Discussion and DB (Sunday Forum)

by Warren , Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 08:29 (1494 days ago) @ Warren

» James,
»
» I appreciate your response and I must say that I find the discussion
» interesting but I have this nagging feeling that it is extremely tedious
» for every one else assuming that any one else is still following it.
»
» I imagine that you are of the same mind so I am proposing to answer your
» last comments and then obviously you have the right of reply, assuming
» that you wish to do so, and that will be the end of it.
»
» I am not sure what you want in terms of etiquette. There have been
» many times when I have made some statement and there has been no response.
» Contributors may very well have thought, "Oh no, here he goes again" or "I
» agree with that", or "I don't agree with that, but I am not going to
» respond because I know what his reply will be", or "I'm a bit bored with
» all this", and many more. Does it really matter?
»
» Which is why I wonder if DB etiquette is a special case but my problem is
» that I cannot think of any good reason why it should be.
»
» I do see DB discussion with a specific person as similar to any other
» conversation and in any other conversation it would be astonishing if the
» other person stopped the conversation by just disappearing.
»
» Even in the situations that you mention above it still seems beneficial
» for the specific person that has been addressed to respond. They would be
» providing valuable feedback to the other person who might then behave more
» appropriately in the future for the undoubted benefit of all.
»
» But I think there are other situations where it seems to me that the
» discussion is just getting to the interesting and challenging bits but
» then it stops and there is no more. For some reason the image of someone
» folding their tent and disappearing over the horizon comes to mind.
»
» Of course it may in fact not be interesting and challenging in which case
» it would be helpful to know this. This can be done tactfully, for example,
» by suggesting an alternative line of thought for the deluded one to
» consider.
»
» My question to Ian was, if the petitionary form of prayer is now "
» evolving" into the contemplative or meditative form of prayer (which seems
» to be favored by many on this thread) how does this fit in with the idea
» that the Scriptures and particularly the Old Testament are
» inspired?
»
» The point I was trying to make, but not successfully I admit, was that
» petitionary prayer is not evolving into contemplative prayer and is simply
» a different form of prayer.
»
» I have stated before that the problem with the OT stories is that
» they have very mixed messages about God. One set of meanings out of a
» biblical story is wonderful and another set is quite horrible (the Exodus,
» for instance). Faith involves discarding the horrible for the wonderful,
» but Christians and Jews are not alone in that. All religions do the same
» with their sacred books.
»
» If there is an "evolution", it has to be an even stronger rejection of the
» horrible meanings.
»
» -- How about you tell us what you think is meant by "inspiration".
»
» I was very careful not to suggest that I knew what a revised idea of
» “inspired” would mean or even that it should be revised. What I said was
» that it was possibly an idea for discussion.
»
» I did outline this in my first post today and so I will not repeat all of
» it again. It began with this paragraph.
»
» Now about the Old Testament. My response is to suggest that possibly it
» might be considered along the same lines as the response I gave (to you I
» do believe, James and there was no response) about the need to revise our
» understanding about the concept of the omnipotence of God.
»
» Perhaps the same idea can be suggested as a basis for discussion about the
» Old Testament and also the New Testament. Perhaps we need to revise our
» understanding of what being inspired really means because perhaps our
» understanding of “inspired”: is defective because it would require God to
» be irrational.
»
» The argument is that “inspired’ can look bad in the Old Testament because
» human understanding of the Transcendent is necessarily and by definition
» defective and it would be irrational for God to replace it with what is
» beyond the human.
»
» In short, as Claude Shannon would say, the message sent by God was not the
» message received by us humans for some obvious reasons to do with
» Evolution.
»
» There is a similar idea in mysticism that is emphasized by St. John of the
» Cross that we can get the message from God very badly wrong. But it is an
» inspired message.
»
» It needs to be understood in the context of Evolution which includes the
» Evolution of human understanding. Evolution is especially interesting
» because it seems to means that what is impossible at one time becomes
» possible, after much more Evolution, at another time.
»
» I guss this is a good discussion to get finished with and I suspect that
» you may feel the same way. » All the best.