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.
Nope- the ends are just as secondary as the means. I'm totally risking bankruptcy in that situation. My assumption is that God's plans don't include bankruptcy. But if they do, then God will provide at that point, too.
I think there's an important point here which gets down exactly to your difference in context/state between the theist and atheist. In each moment of making a decision, the faithful theist attempts to determine God's will and to follow it. So in a sense, the faithful theist loses free will. But at the same time, following God's will depends on every one of their abilities including their full reason. (So perhaps their loss of agency is only to the extent that they gain in their faith? I won't try to argue that right now though.)
My argument, I suppose, is that the faithful theist's state of mind is different from the atheist's because they have faith. I think that difference is observed in how they make choices; and I agree with you that there might be losses in translation between atheist speech and theist speech.
This makes me grumpy, because I would like to argue that the differences are bridgable by translation, particularly for atheists in Quaker contexts.
This is a challenging set of things to think about, but good, I think. Apart from the intellectual part, I realize as I write that I personally wouldn't do very well in the "have faith no matter what" test.
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Date: Saturday, 25 February 2006 09:34 pm (UTC)Nope- the ends are just as secondary as the means. I'm totally risking bankruptcy in that situation. My assumption is that God's plans don't include bankruptcy. But if they do, then God will provide at that point, too.
I think there's an important point here which gets down exactly to your difference in context/state between the theist and atheist. In each moment of making a decision, the faithful theist attempts to determine God's will and to follow it. So in a sense, the faithful theist loses free will. But at the same time, following God's will depends on every one of their abilities including their full reason. (So perhaps their loss of agency is only to the extent that they gain in their faith? I won't try to argue that right now though.)
My argument, I suppose, is that the faithful theist's state of mind is different from the atheist's because they have faith. I think that difference is observed in how they make choices; and I agree with you that there might be losses in translation between atheist speech and theist speech.
This makes me grumpy, because I would like to argue that the differences are bridgable by translation, particularly for atheists in Quaker contexts.
This is a challenging set of things to think about, but good, I think. Apart from the intellectual part, I realize as I write that I personally wouldn't do very well in the "have faith no matter what" test.