Long post, you might want to print and read at leisure
Originally posted by JDawg
But if we can't find life as God knows it, how do we know it exists? Jenyar, I'm going to plead to your rational side here for a moment, and please endulge me...You claim that there is this other reality; this place where the physical ends and the spiritual begins, and you speak of it plainly as if it is common knowledge. Let me ask you, how can you possibly know of it? Be completely honest and straightforward, and don't supply scripture. If you believe because of the Bible, then say that. But please, offer me something that I can hold on to; I'm not asking for hard evidence, just what makes you sure that such a reality exists.
Well, it's hard in the same way it's hard to prove time exists even though we can write it down and use it every day.
There are a few example I usually use. Truth, beauty, all those things that play with reality like a toy, and can only be discerned by reason (even
that is an understatement), not under a microscope. And what is the reality courts of law are based around? Empty space. Whatever documents they rely on are artificially produced out of nothing. Does that mean they are temples of useless ideas, with Judges presiding as priests of faith? A redundant fantasy, or a reality?
Love, does it even exist? Yes, chemical, neurological &c., but at its most human level it's a fantasy we build our lives around and base our happiness on. Invalid fantasy based on perfectly natural and explainable processes, or reality?
Faith. Yes, there are perfectly natural explanations for all (most?) spiritual experiences - but the strongest source of faith is natural experience itself. It encompasses your whole existence, and nothing falls outside of it. Even the most mundane thing can become "miraculous" to a believer because it relates to a
spiritual experience of life. Just like the "soul" is the "breath" of life - to a Christian it is nothing less than God's breath, but to an unbeliever it is simply "breathing". Faith does not exclude reality, it represents reality in the dimension where everything that constitutes "being alive and human" exists.
A rock immersed in water is still exactly the same rock, but everything it experiences is "wet". Faith opens your eyes to such a spiritual reality that "wets" everything. I know the difference between spirituality and pure fantasy is indistinguishable to you; you deny the "water" really exists, and there
are people who live in a fantasy world as if it were real. The difference is that spirituality should represent reality as reality
itself - no lies, no inconsistensies, no illusions. And there are also a lot of people who have discovered spirituality without finding God in it. They are too involved in the experience of it, the possibilities of it - because you can actually make yourself the god of your own spirituality.
All that being said: there is one aspect that I can't explain to you, and that's God himself, because He is in the seeking, not the finding. All I can say is this "spirituality"
is just fantasy without Him. But it is possible to find Him in it, because He reveals himself through it. You can be sure that only the real God can inhabit both reality and spirituality with complete representation. It is possible to know Him because He makes himself known. But if you only accept what you can see you are blind to Him. That is where I hope my examples above provide a clue.
If all else fails, revert to reality and start over. I have doubted many things and questioned even more growing in faith, but I have somehow never found even a bad reason not to hold on to it.
OK, I think I'm starting to understand you a bit more. You're saying that you have this faith--you don't know how or why it showed up, but it's there--and with this faith, you just know God is with you. Am I getting this?
There is more than one answer to this. I learnt about it from my parents, from the Bible, from its Jewish origins - although it now feels more like I just
realized something I was already born with. The fact that I can agree and differ with those who I learned it from means it isn't just blind indoctrination. I can even teach them something every now and then. Then there are also those things that confirm my faith; sometimes there is some issue I think about a lot, reason out, and I write down my conclusion and forget about it. Days or weeks later I find it in the Bible or it is confirmed, not hidden, but undiscovered. Even if it is discredited, I learn something new that once again gets me thinking.
So yes, I "just know" God is with me, but that "just" is based on many unrelated reasons that only come together spiritually. Almost like triangulation. I find it's the same in the Bible - there is a dimension that looks "flat" on paper, even contradictory, but in the mind it constructs something more.
That's fine, you are more for the human experience than the intricicies behind it. I understand that. But you also have to understand that this is only one way to look at life, and it isn't the one that brings advancement to the species. If we all just enjoyed life without questioning it's mysteries, some very bad things might happen. I would imagine most of our medical advancements would not have come about. You may argue this, but I can't see how, when basing an attitude of an entire people on the attitude you have, we as human beings would have found the neccessity to find medicine or ways to treat depression or any other ailment of the body/mind if we all were like you.
I agree with you, but questioning mysteries
selectively is even worse.
Again, faith should not limit human enterprise, but human enterprises infused with faith should be better for it. I believe it's a
lack of faith that makes you stop questioning things - like a kind of fear that you might be wrong, which is ridiculous. There are many people who believe in God with this kind of desperation, and it's a huge pity. By faith, of course I mean faith that enables, not disables. Fleeing reality disables, so does neglecting your potential,
humanity's potential.
I doubt those advancements made by sincere believers or God-fearing men were flukes or "lapses of faith". Few doctors who practised bloodletting to "release evil humours" from people were religiously inspired. Ignorance and narrow mindedness are equally detrimental on both sides of the spiritual fence.
There is no threat of stumbling upon God while exploring the mysteries of the natural universe, so that atheists can say "this is your god" or so that theists could be proved wrong. We can explore all we like and never find God, or we can recognize God and keep on exploring the world He created, delving deeper and deeper into its intricasies.
Sorry, but I can't resist this one quote: " 'Am I only a God nearby,' declares the Lord, 'and not a God far away?' " (Jer. 23:23)
It more than draws it's origin from the emotion...it IS the emotion. Now that I understand where you're coming from, I can speak a little clearer to you: Love--including all the acts that stem from it--is the emotion. If you did not have the emotion, you would not preform those acts. Yet if you have the emtion, there is nothing to say that you will act on any of it. (See: My story...although my heart is growing more for her with every day...see, Jenyar, my boy, even ol' JD can get sappy sometimes! 
)
Good to know
But I disagree. Emotion by definition doesn't include reason. You yourself think it's only a genetic instinct and reason and its manifestation in choices aren't genetically programmed. Patience, kindness, tolerance and trust aren't emotions, and without them love is just a shell. Emotion is
part of each of them, and maybe a few other things as well; sentiment, altruism, even some hidden agenda, but emotion itself is just the stem of the flower. We have to add these other nutrients artificially for the emotion to bear any fruit beyond the predictability of animal behaviour. And this kind of conditioning has a very real influence, ask any cognitive behavioural therapist.
You miss my point, though, Jenyar. Understanding the way love works, or it's purpose, isn't trivializing it. In fact, it's doing more for it, because now you realize that it indeed plays a real role in our survival, and is a truly beautiful thing. I can't stress enough, though, that knowing what love is doesn't exactly mean you've experienced love. Sure, you can know all the mechanics, but as you said, it isn't completely appreciated until you fall in it for yourself!
And it works both ways. Knowing of love as this mystical force and nothing else isn't giving the emotion it's due. You should know everything there is to know about this amazing emotion which is happy and sad and angry all at once. You should know why it exists, and what it's purpose is...if nothing else, you will be one more person who knows all there is to know about something, and that ultimately will inspire future generations to uncover secrets even deeper than we have explored. Big picture, Jenny, big picture.
Have you realized that you needed those emotional words to describe the emotion for what it is? Wouldn't the chemical equations have been more acurate? Wouldn't I have "understood" love better with them?
The big picture on emotion includes the the chemical force and evolutionary purpose behind it, but also the description, the circumstancial variables, the mystery. Understanding is always beneficial to any subject, but it is rarely there when you need it, and afterwards it's almost irrelevant except to rationalize, learn and move on. My argument is that the moment with all its nuances represents reality more accurately than any scientific explanation afterwards.
An example. You are suddenly tempted to cheat on your girlfiend. Is it you natural instincts that will make you resist the temptation, or your love for her? And if you start reasoning it out in the heat of the moment, which way will you reason? For emotion - "new" love, natural desire, experience and personal freedom (all of which are valid options); or against it, because you have realized infidelity amounts to lying to your girlfriend about loving her, and the two don't mix? Choice...
Unfortunately, you fell short on this one. Logic is the equation you just put up: woman, man, and man+woman=attraction=love=reproduction. That is the only variable that logic is concerned with. Everything else is perspective. "Reason doesn't permit it" is only because of the situation we are in...who is to say that 4 years from now we won't meet up again in a completely different situation and be able to be together? Who's to say that she won't find a better job and leave the company, and I'll be able to tell her how I feel, leading to us being together? Again, reason is unique to the individual, while logic is all-encompasing.
Yes, but logic is like the scientific contruction of events afterwards. Logic can't predict your actions, or what will happen. You can be sure it will
be logical, but how does that change anything? On the other hand, reasoning might provide a solution. You would use logic to reach a conclusion, but it still depends on your principles and other variables. You might even decide on an illogical course of action. The chemistry would be logical, your reasoning doesn't have to be. The individual is of concern, and his perspective describes his reality better than the all-encompassing logic.
See, your definition is flawed, because love doesn't require a coupling. Me and her don't need to be together to be in love, or for one of us to have love for the other. I don't like it that you require both parties to share something before love can be proclaimed. It worries me..
That was exactly my point: if you
have to include the basic principles for love to be love, then coupling is
sine qua non, evolutionarily speaking.
Sharing applies to romantic love where mutual affection more or less describes it. But love in the Biblical sense, as in "love your enemies", of course not - in fact, it's required to be unconditionally one-sided, without expecting any "return on investment". This perspective approaches love from the other side: instead of mutual attraction - basic emotion/desire/natural instinct - forming the basis for love,
choice becomes the characterising feature. Follow?
Why is that? Why does something have to happen before love forms? Granted, it happens the way you just said it does, but it also happens the way it's happening to me right now. I love her...I don't need the sex to love her, I don't need a relationship to love her. I know how great of a person she is, how strong of a woman she is, how entertaining she is, how cute she is, what else is there to know? If she's good in bed? Yeah, that would matter if I had just met her last night, but at this point, she could be a dead fish in bed and while it might detract from my physical attraction, I can't imagine it having anythign to do with my feelings for her.
So do you agree that the emotion has little to do with the actual manifestation of it? You might accuse me of being overly emotional, but I hold that reason can also form the basis of emotion. That even though we might be chemically oriented, carbon-based lifeforms, our reasoning ability makes us spiritual beings as well. We can live in a suspended world where impulse can be filtered, processed and analysed before we react to it, and even though this world exists solely in our minds, it is no less real, has no less basis in reality. That it in fact shapes our reality simply by perspective, before we even start shaping it accordingly with our actions. What if God is interested in that part of our existence more than anything else? Where even the desire to sleep with a woman already is already no different than infidelity - where infidelity in the mind is just as
real as infidelity of the body.
But parents don't choose to love thier children. It's instinctual. Granted, they can hate the fact that they had the kid, as circumstances (Again with the reason vs logic thing) may truly prevent her from keeping a child, and even take the hatred as far as murder, but I promise you, the love is there. They love that child.
I believe exactly the same is true with God.
Now consider for a moment that our earthly parents were given to us. In that sense they are just our foster parents, and they love us as their own - because we
are their own. Now change the perspective again, we believe our parents are our real parents, our earthly natures, biological inheritance, DNA, everything scientific comes from them; what if God adopts our spiritual natures - spiritual counterpart of who we are, our souls. He is our foster parent, but He loves us as His own because spiritually we
are His children.
The choice is in your mind: what owns you - who is your master? Your instinctive nature, which is scientific, real, observable, logical, or your spiritual nature, which is uobservable, but just as real and logical? Do you love Andrea because its in your nature and withing your understanding, or do you love her just because she
exists, with everything that means emotionally, psychologically, logically - and illogically? Is she just a ship sailing on the ocean, an eagle soaring in the sky, or is she an infinite mystery you would like to spend the rest of your life discovering? And you didn't have
any say in her existence, yet even the possibility of being with her makes your life worthwhile.
"Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the LORD."
Come to think of it...what kind of upbringing did you have that you actually believe your parents chose to love you? I'm really not trying to start a war, or insult you, Jenyar, but I really can't believe how warped that thought process is. More than your belief in God, or your way of living life for the experience alone, forget all that; what worries me is just how you think it all works. You really think a parent chooses love for a child? Tell me it doesn't say that anywhere in the Bible, because I will tell you now to burn it. That's a disgusting, atrocious, ignorant, niave, backwards and retarded outlook on it. I'm not saying you are those things, but that viewpoint absolutely
OK. Before you fly of the handle any further. Do you believe a parent
has no choice but to love their children?
What you have right here, JD, is the spiritual/biological dichotomy on a plate. One of the Ten Commandments says "honour your father and your mother". A rabbi will tell you it doesn't say "honour your children" as well, because the Bible doesn't speak to fools. But what kind of love aborts an unwanted child for no reason other than personal comfort? You say parents don't choose to love their children, that it's an instinct that comes naturally, like an emotion - but that's obviously not categorically true, and if it isn't always true, it means the natural instinct isn't decisive - and that has huge implications for something like trust, which is crucial to the kind of love I'm talking about. Why do so many parents
fail to love their children near to how much they love themselves - or even love themselves at the expense of their children? If people can fail at something that's so integral to existence, something so basically human as love, then what hope does logic and science provide in the place of God? Even psychology can only do damage control. If God doesn't exist, fair enough - that's just the way we ended up and we have to work at it, but if He does, each person is ultimately accountable and instinct just doesn't cut it.
You're right, this doesn't need to become a war. I'm also not easily insulted. I fully agree with you: parents have it in their nature to love their children. But nature alone isn't enough to ensure love. Ask any child left on someone's doorstep, ask the girl who's had two abortions because she wasn't "ready" to have children. Don't get mad at me, JD, because I know I was the first child of a first marriage and that I was conceived in the kind of love I have grown up with. And I
know it isn't "luck" that I didn't grow up in a broken household - it was a gift I intend to pass to my own children someday. No, I have no choice to love them (that's the law everyone has written in their hearts), but it isn't because my nature doesn't allow it - I don't trust my own nature to "take its course" with that much responsibility - it's because God wrote that law, and I
want to conform to His nature. I
want to love my children. It's a choice.
Even more than this: because everybody on earth are His children, in a spiritual sense you are foster parent to all of them. How's that for increasing your responsibility and putting pressure on "natural" love...
You wanted to know what the Bible says? It says don't take love for granted, because it depends on
you. You can live up to it or let it down. Divine law says it is the natural state of things, but as is evident from the wars, injustice, hatred, parent abuse, child abuse - child rapes - that neither law not justice can keep up with, we are obviously either following the wrong nature, or it (I'm tempted to say "evolution") has become insufficient to regulate our existence, and that makes us
all sinners.
