Posted on 06/27/2009 10:33:55 PM PDT by bdeaner
If you get the urge to research Border Collies, herding and trials, you can start here: http://www.bordercollie.org/core.html
I'd disagree, or refine that. I'll agree and then disagree with Kosta here.
Rational thinking, the intellect can get your body to walk - it is a navigator. It is not, however, the captain. It doesn't determine why what you walk for is better than not walking. Rational thinking alone cannot give you the purpose in walking across the room. It cannot even give you your purpose to get up in the morning. Not reason alone.
Reason is conditional, each reason has a reason.. as far you wish to go, it can only lead to another reason, until it reaches an axiom or absolute truth statement or knowledge.
You can go on infinitely in each conditional statement - but you would still sit - with reason alone.
Reason, the conditional, must stand upon the absolute - to move, to have a purpose. And absolutes cannot be known by reason - by definition, they have no "because". If they did they would be conditional, not absolute, and still you would sit.
no one who positively repudiates the Church can be said to belong to the Church in any sense
If one repudiates, semi-quoting: The Church including ALL of the instrumental means of salvation operating in the world through Christ and the Holy Spirit, no matter where that may be occurring… I can see the meaning. I would equate this rejection, or at least include in it: denying the reality of Goodness, Beauty, Truth. And I imagine such a person would not know anything of his connection with the divine or with anyone else and would experience this life as being abandoned in a deep and dark well. Hell.
But there is still hope.
The soulish man presumes our knowledge of Him precedes our faith. Faith comes first. Through faith, He is free to further sanctify us.
Does the “faith that comes first” require no knowledge of Him? If not, what knowledge may precede faith? And must it always be in this order?
It's a sensible question considering that God is "beyond everything." As for the world, I never made such an inquiry.
He holds up logic, and asks for proofs. I tell him there are none, because God is revealed, not concluded.
Better logic then reflex or fancy gone wild. You will have to make up your mind about the revealed thing. You admitted, to my surprise, that faith is an a priori assumption, and now you are saying it's a 'revelation.'
He wants to know how someone can believe a revelation, since it is not logical.
No, you got that one wrong too. I want to know how can you believe a revelation without knowing what it is. As I said, it could be God, but it could be insanity or a brain tumor that's making you "see" and "hear" revelations. And if you do know what it is, how do you know what it is? I also asked you if you believe that "demons" cause diseases and you conveniently ignored that.
The mind operates quite effectively in many areas without resorting to logic or conscious thought
As in thoughtless and illogical behavior? How do you measure effectiveness of the mind in thoughless illogical mode?
it seems foolish to me to assume that logic is the rule that we can submit belief in God to. In such a discussion, logic is inadequate.
At least you practice what you preach. You say it seems foolish to assume that logic rules, but it is not foolish to assume the existence and knowledge of an inconceivable ontologically alien divine entity? Faith is an a priori assumption, remember? And based on that "logic" you conclude that logic is inadequate. Is that a fact?
I used dogs because I know something about Border Collies, and because even learned men like yourself ought to know something of a Lab’s behavior. If behavior - complex behavior - is inheritable, then we should be cautious in trusting our powers of logic
Inbreeding in humans does not result in specific behavior patterns. Identical twins separated shortly after birth develop different behavior patterns. Human behavior is not inbred; it is learned.
If you knew more about Border Collies, you would know that top breeders breed for behavior, not looks or body
And if you knew more about humans you'd know that what we are not Border Collies.
I used an anecdote to illustrate, not to prove. I’m not going to try to teach you about Border Collie breeding or trials - feel free to research it on your own.
You used an anecdote of innate dog behavior and assumed a paralle with humans where there is none.
If you think your mind operates independently of your body, you aren’t very bright. Hunger and weariness obviously affect out thinking. Why? Because our mind is part of our body.
You are still building your strawman. I never even suggested such a thing. Hunger and weariness affect our mind because our brain needs glucose to function, the way your car needs gasoline to run, and your electric fan needs electricity spin. You see, it's quite simple: no glucose, no brain activity, no mind.
How does this justify making an a priori presumptive leap of faith that there is God, that you know what God is, that you know how to "recognize" the ontologically unrecognizable, to detect the undetectable, to speak of characteristics of the invisible, etc? You have covered everything from Border Collies to unscientific claims about human behavior and your military service, but you have still not addressed these logical questions.
How do I know about God? The Holy Spirit.
Good. Now you can tell me how do you know it's the Holy Spirit?
Sorry that you don’t like that answer, but it is true.
Sorry that I don't "like the answer BUT IT IS TRUE?" I can understand why logic is such a low item on your repertoire. It's much easier to use a sledge hammer approach as "proof." When all else fails, we will just declare it true and that "proves" it.
I pray you might someday learn the truth of it.
Why? So that I may dispense with reason and let myself be guided by a priori assumptions?
What? You wake up one day and believe for no reason whatsoever?
Faith comes first
How do you know that?
Through faith, He is free to further sanctify us.
And how do you know that? How do you know "He" is limited to faith and why?
I remind myself of that every day when I observe people's driving habits. Not using reason as your captain is a matter of habit or choice it seems. Perhaps using reason is also a badly neglected learned behavior, especially with people who buy things they don't need, with the money they don't have, to impress people they don't know.
And if mind is not the captain, what is?
Reason is conditional, each reason has a reason.. as far you wish to go, it can only lead to another reason, until it reaches an axiom or absolute truth statement or knowledge.
This is an epistemological issue...where is the limit to our knowing. One thing leads to another, but where does it end? I think the end of knowledge (not awareness) is when we have to make a leap of faith because we have run out of objective knowledge, and begin to construct reality in our own mind rather than simply accept that our 'box' is not big enough to know everything, and be humble enough to simply admit ignorance beyond a certain point.
Reason, the conditional, must stand upon the absolute - to move, to have a purpose
What absolutes? And why does anything have to have a purpose?
And absolutes cannot be known by reason - by definition, they have no "because". If they did they would be conditional, not absolute, and still you would sit
How do you know there are absolutes then? To assume that something preceded this existence doesn't mean it is an absolute. And if an absolute cannot be known by reason, by which means it is known?
There is a highly observable chasm between animals and humans. Animals can do what we can't and vice versa. The main one is language and absence of innate behavior in humans.
Using one's own inner experience as the rule is solipsism. It basically denies the world around you. I can see why personal fancy can play a dominant role in such an approach.
Actually, rational thinking doesn’t allow you to walk. Walking requires dozens of decisions each second to maintain balance, and we do not and cannot use our conscious mind to make those decisions. That is why walking takes time to learn. The body needs those decisions to be made, but you cannot ‘think’ fast enough and at the level of muscular control required.
This is true in other areas as well. When you ‘see’ a couch, you don’t see a couch. You see a lot of colors in a pattern. Your mind then compares it to everything else it has seen and determines it is a couch. Before you can look at a room and have any sense, your mind needs to be able to make these comparisons and determine what is what.
That is why humans are so good at target recognition. A child can look at a severely scrambled picture of a tank in the woods and know it is a tank. Computers cannot - not at the level we can. That is why no automatic target recognition system has worked nearly as well as a human.
This is not ‘anti-rational’, for it is something we train for. In WW2, target recognition of planes was taught. With practice, a human could see a specific plane for 1/10 second, and ‘know’ exactly what it was. They were specifically taught not to think. Thinking was too slow and too unreliable. They had to train the subconscious mind to do the rational work of the conscious mind.
That is what I am trying to explain to kosta50. Every day, he makes thousands of ‘rational’ decisions without using logic to do so. If he didn’t, he would be insane.
So why does he insist that only his conscious, rational, logical mind is adequate to ‘know’?
This is also something they teach in self defense and in combat - trust your ‘instincts’. If it feels wrong, it probably IS wrong. Your mind can pick up on details, compare it to your experience, and make rational decisions without logic.
Can it go wrong? Of course. So can the logic of anyone I’ve met. You can make mistakes. But when I was training to go to Afghanistan in 2006/2007, our instructors said that NOT trusting our instincts was a sure way to die.
That is what I’m telling kosta50. Don’t be surprised if we make decisions about following God without having a clearly thought thru, logical, A proves B approach. After all, we do this all the time, every day, and it works well.
In combat, no one waits to move until they can prove something. You take what you’ve got and make the best decision you can, including your ‘instincts’ and ‘feelings’ as inputs. You make a ‘leap of faith’ and go (or stay). We do the same thing driving down the highway. And we do the same thing making decisions about God and faith.
Every day we make ‘leaps of faith’, most of which work. Those that don’t, or are based on inappropriate subconscious patterns, can kill us (read Deep Survival, or study USAF accidents). But we have to make them, so we do.
Faith in God is not anti-rational, but neither is it a conclusion. Obviously we make mistakes, just as we make mistakes when flying. But avoiding a decision until it is provable is a decision in itself.
“Human behavior is not inbred; it is learned. “
Based on our experience with animals, it is likely that I could breed a human for aggression or a drive to go running. It would take at least a few dozen generations, and probably more. But we can breed dogs, on average, for retrieving, hunting, herding, long or short outruns, use of ‘eye’, etc.
I’d love to hear WHY humans have a ‘chasm’ that makes us immune to the techniques used successfully in other animals for a thousand years.
“Using one’s own inner experience as the rule is solipsism.”
Wrong. You do it every day. It is an inescapable part of life.
The object of our thinking is in Him, not in our primacy of judgment. He is the object of our faith. In the Greek the same word is used which we find translated as for faith and belief. Believe in Him and we will be saved. We are saved by faith alone, not by works, lest any man should boast. Same word used in both cases.
How do you know that?(Faith comes first)
Because the Word of God tells us. That is why we study the Word of God, to know what He wants for us by what He reveals of Himself to us, all glorifying the Son.
Consider Hebrews 11.
I don't know, but without one we don't ask such questions - or get up in the morning.
How do you know there are absolutes then?
I know they are necessary to fully use reason/logic in determining human decisions. Without them, real or assumed, we have no place to begin our reasoning. We all, at the least, act as though they exist.
In absolute values, our choices are 1) Absolute values and truths exist and can be known 2) We can only take someone else's word they exist and we consciously choose some. 3) Unconsciously do 2, our actions illustrating which absolute values are true for us.
The alternative to all of these, if we are making all decisions on logic-reason is to be frozen in an endless road "why/because" ?
if an absolute cannot be known by reason, by which means it is known?
You are not frozen, you have purpose and values. So you know or act as though you know absolute truth/values. Find what these, maybe one, are - a simple exercise will work - and ask yourself the same question. I think this is the most useful answer.
In any case, let's assume that a leap of faith of some sort is required. On what basis, what criteria do we use to choose where to leap?
In driving, or combat, we don't have full information, but we have clear criteria - what information we're looking for and how it it relates or is judged. We don't leap completely blind in driving or combat.
What is the data we're evaluating that goes into where and if we leap?
I never said everything we do is rational. I said human begavior is learned. That's not the same as rational. But it is only through reason that we may know, because through logic we estbalish relationships of the cause and effect (understanding).
You could ahcive the same thing well into one's lifetime by proper conditioning (learning).
I’d love to hear WHY humans have a ‘chasm’ that makes us immune to the techniques used successfully in other animals for a thousand years.
Because innate behavior doesn't exist in humans. We also don't know why gravity is, but we know it is.
I differentiate my dreams from reality. I do not believe for one minute that just because something maskes sense it has to be true.
Who says? You do? Who is "Him" and how do you know "Him?"
He is the object of our faith
Why?
Believe in Him and we will be saved.
Saved form what? And how do you know that? Why do you fele you needor deserve to be saved?
Because the Word of God tells us
How do yoyu know it's the word of God?
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