Hi MoQers!
This one languished in draft form for a while.
> MATT:
> >Logic has its roots in faith (SQ).
> >Religion has its roots in faith (SQ).
Faith, IMO, is much more fundamental than that. Possibly the interface
between phenomena and noumena.
Jonathan writes:
> Interesting this Western tendency to faith in THINGS. Where we rely on
> faith is as faith in processes, that the sun will rise, that the brakes
> on the car will operate, that the train will get us to work on time.
> Yet, our dictionary definition is about faith in OBJECTS.
and:
> To the Western mind, the Hindu temple makes Hinduism look like idolatry.
> However, Hindus will say that those statues are not idols, but physical
> reminders of different attributes (of God? of Nature?).
Careful here. A Catholic may be (wrongly) accused as well - and have been by
(some) Protestants and Jews. Maybe we're beginning to generalize too much.
Actually, the problem is universal if some of the Eastern philosophers I've
read are any guide. Christian mystics have identified the problem as well,
so Easterners aren't alone in having seen the trouble in S-O thinking.
Catholics have had to defend themselves from those charges made by
Protestants. Thich Nhat Hanh insists that a major stumbling block to faith
is the confusion of noumena with phenomena. Personalizing Absolute
Reality/God is an attempt to describe the noumenal and is doomed to provide
an incomplete description of reality. It is impossible to use words and/or
concepts to talk about God/Absolute Reality/Quality.
Paraphrasing a Buddhist is a trick. Nhat Hanh describes it eloquently in
"Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers."
Interestingly enough, Buddhism, as a religion for the masses is about in the
same shape as Christianity in the West, which is to say irrelevant to most
people. Buddhist priests officiate at weddings and other traditional rites,
of course, but, and leave it to the Japanese, the demand for priests
outstrips the supply, so the Japanese have invented a robot that intones the
rites!
Shades of the drive-thru wedding chapel in Vegas.
Yamada Roshi, according to Fr. Robt Kennedy, a Jesuit Zen teacher, feels
that Zen is dead in Japan.
> IMHO, the question "Do you believe in XXX?" asked in a religious context
> is usually a question that needs to be unasked, and replaced by
> questions such as:
> "Do you think XXX will happen?", or even, "Do you value XXX?"
Hmmm. In a religious context, the question "Do you believe in XXX (Asolute
reality/God,etc.) is merely the starting point of the conversation. The
answer to that question is the premise of one's worldview!
> I see a gray scale here: The "supporting evidence" is seldom totally
> lacking, and seldom absolutely compelling. Then there are those cases
> where the "objective" evidence seems so strong, yet some other "sense"
> tells us to treat that evidence with the utmost suspicion.
A moral sense, perhaps?
Good night, all!
drose
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:00:41 BST