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To: betty boop
These men are more interested in getting the questions right than in coming up with answers....

Perhaps. Perhaps the reason I don't follow along with Voegelin is because I think he's asking the wrong questions.

The "revealed truth" is neither "revealed" nor "true" for a person if it does not evoke an answering response in his or her spirit and mind.

In that case, Voegelin falls down and can't get up right at the beginning. From my perspective, and from the perspective of a great many others, there is no "revealed" truth. And how does Voegelin counter that? By telling me that if I believed in revelation...I'd believe in revelation. Not very helpful. ;)

99 posted on 12/09/2002 8:50:55 AM PST by general_re
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To: general_re
From my perspective, and from the perspective of a great many others, there is no "revealed" truth. And how does Voegelin counter that? By telling me that if I believed in revelation...I'd believe in revelation. Not very helpful. ;)

What Voegelin hopes to show you -- or reveal to you -- is the experience of human beings down the millennia, as they have attempted to grapple with the human condition which is still our own condition. Invariably, intellect and transcendence (plus ideation and reason) have been the sources of human understanding of man, his place in the world, and his relations to his fellow men.

Once upon a time, before the concept of radical individualism seized the modern imagination, people understood they were participants in a community of being that had its Source outside the physical universe. Now you may wish to argue that this is a silly superstition. But I would not agree with you. For I have so far been unable to locate reasonable explanations that answer Leibnitz's two famous questions anywhere in the physical world. If we insist the explanation is "there" (which strikes me as a kind of "faith statement"), then neither I nor 6 millennia of human generations have yet to find it. If it's really not "there," then with all our ingenuity, we won't find it "there," no matter how much we want to/"need" to....

Still, reason tells me it must be somewhere. And so if the answer to the questions "Why is there something, why not nothing? and "Why are things the way they are and not some other way?" cannot be found here in physical reality, where can they be found?

101 posted on 12/09/2002 9:21:01 AM PST by betty boop
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