tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-539463236258014970.post5679726343112923388..comments2023-05-09T03:58:28.114-04:00Comments on the Pigouist: Merry Christmas from a Nihilist Humanist.Evanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15924952798635901214noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-539463236258014970.post-29854486725520346712010-06-04T11:51:43.288-04:002010-06-04T11:51:43.288-04:00Certainly not overstepping bounds! I did write thi...Certainly not overstepping bounds! I did write this for a public forum, after all. A few short responses to your points: <br /><br />1) I agree fully that people have a hard time explaining their beliefs and positions, but I was attempting to be charitable in stating that reasons are actually there. But it's because of this bias (people's inability to understand their own beliefs), however, that I tend to err toward the notion that judging worldviews from the outside, not the inside, tends to be the more accurate standpoint. <br /><br />2) Yes, I am stating that this structure I have chosen rests on those two assumptions, and yes, I do consider them to be assumptions, either faith or delusion (depending on whether you'd like to have a positive or negative connotation). I have chosen those two because they seem to require the fewest additional assumptions. <br /><br />3) I agree that impartiality is impossible (whether you are a believer in a religion or not), but in general, when observing phenomena (in hard sciences or social sciences) observing from outside reduces partiality, and that includes the phenomena of religious belief. I think this is perhaps even more true when those being observed have a hard time explaining their behavior or belief, as we have already agreed can tend to be the case. <br /><br />I take no offense to the assertion that I "never truly believed the gospel," though I would certainly have described my experience at the time as having been a believer (again, here I am trusting the judgment of an outside observer). The assertion of my prior non-belief would have to stand up against not only my subjective experience, but other faith leaders believing that my faith was strong enough to choose me for leadership positions. I can't help but suspect that the assertion is made categorically, that if a person decides they no longer believe what they once did, they retroactively no longer had ever believed. <br /><br />To answer your final question (in the simplest terms, as you requested), I found the gospel to not contribute anything useful to my understanding of the world. Belief in any sort of accuracy became irrelevant.Evanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15924952798635901214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-539463236258014970.post-57773244656487740272010-05-29T09:29:10.302-04:002010-05-29T09:29:10.302-04:00Evan - interesting stuff. I appreciate your though...Evan - interesting stuff. I appreciate your thoughtful approach. Here are a few thoughts I had while reading this:<br /><br />1) As humans we have a very hard time understanding the particulars of our current state of being and reality. So, for example, many people who are genuinely born again (and yes, I firmly believe in that reality) have a very difficult time explaining to anyone why it is that they have believed, they simply do. They have heard and understood the gospel, been changed by grace, and found themselves believing. You might as well ask someone for a detailed answer with evidence for why they enjoy the taste of honey. In an attempt to give answers to those who question their faith many people, having been poorly taught in the church, or being young in their faith, give silly responses because, as I said, they don't fully understand what has happened. They know that they have heard the gospel, received it as true, and gone forth changed. <br /><br />2) it seems your whole structure rests on your ability to hold your 2 values. Yet you seem to admit that your system provides no grounds for doing so. It's no surprise that as you move outward, applying these values, life makes sense. You have stumbled upon what I believe God has ingrained into every human being as patently obvious and undeniable. After all, someone who in no way values life, not even their own or their friends and family, would be considered to be an anomaly or to be disturbed in some way. <br /><br />3)The problem with an unbeliever attempting to understand the Christian faith is that impartiality is impossible. You have no choice but to look from the outside in, and the more you learn, having as of yet not believed, the more convinced you must become of the rightness of your own decision, i.e., not believing, and the silliness of the other position. Again, it's like someone who doesn't like honey trying to get inside the head of someone who does. You just can't do it. Many liberal theologians can write with great accuracy on the theological positions of evangelicalism and can appear to have great insight into the workings of the Christian church and community, but, at the end of the day, many of them admit that they simply don't believe the gospel and they cannot fathom why somebody would. At the most basic level, the difference between an unbeliever and a believer is an act of grace on the part of God, and it is his prerogative whether or not to act. <br /><br />Evan, I don't pretend to know you very well (or at all, for that matter! Though we did have a good time cleaning cabins together for a month!), so I hope I'm not being annoying or overstepping my bounds here. However, based on what I read here and based on what I understand the Bible to say, I see clearly that you never truly believed the gospel. In other words, I don't believe that you have "fallen from grace" so to speak. I'm curious, in the simplest terms, why have not believed the gospel? Is it because you find it unbelievable on its own terms, or because it doesn't fit with your own presuppositions?Ian & Meganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06208718906797425607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-539463236258014970.post-77765094270970883472010-01-05T12:43:08.833-05:002010-01-05T12:43:08.833-05:00Richard... wasn't really considering that for ...Richard... wasn't really considering that for this post, but I'm guessing that the rent I pay for my space is greatly undervalued. It's hard to judge given the impact on Cleveland that the crash has had, and the fact that my own space is technically only a handful of square feet, but I've got pretty great resources around me. More on that in other posts. <br /><br />Derek... Yeah, generally my experience has led to emphasizing less so the erroneous nature of it (whose errors have been well documented, to be sure) and more so the irrelevant nature.Evanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15924952798635901214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-539463236258014970.post-31479431643541191072009-12-30T14:06:27.321-05:002009-12-30T14:06:27.321-05:00"But I do discover that when I reason from th..."<i>But I do discover that when I reason from these values, taking the widest array of evidence into account, the evidence proposed by my religious life (as it once was) becomes superfluous. Before deeming it superfluous, I had even become quite adept at using what would be considered religiously-admissible-evidence to reconcile religious truth with what I found to be true in a wider context. But even this turned out to be not only superfluous, but near arbitrary -- usually in the form of picking a verse from the bible to trump some other verse from the bible.</i>"<br /><br />I found this part to have a good deal of traction for me. Personal experience has brought me to similar thoughts.Derekhttp://youtube.com/DerekKniselynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-539463236258014970.post-5342584192052837432009-12-25T12:07:47.846-05:002009-12-25T12:07:47.846-05:00Where - in time and space - do you stand/move/slee...Where - in time and space - do you stand/move/sleep/sit/work/etc.? <br /> <br />Do you pay the full economic rent for your personal time-and-space slot?Richard Biddlehttp://www.henrygeorgeschoolphila.orgnoreply@blogger.com