From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Oct 14 2004 - 19:11:13 BST
Wim,
[Wim:]> 1) You -quite uncritically- quote Scott: "What I find annoying are
critics
> of religion who have not studied it. No modern non-fundamentalist
theologian
> is ignorant of the value of science, but how many critics of religion are
> familiar with modern theology?"
> As a Quaker I object to equating religion and theology. Theology guides my
> life just as little as chemistry. If anyone wants to criticize my
religion,
> please study its practice.
I didn't equate theology with religion. But there is theology to study.
That is not all there is to study, as there are also people who write books
on their own practice and why it is valuable to them, plus books on
comparative religion, etc. I emphasized theology because if one takes a
random practitioner of, say, Catholicism or Buddhism, one often finds
discrepancies between the beliefs of the practitioner and the "official"
religion (though more and more, theologians are recognizing that concepts
like "official" don't really apply, that there are no single correct
answers). For example, I once heard in a documentary a Buddhist saying that
dying was ok, since she would be reincarnated. She seemed to be unaware
that Buddhism was about getting off the cycle of birth and death.
Theologians often have insight into the broader scope of the ways in which
their religion is practiced, how it relates to traditional practices, and
so forth.
[Wim:] 2) How can distinguishing types of 'beliefs' clarify 'faith'? For me
'faith'
means 'trust' (in divine guidance, when I open myself for it) and has
nothing to do with any cognitive content.
This is a theological statement. You are distinguishing between seeing
'faith' as 'trust in divine guidance' from seeing faith as ascribing to a
set of propositions. This is the kind of good information on religion one
finds in theology that people who haven't studied it don't know about.
- Scott
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