So, let me make sure I understand... as a theist in this position, it's not just that I believe that following God's will is more important than financial concerns, and therefore will risk bankrupcy to follow God's will. It's that I believe God will pay the bills as long as I follow his will, and therefore I'm not actually risking bankrupcy at all.
Yes? Did I understand you correctly?
Hm. So, OK.
I can certainly translate this as far as saying "This needs doing, and I can do it, and therefore I will. If it bankrupts me, so be it." without invoking a deity.
I can translate this further as saying "This needs doing. I cannot do it all myself -- I do not have the resources. But what I can do, I will, in the hope that others will do the rest."
I can hypothetically translate this as far as saying "I am convinced that this need is genuine, and not just my personal quirk. I believe the existence of this need will call forth a response to it in others, just as it has in me, in proportion to their level of awareness... and therefore I believe that others will do the rest." This, again, does not require invoking a deity, although it does require invoking a certain commonality of human experience, an "inner light" as you note above.
I think this gets us pretty close to a mapping into the atheist vernacular. It seems to leave a gap only in cases where the problem to be addressed is beyond the reach of concerted human effort... cases where only divine intervention can suffice.
These cases are, I think, pretty rare... in fact, I can't think of one.
The closest I come is things like "The sun is going to go nova!" but even there I can imagine the nontheist taking action in the faith that human ingenuity etc. will address the problem as long as everyone acts with faith, boldness, and confidence... even if the individual nontheist has no coherent idea of what such a solution might look like.
So... am I missing something fundamental here? Because if I've understood the theist experience you're describing, it seems like there is an available nontheist translation.
That said, I should reiterate something I said before: the context we choose matters. Even if a nontheist translation exists, the theist formulation may be more emotionally compelling... something essential may be lost in the translation, causing the theists to be more effective at accomplishing things that need to be done than the nontheists are.
If that were true (which, for all I know, it might be) then a rational nontheist might legitimately conclude that becoming a theist is the practical thing to do, and to encourage others to do, whether god exists or not.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Friday, 24 February 2006 03:08 am (UTC)So, let me make sure I understand... as a theist in this position, it's not just that I believe that following God's will is more important than financial concerns, and therefore will risk bankrupcy to follow God's will. It's that I believe God will pay the bills as long as I follow his will, and therefore I'm not actually risking bankrupcy at all.
Yes? Did I understand you correctly?
Hm.
So, OK.
I can certainly translate this as far as saying "This needs doing, and I can do it, and therefore I will. If it bankrupts me, so be it." without invoking a deity.
I can translate this further as saying "This needs doing. I cannot do it all myself -- I do not have the resources. But what I can do, I will, in the hope that others will do the rest."
I can hypothetically translate this as far as saying "I am convinced that this need is genuine, and not just my personal quirk. I believe the existence of this need will call forth a response to it in others, just as it has in me, in proportion to their level of awareness... and therefore I believe that others will do the rest." This, again, does not require invoking a deity, although it does require invoking a certain commonality of human experience, an "inner light" as you note above.
I think this gets us pretty close to a mapping into the atheist vernacular. It seems to leave a gap only in cases where the problem to be addressed is beyond the reach of concerted human effort... cases where only divine intervention can suffice.
These cases are, I think, pretty rare... in fact, I can't think of one.
The closest I come is things like "The sun is going to go nova!" but even there I can imagine the nontheist taking action in the faith that human ingenuity etc. will address the problem as long as everyone acts with faith, boldness, and confidence... even if the individual nontheist has no coherent idea of what such a solution might look like.
So... am I missing something fundamental here? Because if I've understood the theist experience you're describing, it seems like there is an available nontheist translation.
That said, I should reiterate something I said before: the context we choose matters. Even if a nontheist translation exists, the theist formulation may be more emotionally compelling... something essential may be lost in the translation, causing the theists to be more effective at accomplishing things that need to be done than the nontheists are.
If that were true (which, for all I know, it might be) then a rational nontheist might legitimately conclude that becoming a theist is the practical thing to do, and to encourage others to do, whether god exists or not.