however reluctantly. At least @Gamma Gamaliel recognized it as a thought experiment. You've ridiculed it, and relegated it. I suppose that's an attempt to "engage with their ideas" of a kind, anyway. Perhaps I should have posted this thread in Epiphanies.
what would it take to make you change your mind re: your religious belief, or your disbelief
Why can't we do both? They're both worldviews: why do we have to stick with one or the other? There's no "rule" anywhere that says we have to hold to only one worldview - so why can't we hold more, and move between them as we see fit?
What - you can simultaneously hold the belief that God exists, and that God does not exist, and be happy in that state? And not in some quantum superposition, "my belief vector is a linear combination of God-exists and God-doesn't-exist vectors" sense, but in an actual believing mutually contradictory statements sense?
I can simultaneously hold the belief that God exists and fully affirm that belief, and hold the belief that God does not exist and fully affirm that belief. I can do that because I am not a robot capable of only holding binary value-judgments in mind. It is not a pleasant state, no, but that doesn't matter. I also don't enter this state regularly but it has certainly happened, sometimes for seemingly no reason. The life of faith is nuanced and wonderful, and part of that wonder comes from the vastness of experience it contains.
What I had in mind when I wrote the post above was being able to intentionally switch between worldviews, rather than holding to them simultaneously.
But I've been thinking about KarlLB's conception. (And also that some people report "losing" their faith overnight, as well as "finding" faith overnight.)
Is belief really an on/off thing? Not in my experience.
It's not. Everyone has a degree of confidence that a given set of beliefs are true. If you're near or at the bottom of the scale for all the ones that propose the existence of a God or gods you probably consider yourself an atheist. If you are higher up on one of those confidence scales you'll identify as a believer in the religion associated with that set of beliefs.
And your position can vary.
Consider the situation of being familiar with two or more worldviews, and that you find some aspects of these worldviews personally convincing. Each worldview has a confidence "value" (for want of a concept) - how convincing you find it. This value depends on various factors, which might include empirical evidence, cultural values, family, psychological state and more. These values can change - I guess I'd expect it to be more common that they change little or slowly than rapidly. Either way, there may come a point when the worldview in which you have most confidence changes.
The first time (and if) this happens, you're likely to notice that something significant has changed, and to wonder what's going on. And, in brief, you can either try to accept the change, or try to work out what happened and maybe gain some agency.
At this point, it seems unlikely that you forget a worldview in which you no longer have confidence. And that you may well be able to remember what it was like to have confidence in it. I would tentatively suggest that (for some people) it may be possible to make a sufficient intentional adjustment of your own mental state (and maybe other factors) and, in effect, choose which one you have most confidence in.
As for holding worldviews simultaneously, I think I recognise something like the experience Thomas Rowans relates. I'd describe it as disconcerting, and not a state you'd intentionally try to maintain for long. In general, and if possible, I would recommend being asleep when it, or changes to preferred worldview, happen.
I have no idea how accurate or reliable the above is - to what extent it's a story I'm telling myself. But it's one way in which I try to understand my experience of worldviews and beliefs.
Yes, I don't understand what it is. I suppose "everything is made by God" is a worldview. Or maybe not. But when I'm putting £100 on a horse in the 2.30, is that my worldview at work? Some people would say the horse is God.
I suspect most atheists in the West are operating from a broadly Christian worldview. That's not because they all are ex-christians (although some vocal ones are) but because we mostly live within communities where Christianity has had a big influence on thought processes. Of course it's a two-way street and (for example) British Christianity has been influenced by it being British and Britain has been socially impacted by a certain dominant type of religion.
That said, it seems like there are layers of worldview. We might say that even British Muslims are influenced by the history of British Christianity, to the extent that their thought processes are distinct from other kinds of Muslims. However it is also clear that there is a subculture (or collection of subcultures really) within British Islam which distinguishes their thought processes from everyone else's.
But people are not consistent. I assume a worldview is, more or less. If I practice Buddhism, but get roaring drunk several times a week and practice "sex magic", is this a partial view?
I saw a worldview flowchart online. It started with whether the reader thought that the material world was all that existed. Since that's an 'I don't know' from me I couldn't really get much further.
I have to regard the resurrection of Jesus as a special case because I also believe that Paul makes sense when he says that our spirits will be resurrected and not our bodies.
1. Corinthians 15.
42 So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;
43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
The questions I have are: exactly how does Paul know these things? How did Paul gain this information? Does he really know? No. He does not. No one does.
Okay, but agreement about being essential doesn't reveal anything to me about the divinity of that action. So often the phrase "divinely inspired" just rolls out as if it's a long settled fact.
My experience of the switching dual worldview, is that it is a bit like looking at this. You look at the same information but your gestalt understanding of it can shift. You can be consciously aware of that but I am not sure how much you can consciously control it.
A worldview in my experience and usage is much like a culture, except it goes even deeper. So you can have more than one cultural viewpoint, if you happen to live between two like I do (mainstream American and Vietnamese refugee/immigrant), and you switch back and forth between them as needed (Do I have a beer in public or not? Look around, decide "not now," it's traditional Vietnam time)
A worldview is a lot less conscious even than culture, and may require some of the same deep digging you'd do for psych work. For example, do you in your deepest heart operate from a zero-sum-game mentality (More for X means less for me, because there's never enough of whatever for everyone, even I can't see a logical connection) or from abundance? Does the arc of history in fact bend toward justice, in the big things or in the small things, or is history essentially meaningless and what happens to me a series of chance events? Is time cyclical or linear or some combo of both? Do people create their own luck and opportunities, or does time and chance happen to them all? As a result of all these ideas, what are my responsibilities (if any) to my fellow creatures?
You can see that it's easy to talk about this stuff, once it's drawn to your attention, and maybe possible to work on changing it, if you don't like what you see. But worldview is the thing that sets off your reflex actions without you stopping to consider--do you grab that last piece of cake or not, do you always overpack for trips, do you immediately assume that your new in-law whom you know nothing about is a) likely to be lovely or b) likely to be a problem for you in some unspecified way?
And since most people don't bother to consider their worldview, and just assume that theirs is the only one out there, we get a lot of incomprehension and people talking past each other. With sentences that start out, "But of course you would..."
Does anyone disagree that nothing could possibly unbelieve a believer but reason, and it would take a global and personal demonstration to believe an unbeliever? Apart from the usual and postmodern suspects of course.
Ordinarily I suspect that people who leave a strongly held religious position essentially have to deprogramme themselves. I don't think there can be many religious worldviews which make no sense in their own terms, so presumably people who start questioning move between views that exist within that religion then become close enough to beliefs that are outside it that the move to unbelief is not so far.
The reverse I think is a different process. Atheists who become religious are often convinced by different kinds of evidence, primarily relational and emotional.
I think it is quite rare for an atheist to examine all the main beliefs of a faith and then accept them. Usually I would guess they find something that attracts then works through the process of understanding what the rest of it is about.
It took 50 years, because reason was always there, used to justify belief. The elephant is in charge and the mahout can't but follow on its back, soothing and encouraging it and kidding himself that he's in charge. It's a Ptolemaic orbit of the sun and planets around the earth. Particularly the planets. Their orbits have to have epicycles on their otherwise perfectly circularity. When that doesn't work they have to have deferents and equants and eccentrics. Reason can always justify belief. The centre of the epicycle is on a perfectly circular deferent about the eccentric halfway between the Earth and the equant.
Until reason, the mahout on the becalmed elephant, posits the what-if. What if it's all bollocks? Just as an idle thought experiment. Deconstruct. Just to prove it isn't. Reconstruct.
The trouble is, in the middle of that, my last redoubt miracle was revealed as a pious fraud.
I have to confess I'm not sure that I consciously have a worldview at all. It's certainly not how I explicitly think about things.
If there's any consensus about worldviews, in common use of the word, it seems to be that everyone has one, and that we tend to take own worldview for granted and not consciously be aware of it most of the time.
Our worldview is how we "view" and conceptualize the world. The idea comes from western philosophy (Kant), and can also apply to societies, but I was familiar with the idea in a fairly loose, personal sense long before I knew where it came from or tried to understand my own worldview in any detail.
Underlying a worldview is a set of basic beliefs and assumptions which can be organised under different (essentially philosophical) categories, for example:
nature and sources of knowledge
ultimate (metaphysical) nature of being or reality
origins and nature of the universe, life, and especially humanity
meaning and purpose of the universe, its inanimate elements, and its inhabitants
existence and nature of God
nature and purpose of humanity in general and, oneself in particular
nature of value, what is good and bad, what is right and wrong
Christian theism is sometimes regarded as a complete worldview, in that it addresses all of these. Other worldviews might not.
But people are not consistent. I assume a worldview is, more or less. If I practice Buddhism, but get roaring drunk several times a week and practice "sex magic", is this a partial view?
But people are not consistent. I assume a worldview is, more or less. If I practice Buddhism, but get roaring drunk several times a week and practice "sex magic", is this a partial view?
Basically we label things in order to have a condensed description, which then allows us to think with that understanding without having to explain it at length each time. It’s not necessarily a value judgement.
Basically we label things in order to have a condensed description, which then allows us to think with that understanding without having to explain it at length each time. It’s not necessarily a value judgement.
I think the idea of compartmentalism often carries a negative sense. I thought humans have to be like this.
Basically we label things in order to have a condensed description, which then allows us to think with that understanding without having to explain it at length each time. It’s not necessarily a value judgement.
I think the idea of compartmentalism often carries a negative sense. I thought humans have to be like this.
Oh yes, I think we do it all the time - ‘tho not in the extreme ways of your example. But I don’t think it’s a worldview thing really - it’s just our way of coping.
Basically we label things in order to have a condensed description, which then allows us to think with that understanding without having to explain it at length each time. It’s not necessarily a value judgement.
I think the idea of compartmentalism often carries a negative sense. I thought humans have to be like this.
Oh yes, I think we do it all the time - ‘tho not in the extreme ways of your example. But I don’t think it’s a worldview thing really - it’s just our way of coping.
Well, I find the world view idea nonsensical anyway. Humans are not homogeneous.
Ordinarily I suspect that people who leave a strongly held religious position essentially have to deprogramme themselves.
Over the years, I have had a number of evangelical friends who lost their faith as a direct result of ill health - their own or that of a close family member.
I understand these events as the reality of their lives failing to live up to their expectations (of living by faith). Or that they lost confidence in the ability of their faith-based worldviews to make sense of their lived experiences. All accompanied by a range of complex and painful emotions.
Ordinarily I suspect that people who leave a strongly held religious position essentially have to deprogramme themselves.
Over the years, I have had a number of evangelical friends who lost their faith as a direct result of ill health - their own or that of a close family member.
I understand these events as the reality of their lives failing to live up to their expectations (of living by faith). Or that they lost confidence in the ability of their faith-based worldviews to make sense of their lived experiences. All accompanied by a range of complex and painful emotions.
Aye, meaningless suffering is a good one. It didn't touch my beliefs, reinforced them in fact. But yeah, some cannot reconstruct from that.
I know a trained counsellor who once had a Pentecostal minister as a client and who went from faith to outright unbelief within a remarkably short time-frame. What struck him was that the particular Pentecostal denomination this chap belonged to didn't seem to have any mechanism or procedures for dealing with this.
I can't remember which Iris Murdoch novel it is - spoiler alert - where one of the characters has a long-running correspondence with a monastic spiritual director who eventually loses their faith as a result. An unintended consequence.
Why nervously? (I think Adventists have a reputation, in the UK, of being slightly more than averagely cranky).
It's all cranky. And I was crankier than they. But it's all cranky, nothing crankier than the scandal of particularity, and the guy's deconstruction is excellent.
Why nervously? (I think Adventists have a reputation, in the UK, of being slightly more than averagely cranky).
Nervously because it is worrying. He found life going on pretty much is it had with God allegedly involved. Where was the life in all its fullness? The peace that the world cannot give? Surely he should have noticed their absence?
It makes Christianity look a bit like a habit. Give it up for a bit and you miss it. Give it up for long enough and the drive and cravings for it dry up and you find you don't need them.
I find the story deeply troubling and hesitate to think about it too much.
Why nervously? (I think Adventists have a reputation, in the UK, of being slightly more than averagely cranky).
Nervously because it is worrying. He found life going on pretty much is it had with God allegedly involved. Where was the life in all its fullness? The peace that the world cannot give? Surely he should have noticed their absence?
It makes Christianity look a bit like a habit. Give it up for a bit and you miss it. Give it up for long enough and the drive and cravings for it dry up and you find you don't need them.
I find the story deeply troubling and hesitate to think about it too much.
I find it troubling for a different reason.
I could see this happening to me, but not because I think I'd lose the craving or whatever. Because it would be parallel to saying to my husband, "I want a trial separation," but doing everything in my power to make it a permanent one and no mere trial. Having no contact with each other, even measured, short and public ones. Replacing all the activities and habits of the couple with new ones owned by me alone. Basically driving the thought of him out of mind as far as possible and replacing it with substitutes. Not living with the emptiness--filling it up with something else.
Of course we'd end up in a divorce! that set of actions in itself constitutes a divorce.
And equally of course, seeing I'm human, I would end by justifying my own actions and deciding that my choices had nothing to do with it.
Comments
It isn't a quotation that's why. Except by me. I have amended yours to align with @Lamb Chopped's post.
I veer between doubt and faith. During the worst moments in life my faith deepens and I feel the Living Light of Christ strongly. When life is easy my faith trembles and crumbles, sometimes to almost nothing.
I've never missed Church 'tho, because I have always very much enjoyed it as a community.
Belief is harder to define for me because it's a logical/intellectual matter and I don't have a logical or intellectual mind.
I put my 2p worth here because @The_Riv asked it as a personal question rather than a debating point.
The idea that we become disembodied spirits floating around on clouds is a relatively new and 'Western' development.
I don't read Paul to be saying what @Telford seems to suggest. But sure, he's not talking about fluffy clouds, I get that.
That'd be a matter for a Kerygmania thread I think.
When I've more time I may start one.
Meanwhile @Lamb Chopped I can understand your objection to my suppose they found Christ's bones illustration.
Put simply, all I meant was suppose somebody could provide proof positive that the Resurrection hadn't taken place. If so, our faith would be futile as Paul puts it.
Interesting thread and thanks to everyone for their comments.
I'll post again when I get a chance.
Peace to all.
I'm sorry? What would be correct? In the light of what you said?
The writer asked ,why in the Hajj pilgrimage do we remember the painful situation of Hajar/Hagar abandoned by Ibrahim/Abraham in the desert ? Did her faith in God waver ?
Why does God want us to remember these painful stories ?
The writer then decides that faith is more than just believing ; it is about living with fear and self doubt and working through those feelings until they bring some sort of answer.
Thank you, @Boogie. It's refreshing to read a straightforward answer *to* a question instead of the usual issues raised *about* a question, even if we're in Purgatory where the latter is the norm, and it takes a full page to set the table. I say that having been as guilty as anyone here on that score. Your mind and your answer are most welcome!
Messing with scripture has been going on since if was first chiseled. Don't see why @Martin54 should have to be any different.
Thanks for stopping by.
I know, much easier to dismiss those who don’t conform to the arbitrary structures you set out rather than engage with their ideas.
The existence or otherwise of God absolutely is a propositional statement. I don't see why it can't be subject to the same questions as one might ask about the existence of aliens, ghosts or alternate universes.
which after a few dozen posts landed at
Some here have deigned to answer, however reluctantly. At least @Gamma Gamaliel recognized it as a thought experiment. You've ridiculed it, and relegated it. I suppose that's an attempt to "engage with their ideas" of a kind, anyway. Perhaps I should have posted this thread in Epiphanies.
But I've been thinking about KarlLB's conception. (And also that some people report "losing" their faith overnight, as well as "finding" faith overnight.) Consider the situation of being familiar with two or more worldviews, and that you find some aspects of these worldviews personally convincing. Each worldview has a confidence "value" (for want of a concept) - how convincing you find it. This value depends on various factors, which might include empirical evidence, cultural values, family, psychological state and more. These values can change - I guess I'd expect it to be more common that they change little or slowly than rapidly. Either way, there may come a point when the worldview in which you have most confidence changes.
The first time (and if) this happens, you're likely to notice that something significant has changed, and to wonder what's going on. And, in brief, you can either try to accept the change, or try to work out what happened and maybe gain some agency.
At this point, it seems unlikely that you forget a worldview in which you no longer have confidence. And that you may well be able to remember what it was like to have confidence in it. I would tentatively suggest that (for some people) it may be possible to make a sufficient intentional adjustment of your own mental state (and maybe other factors) and, in effect, choose which one you have most confidence in.
As for holding worldviews simultaneously, I think I recognise something like the experience Thomas Rowans relates. I'd describe it as disconcerting, and not a state you'd intentionally try to maintain for long. In general, and if possible, I would recommend being asleep when it, or changes to preferred worldview, happen.
I have no idea how accurate or reliable the above is - to what extent it's a story I'm telling myself. But it's one way in which I try to understand my experience of worldviews and beliefs.
That said, it seems like there are layers of worldview. We might say that even British Muslims are influenced by the history of British Christianity, to the extent that their thought processes are distinct from other kinds of Muslims. However it is also clear that there is a subculture (or collection of subcultures really) within British Islam which distinguishes their thought processes from everyone else's.
It's worldviews all the way down, baby.
A worldview is a lot less conscious even than culture, and may require some of the same deep digging you'd do for psych work. For example, do you in your deepest heart operate from a zero-sum-game mentality (More for X means less for me, because there's never enough of whatever for everyone, even I can't see a logical connection) or from abundance? Does the arc of history in fact bend toward justice, in the big things or in the small things, or is history essentially meaningless and what happens to me a series of chance events? Is time cyclical or linear or some combo of both? Do people create their own luck and opportunities, or does time and chance happen to them all? As a result of all these ideas, what are my responsibilities (if any) to my fellow creatures?
You can see that it's easy to talk about this stuff, once it's drawn to your attention, and maybe possible to work on changing it, if you don't like what you see. But worldview is the thing that sets off your reflex actions without you stopping to consider--do you grab that last piece of cake or not, do you always overpack for trips, do you immediately assume that your new in-law whom you know nothing about is a) likely to be lovely or b) likely to be a problem for you in some unspecified way?
And since most people don't bother to consider their worldview, and just assume that theirs is the only one out there, we get a lot of incomprehension and people talking past each other. With sentences that start out, "But of course you would..."
I'll get me coat.
Not always. But that's what happened to me. Took 50 years mind.
The reverse I think is a different process. Atheists who become religious are often convinced by different kinds of evidence, primarily relational and emotional.
I think it is quite rare for an atheist to examine all the main beliefs of a faith and then accept them. Usually I would guess they find something that attracts then works through the process of understanding what the rest of it is about.
Until reason, the mahout on the becalmed elephant, posits the what-if. What if it's all bollocks? Just as an idle thought experiment. Deconstruct. Just to prove it isn't. Reconstruct.
The trouble is, in the middle of that, my last redoubt miracle was revealed as a pious fraud.
Our worldview is how we "view" and conceptualize the world. The idea comes from western philosophy (Kant), and can also apply to societies, but I was familiar with the idea in a fairly loose, personal sense long before I knew where it came from or tried to understand my own worldview in any detail.
Underlying a worldview is a set of basic beliefs and assumptions which can be organised under different (essentially philosophical) categories, for example:
- nature and sources of knowledge
- ultimate (metaphysical) nature of being or reality
- origins and nature of the universe, life, and especially humanity
- meaning and purpose of the universe, its inanimate elements, and its inhabitants
- existence and nature of God
- nature and purpose of humanity in general and, oneself in particular
- nature of value, what is good and bad, what is right and wrong
Christian theism is sometimes regarded as a complete worldview, in that it addresses all of these. Other worldviews might not.I’d call it compartmentalism.
Why call it anything?
I think the idea of compartmentalism often carries a negative sense. I thought humans have to be like this.
Oh yes, I think we do it all the time - ‘tho not in the extreme ways of your example. But I don’t think it’s a worldview thing really - it’s just our way of coping.
Well, I find the world view idea nonsensical anyway. Humans are not homogeneous.
I understand these events as the reality of their lives failing to live up to their expectations (of living by faith). Or that they lost confidence in the ability of their faith-based worldviews to make sense of their lived experiences. All accompanied by a range of complex and painful emotions.
Aye, meaningless suffering is a good one. It didn't touch my beliefs, reinforced them in fact. But yeah, some cannot reconstruct from that.
Why nervously? (I think Adventists have a reputation, in the UK, of being slightly more than averagely cranky).
I can't remember which Iris Murdoch novel it is - spoiler alert - where one of the characters has a long-running correspondence with a monastic spiritual director who eventually loses their faith as a result. An unintended consequence.
It's all cranky. And I was crankier than they. But it's all cranky, nothing crankier than the scandal of particularity, and the guy's deconstruction is excellent.
Nervously because it is worrying. He found life going on pretty much is it had with God allegedly involved. Where was the life in all its fullness? The peace that the world cannot give? Surely he should have noticed their absence?
It makes Christianity look a bit like a habit. Give it up for a bit and you miss it. Give it up for long enough and the drive and cravings for it dry up and you find you don't need them.
I find the story deeply troubling and hesitate to think about it too much.
I find it troubling for a different reason.
I could see this happening to me, but not because I think I'd lose the craving or whatever. Because it would be parallel to saying to my husband, "I want a trial separation," but doing everything in my power to make it a permanent one and no mere trial. Having no contact with each other, even measured, short and public ones. Replacing all the activities and habits of the couple with new ones owned by me alone. Basically driving the thought of him out of mind as far as possible and replacing it with substitutes. Not living with the emptiness--filling it up with something else.
Of course we'd end up in a divorce! that set of actions in itself constitutes a divorce.
And equally of course, seeing I'm human, I would end by justifying my own actions and deciding that my choices had nothing to do with it.