Comments on: Belief in God

By: dor deasy

dor deasy — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 19:33:44 +0000

Doubt is, I believe, an essential spiritual tool. Without doubt, we risk turning God into a human-created idol, something small and easy to understand. Doubt allows us to challenge the theology so that we may find the spirit of God within it.
It is possible that one reason there are so many faiths is that we need that array to understand the complexity of God. It is possible that the difficulty lies not in belief, but in defining God and having a language for how we experience God. Both of these posts speak to that.
In the first post, Pascal refers to God as an entity. In a post-human era, this is often perceived as “superstition” and dismissed. Rorty refers to God as orthopraxy (right action).
The more narrowly we define God or a God-experience, the greater the risk that we use God’s name in vain. Are not creativity or artistry God Experiences? Is not the human connection that transcends language and culture that we make during mission a God experience?
What all of these speak to is service beyond the individual, living in a non-egoic space.

By: Roger Hansen

Roger Hansen — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 19:22:21 +0000

I’m not sure I totally understand your comment. But I’m an agnostic that wants to believe in theosis. If there is an afterlife, I feel that eternal progression is the only doctrine that makes intellectual sense. In this regard, I’m a strong believer in parts of process theology. But I don’t feel that a desire to believe in theosis (in posthuman terms), makes a belief in God a “moral imparative.”

Rorty had a positive feeling about the LDS belief in eternal progression (his wife is LDS), but that didn’t lead him to a belief in God. Have I missed your point?

I have two brothers. I suspect that we are all agnostics. We were all raised in a Mormon home and our parents were fairly active and certainly encouraged us to be active. Our father, despite his best efforts (particularly during his mission), could never develop a testimony, although I’m sure he wanted to believe in God. I suspect he was very much a “cafeteria” Mormon.

I wonder if part of our genetic makeup is our propensity to doubt? But does this doubt alter the way we want to live our lives? I don’t think so.

By: Lincoln Cannon

Lincoln Cannon — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:15:13 +0000

However, belief in our own potential to flourish should lead us to belief in God, defined in posthuman terms. In this sense, there is a moral imperative to such faith.