Following up on my previous posts about ideas I've rejected (religious ideas in particular), I'd like to write about an idea I was raised with that I haven't rejected--the idea that God really has revealed himself to people, through prophets, the Bible, etc.
While this idea can be used to turn religion into a controlling, oppressive thing, misuse doesn't mean the idea itself is wrong. The idea of natural theology (that our ideas about God can just be based on what we perceive) is attractive, but it has its own problems. It's so subjective. Personally, I think God's characteristics are not obvious from looking at the world around us. If they were, there would be a lot less variation in the world's religions. If God actually has revealed something about himself to people, those things that he revealed would be much more accurate and beneficial than anything we could figure out ourselves.
That leaves us with a glaring question: how do we know what God has revealed and what's just made up by people? Or can faith somehow transcend this question? Is there some way we can have a devoted faith without knowing for sure, intellectually, that God revealed certain things?
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1 comment:
Analogy time!
I remarked on this blog post in Buzz, where there's an extremely silly dialogue now ongoing in the comments.
On the original post, however, this dialogue does not appear.
I assume that if God wants you to see his comments, he will do so in a forum to which you have access, and can fully understand. Otherwise, we have to take it as a sign that he doesn't want us to hear what he has to say. Yes? No?
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