chavos

Uh...objectively experience? What makes any experience objective? That more that one person can have it? Religion does that. That it seems very real? Religion's done that from time to time. That it makes sense with other things we sense? Religion does that too!

Given that we are not totally rational beings, why does it make sense to only allow ourselves to experience life with that part of ourselves?

Same with any other human thought or construct, rationalism included.

Ever the skeptic, i do have to ask who "they" are, and where you get this. I'd love to read about it. Assuming it's truth for a moment, i'd like to know how that makes God less real that part of our physical brain can produce an abstract reality. That's what the whole thing does... Part of us is physically wired to understand spiritual things, and can be short circuited? What possible challenge to faith does that present?

I got that. I was very clear on the fact that you don't believe in him. That's why he doesn't exist. Faith does not start out of nothing....and the llama is not grounded in your experiences.

Quite confusing to read this. Your thoughts are on a plane of existance that interacts with
"Reality" but are not part of it? How is an idea not real? I don't mean to say that fictional and mythic things are true becuase people believe in them. But when billions of people share ideas on spiritual realities, i say it's as much of a reality as "freedom" or love" are. We can physically describe these things, and can explain away the logic behind them...but that still doesn't change the fact that there is a subjective, non-rational human experience taking place with a reality that is not dependant on outside confirmation.

Not quite what i was saying...it is not there to provide an asnwer, but allow us to think. I don't expect neat answers from my faith...i've choosen to adhere to a complicated religion with contradications, challenges and problems. Wouldn't have it any other way. I happen to be contradictory, challenges and problematic. Many of us are... Religions are ways for people to chew on difficult questions...and that's why substance is important. Shallow, easy answers would never satisfy...

Btw:I'm currently reading the fascinating "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong...i HIGHLY reccomend it. She makes a very informed discussion of God with the light that religions are not about the particular truth value of the statements they make, but more about how they point people to realities that words cannot deal with.

I don't expect God to tell me why the sky is blue. I don't expect commentary on the how and the what of physical things. Science does a lovely job with that. I turn to non-rational systems when they work. They have taught me about love, patience, trust, and mercy, to name a few.

If your llama really taught you about those things...it too would be a doorway to the reality of God. It's often called animism...and is perhaps the most ancient faith man has held. It's an easy sport to put something mundane in the place of the revered, and i get the point. But my rebuttal is not that you're wrong, but that you're right in a way that you won't like. The llama could work...but it doesn't. We don't worship llamas because they don't tell us about ourselves. We don't believe in cold fusion because we can't get it to work. Efficiacy determines our trust in an idea, both rational and non-rational.

Fact? The fact is quite unimportant, when you come right down to it. I don't beleive in literal creation in 6 days. I don't have to in order to find meaning in Genesis and what it tells us about our search for our place in the world. Belief does not make objective fact. But it can make a subjective truth. And you don't care for subjective, or non-rational, and that's fine by me. But i've found such things to be a million times better at helping me understand my life and its meaning than rational studies of the mind. Faith does not begin in a vacuum, as your llama example suggests...it begins in experience.