[Sca-cooks] OT: Faith and challenges

[Patrick Levesque]

You seem to be confusing ³Dogma² and ³Faith² which are two entirely
different things. 

This (and the mini-debate which spontaneously sprouts every time this kind
of subject matter pops up on a list) seems to be an unfortunate
representation of the Atheist/Believer antagonism that exists in North
America (and maybe elsewhere, I just can¹t attest to its presence outside
North America). Whereas the former seem to be unable to define themselves,
except by opposition to the latter, and the each tend to vilify the other.
(Ok, it¹s a rather gross caricature, but you get the point. Your list of
bones of contention for example is rather convenient for a militant atheist,
except that it casts aside the whole of the social and historic context in
which all of these phenomenon did occur, and without this context the
argument is invalid).

Back to our topic. I am not a man of faith, and actually do not recall ever
being one, or losing faith, or whatever. I just don¹t have it. Incidentally,
Catholics believe faith to be a grace ­ not something to be acquired, but
something which is bestowed through divine intervention. I have had the good
luck of knowing many different persons who were possessed of such strong
faith, and seemed to me to use this faith to become much better individuals
and citizens. In all cases faith transcended dogma. I am happy to have
investigated faith with them, and while it still eludes me to a certain
degree I at least got to know and develop a new respects for those men and
women. 

I am glad that you included sociology in your list because, well, it¹s not a
science. I would have added art, history, music, philosophy the whole of the
humanities to the list. Instead of precise answers to just as precise and
culturally meaningless questions, these domains seek to appropriate these
answers and include them in a coherent vision of our world. There is no
³truth² to them, and these fields tend to change pretty damn fast, but they
at least ³try² to make sense of the entire mish mash instead of being purely
oppositional. 

Petru

(Eventually this thread will make some people uncomfortable ­ I suggest that
when this happens you take the debate to another list or to private e-mails
instead, as this is a period cookery list, after all).



On 30/05/06 17:21, "tom.vincent at yahoo.com" <tom.vincent at yahoo.com> wrote:

> And you see those declarations as *good* things?!?
>  
> I mean, everybody's welcome to believe what they wish, but when overwhelming
> evidence is presented to the contrary of a belief (such as racial inferiority,
> age of the planet, human genetics, leadership by 'divine right', papal
> infallibility, female subservience, slavery, stoning children that misbehave,
> talking serpents, talking bushes, a global flood, a boat with all the planet's
> species, talking donkeys, floating iron, leaping fetuses, that pi is 3, etc)
> ... well, that's pretty much what education and the quest for knowledge is all
> about, isn't it? 
>  
> Learning the truth about geology, biology, sociology, archaeology, astronomy,
> chemistry, physics?
>  
> Whenever someone urges me to accept something 'on faith', I grab a tight hold
> on my wallet because it's a sure bet that they want to control my money, my
> actions, my voice, my body and/or my mind.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ansteorra.org/pipermail/sca-cooks-ansteorra.org/attachments/20060530/fb70b1df/attachment-0004.htm>