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Don't try and tell me that that isn't irational.
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No, that is pretty clear. But "proving" a rule with one personal experience is similarly hazardous.
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If you were to take a soley rational view of the world, you would have no reason to believe in a god.
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Quite possible. However, is it beyond beleif that there is in fact reality to non-rational things? I don't mean to suggest the paranormal, or things that we simply lack the technology to understand. But what i do suggest is that a deep search for meaning takes place in all cultures, and many of those cite an experience with spiritual energy that is not tangible, but very real.
The point is that we are not soley rational beings. And that using only that part of ourselves to understand the world shuts us off. I would not believe in the literal precense of your llama, nor do i conceptualize God as big guy in the clouds. I would believe you that the llama means something to you...and that the physical reality of the llama has nothing to do with its reality in your mind. In thinking that the llama is there, you've created one in your mind. At
very least, God is in the minds of believers...
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However, just because there are things that we do not know (or things which we can never know) does not give carte blanche to go ahead and arbitarily make up what-ever stories you feel like, and claim them to be equally valid as any empirical knowledge.
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Not at all. I would never claim that for instance that the llama is as effective as God. Why? You don't really believe in the llama. The llama doesn't actually help your life...or for you to discover things about you. The llama is a poor god, and a poor god idea becuase it doesn't work. The point of faith tradition is to add, change and retool ideas that help people think about things they can't think about directly.
It's near impossible to think about "the Meaning of Life" straight up. We tell stories, we think of metaphors, use abstactions, and build constructs to feel and think about realities that our words and logic fail to capture. The llama is absurd only because it doesn't work. God is absurd when "He" doesn't work. Infact, the degendering of God is mearly the changing of the guard in the ideas that people use to think. There was never a Holy Wang that has been suddenly snipped...nor a male deity that's offended that people are calling him a girl. Simply a change in how we have spoken in our hearts about that which our words struggle to describe.
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They are called science-fiction novels, and some are indeed very entertaining.
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Again, i would nearly agree. These too, do help people think in ways that can quite appropriately be labeled "god talk." However, few have the depth that religions possess. When i want to think about what happens when humans mess up, i can look at conceptualizations of sin posulated by thousands of communities, scholars...where as devotees of sci-fi or the llama have but the sole creator of that idea. The richness that would allow them to delve in to the mystery of God is simply not there....